Education Technology

BYOD: “With great power comes great responsibility.”

Any conversation involving technology and education must involve Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) in one way or another. BYOD is becoming increasingly popular as it allows for school districts to “meet students where they are” in a way that is financially advantageous. In short, students are allowed to bring their devices (iPads, iPods, Android tablets, etc.) to school, connect them to a safe and secure network, and leverage their technology for educational purposes.

This year, my district has begun the process of implementing BYOD in what is being called a pre-pilot, and my students and I were delighted when we got the call to be the first classroom in the entire district to have the honor. While working with my students remains my main priority, it is also my duty to set the stage for teachers and students who will be a part of BYOD classrooms in the future. (Next year, the “real” pilot will begin with volunteer teachers from grades 5 and up.)

As a result, here is a quick snapshot of what I have learned (and some of my ideas that have been reinforced) throughout or BYOD pre-pilot:

colAR Mix App and Visualizing

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When I first started teaching about six years ago, one of the biggest mistakes I made was believing that reading comprehension did not consist of much more than reading texts and then answering follow-up questions. Then, everything changed when I read Mosaic of Thought by Ellin Oliver Keene and Susan Zimmermann, followed by Strategies That Work by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis. Now, all of my reading comprehension instruction is encompassed by the essential question, “How can I understand while I am reading?” In other words, it is what great readers do while they are reading that makes them great. This teaching relies heavily on student metacognition and the explicit strategies of monitoring comprehension, activating and connecting to background knowledge, questioning, visualizing, inferring, determining importance in text, and summarizing and synthesizing information. (It is also my firm belief that students should be consistently using these strategies from first grade through high school.)

I am always looking for unique ways to leverage different technologies in order to teach these explicit strategies, and to help in deepening student understanding of what they read. A few weeks ago, I decided to use the augmented reality iOS app, colAR Mix, to teach the strategy of visualizing through a writing workshop. ColAR Mix is an app that literally brings drawings to life! Through the app’s official website, the user can print out coloring pages. Then, when the app’s camera is focused on the printed page, the drawing pops out of the page and animates. It is really one of those things that has to be seen to be believed.

Classroom Technology Integration: 5 Easy Steps

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1. Approach Technology with a Backwards Design

When creating an instructional unit, start with the technology. There will be points in time during your teaching career when you will think that you have found the next great program, website, or app that you just have to use with your students. You can encounter these resources by collaborating with other teachers, by browsing the Internet, or when checking your RSS or Twitter feed. Instead of starting backwards from what you want the students to know, start with the technology and make everything else “fit.” However, if you cannot find a valuable use for the technology in your classroom, do not try to cram a square peg into a round hole.

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How We Start the School Year!

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About two weeks prior to the start of the school I mail my new students and parents a welcome letter and a supply list. This year, I decided to throw in a bit of flare by enclosing the content in a “candy bar wrapper,” which I modeled after the Wonka Bar from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. My wrapper was created in Adobe Illustrator with the help of the Willy Wonka font, which I was able to find and download for free after a quick Google Search. For the sake of authenticity, I tried to make my chocolate bar look as close to the Wonka Bar as possible. Also, the back (not pictured) contains a QR code that connects to my classroom website.

Along with the two papers, the wrapper also included a golden ticket, which invited new students to a classroom technology day, approximately ten days prior to the start of the school year. (Once again, the golden ticket mimics the “real” golden ticket as closely as possible.) Due to the heavy emphasis that is placed on technology in my classroom, I like to get students started with certain tools as soon as possible. Also, I can take this time to proactively establish rapport with my students, which pays off later on when certain learning obstacles may occur.

So, towards the middle of this past August, 20 out of my 28 new students entered into my classroom for the very first time. More or less, the day was split into four parts:

Student Guest Post: Technology Day and The Marshmallow Challenge

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The week before school started Mr. Cooper had a technology day for his students. Some of the fun things we learned about are how to make an iMovie on our iPods and transfer it to the MacBooks at school. He had us go into groups and come up with our own ideas for the movie. Most of the movies turned out to be very funny. My group’s movie was called “The Splinter”. The movie was about a girl who got a splinter and was very sad about this splinter. In the background there is a girl who keeps really getting hurt (fake of course) and has to keep going to the nurse. Creating an iMovie is fun and teaches us a lot of things such as, adding music and sound effects, adding titles and different backgrounds for titles. On technology day we enjoyed ourselves and made new friends.

Daily 5 and Additional Resources

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In a previous blog post I wrote about The Daily Five and the ways in which its implementation can be enhanced through the use of technology. In this post, I would like to briefly touch upon other “teacher books” that can be used along with The Daily Five.

Daily 5 and Technology

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As of this moment, one of the bigger movements in my school district at the elementary level involves The Daily Five, by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser. “The Daily Five is a series of literacy tasks (read to self, read with someone, writing, word work, and listening to reading) which students complete daily while the teacher meets with small groups or confers with individuals.” The book “explains the philosophy behind the structure,” and it shows teachers how to train “students to participate in each of the five components.”

As teachers begin to implement different aspects of the Daily Five into their classrooms, many teachers have been curious as to how one would integrate technology with the Daily Five. Here is a quick list that might prove useful (and I will probably refer back to this during my own literacy instruction):

Google Goodness

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Prior to the start of this school year, teachers in my district participated in two days of professional development. On the second day, I was supposed to co-present on unique ways in which Google tools can be used in the classroom. Unfortunately, other segments of the professional development ran longer than expected, and my presentation did not take place. (Nonetheless, there was time for me to show Tony Wagner’s TEDx Talk from last April.) Throughout the course of the year, I hope to present the Google information across various faculty meetings. Here is a quick snapshot of the material.

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Google Teacher Academy

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On April 4th and 5th, I attended this year’s Google Teacher Academy (GTA), which was held at the Google office in London, England.

“The Google Teacher Academy is a free professional development experience designed to help K-12 educators get the most from innovative technologies. Each Academy is an intensive, one-day event [with an optional second day] where participants get hands-on experience with Google’s free products and other technologies, learn about innovative instructional strategies, receive resources to share with colleagues, and immerse themselves in an innovative corporate environment. Upon completion, Academy participants become Google Certified Teachers who share what they learn with other K-12 educators in their local region.”

Adobe Educators’ Choice Awards

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Recently, my Pinball Wizard project was chosen as the Grand Prize winner for the Primary/Secondary Cross-Curricular category in the Adobe Education Exchange 2011 Educators’ Choice Awards. This is a contest that features innovative teaching and learning materials, which are created with the help of Adobe products. Many of the teachers in my district and students at my school helped to support me in this endeavor, and I cannot thank them enough. As a result of the contest, I have won a 15-inch MacBook Pro (which I am typing on right now) and the Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Master Collection (which I am still waiting for in the mail). Also, after the contest, the PR manager from Adobe contacted me about doing an interview with one of their bloggers. The interview can be found here.

Below is a description of the Pinball Wizard project. This description was a part of my entry, along with the project’s website, student samples, and a video of students playing on their pinball machines.