Productivity for the modern teacher/parent/spouse -- how do we get it ALL done? B 12, Evernote, and other solutions.

Last week, we had a health wellness check in my building. This is a great service provided to busy teachers who seldom put themselves first. Teachers are notorious for serving the needs of everyone else before even realizing they might have pneumonia or a kidney infection or their left foot is falling off. Teachers just hobble along on the stump that used to be a left foot. There are essays to grade, and lessons to plan, and letters of recommendations to write -- who has time to take care of an obnoxious gangrenous foot? That foot was probably just slowing you down anyway. So, to have a team of medical professionals actually show up in our building and check on our well-being, that's a pretty big deal. I only bring up this scenario because as part of this wellness service, they offered us vitamin B 12 shots. It is believed that these B 12 injections increase energy levels, and for a busy teacher, mom, wife, and student, if there is ONE thing I need, it is more energy. So, of course, when they asked me if I would like a B 12 shot, I said, "How many can you give me at once?" So I allowed this nice nurse to inject some kind of cranberry colored liquid into my arm in order to help me get everything done that just needs to get done. But I don't describe this scenario just to explain how desperate I am to have the energy I need to make my life "happen" on a day to day basis. This also made me think about, outside of vitamins, caffeine, B12 vitamins, and maybe just a tiny bit of meth, what can we do to get it all done? How do we make the time we have as useful as possible? What are people doing to increasing productivity?

In researching productivity, I found several apps that appeared on many lists for helping busy people manage their lives. The Google apps make every list, and I concur. These apps have really changed the way we all work. Google Drive is one app that shows up on just about every productivity list because it has made saving and sharing work simple. All of the Google apps work seamlessly together and help us get our work done better and faster. I just taught my students this week how to upload their work to Google Docs and then use the add-on apps to edit their own work and add works cited pages. The days of slowly working to piece together all of the minutia that is a works cited page is over. You just click, click, and click, and there it is. Every comma and period and italicization is perfectly put together. And the fact that you don't have to worry about information not being lost because it is in or on or over "the cloud" makes everything even more convenient. As a teacher, I am trying to integrate the Google apps into my classroom as we move to a paperless and technology-based system. I know that Google is just going to keep getting better at making my life easier.

Evernote was also a big hit on the productivity top ten lists. This app allows busy people to manage ALL of their information. Evernote, also a cloud based system, allows you to save notes, articles, emails, pictures, audio, and video. You name it, and you can save it in Evernote. Most impressively, you can even take pictures of your handwritten notes, and Evernote will clean them up and save them for later. Additionally, Evernote has easy search capabilities. You can tag your notes in order for it to be easily sorted and organized for later use. Evernote also allows the user to conveniently share your notes with others. In this day and age when we feel bombarded with information, it's important to have a way to sort and save and organize all of this information. Because if we can't utilize any of this information, then it ceases to be information. It's just junk that clutters up our lives. And we just don;t have time for that!

Another very popular app found on numerous productivity lists is Any.do. There are many popular To Do List apps out there to help people stay organized to improve productivity, and Any.do seems to really help get the job done. People like Any.do because it doesn't overwhelm its users with everything that needs to get done yesterday. The trouble with To Do Lists is that they can leave people feeling like failures as they see what they aren't getting accomplished. It can just become an ever-growing mountain of  what isn't getting done. Therefore, you need one that makes things feel manageable. Any.do sorts your tasks into "Today," "Tomorrow," "Upcoming," and "Someday." This categorization makes things seem a little less overwhelming. Any.do is also cool because you can add new tasks by emailing them to your do@any.do account. Any.do prompts you every morning to take a moment to plan your day. And as you complete tasks, Any.do cheers you on with, "Like a Boss!"

Regardless of what you're using to make your life more productive, whether it be vitamins, caffeine, or apps, it's important to remember that as teachers, and parents, and spouses, or whatever role you fulfill in life, we have to make time for taking care of ourselves, We can't help anyone or complete any tasks if we are falling apart. In our busy lives, we often put our health on the back burner. Eating right and getting exercise and spending time laughing and talking with loved ones also boosts productivity because it boosts our immune systems and energizes us. Getting enough sleep is also vital to making our very busy lives doable. Therefore, make sure to check out all of the new tech that is out there to help us sort and organize our lives, but also take some time to rest and recharge. Research shows that people who take time in their day to be meditate or be mindful about what they are getting accomplished and why they are working towards a goal work more efficiently. It's not only important to get the job done, it's also important to stop and consider why we are getting the job done in the first place. Don't be a hamster stuck on its spinning wheel.

