How to put this...
One of the things I shared with parents last night at Meet-the-Teacher Night was a slide listing some of my classroom expectations and it had 'Google' at the top. I had listed below: Chrome Browser, Chromebooks, Drive, Gmail (for Students). Some (maybe a lot, but I hope not by the end of the year) of my students don't seem to like this a lot, but it's a cultural shift that they (and I) have to get prepared for and used to. I wanted parents to see that this is something their children have to know how to use for my class. It isn't a once-in-a-while thing to do as an activity for my classes.
As I've been transitioning to having everything available online at my website, and some more inquiry-based activities instead of memorization for my classes, I've overheard and been told by a few students that they'd rather have me stand up front and give them everything, have a book and write everything down. On the other side, I heard a student tell another that he loved this class because we used the Chromebooks everyday. We got into a conversation about the difficulties of multi-tasking and distractions that come about when you have a device in front of you.
That day at lunch I read an article from BrightBytes, Make Way for the New 3Rs by Gayle Allen. It really struck a chord with me, putting in perspective some of the shifts I've been seeing (and am trying to implement) in education the last 4-5 years. So, after my 'Classroom Expectations' slide, I had the following slide to help explain why I do this in class:
So how do I see my teaching changing in the next 5 years? Hopefully by being as close to a master at this as possible with buy-in from my students.
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