Sources: Forbes Magazine. "Here are the Best Apps for People With To Much To Do." 
               Business Insider. "The Best Productivity Apps for Getting Things Done."
               Tom's Guide. "20 Best Productivity Apps."
               Inc.com. "Inside the Psychology of Productivity."

Check out the latest trends!

So what are the hot tech trends in education today? There seem to be so many that it's difficult to wade through the sea of what is hot and new. When I recently discussed the issue with my very fabulous friend Brooke Brown, a teacherpreneur who always seems to know what is the latest and hottest thing going on in the world of education, we talked about the trends of communication and individualized learning. If there are two things I really see transforming education, it is the ability for teachers to communicate quickly and efficiently with students and parents, and it is a teacher's or school's ability to truly give students an individualized education. No more teaching to the middle. 

Class Dojo and similar apps are becoming extremely popular. And as we learned in our class, with a click of a button, a teacher can send a parent a notification that little Suzie has received a gold star for being a good sharer, or that she forgot to turn in her permission slip for the big zoo trip. Just like that -- with one click. It is this technology and cultural norm that I have really watched change over the last decade. I remember printing off 20 D and F letters, hand addressing them, and sticking them in the mail tray at work. Hand addressing, people!!! And I remember trying to make phone calls to parents and struggling to find a home phone number that wasn't disconnected or no longer connected to my student. My, times have changed. If anything, communication can now feel overwhelming. I now have to make sure to reply back to the fifteen parents who have emailed me in a day. The world seems much more connected, and our technology is undoubtably building this bridge between families and schools. Edmodo, Remind 101, Showbie, Class Dojo, they all make communication smoother and easier for teachers and families. 

Individualized education is also what I see making great strides. And, as a teacher, I believe that it is technology that is going to allow teachers to develop better and more personalized instruction for students. As a parent and a teacher, I think that this is an incredible and wonderful shift. We all know that individualized instruction is what is best for students, but there has been no way to actually do that until now. When I was a kid, some kids were reading the blue level SRA's and some were on the orange, and that was about it for individualized instruction and then it was time to get back to the math worksheet.  But now, there are all kinds of apps and instructional tech companies that gauge student learning and allow students to practice and grow at their own pace. Language Arts Friendzy and other apps allow students to practice ELA or math individually. It gives them feedback as they go, and such apps will keep targeting certain skills it sees a student struggling with. A new edtech company, Knewton, claims that it assesses student learning and will even reteach core knowledge issues that it sees lacking in students, meaning that Knewton is able to "see" that Bobby is struggling with understanding Active voice because Bobby doesn't really have a good grasp of subject-verb agreement. Knewton will reteach those core skills Bobby is having trouble with. 

Communication and individualized instruction are both key to bettering education. I'm excited to see what the future brings. I fear that this teach may put me right out of a job, but, as usual, I'm hoping for a world and future where there is room for very flawed humans and our perfect computers ( who want to secretly destroy us!!) to exist together in harmony. 

ISTE rules!

If there is one thing I'm learning this year, it is that our world is changing at a break neck pace. And that change is also affecting our educational institutions and our classrooms. It feels impossible to stay ahead of the curve, and it feels overwhelming to project what tech is going to take off and be truly useful and what tech is just going to be the gadget of the week. 

Even this morning, I heard about a new edtech company called Knewton. As students answer questions related to just about any curriculum, Knewton uses the student's right or wrong answers to project at which level the student is working and how to keep pushing them forward. If the student is not understanding the concept, Knewton keeps lowering the skill level and eventually starts looking at what key concepts the student may be lacking and reteaches those missing key concepts that are keeping the student from moving forward. Sounds great, right?! Knewton promises to give every student individualized instruction. No more teaching to the middle. But as soon as the Knewton founder was finished talking, another edtech intellectual questioned the very idea of such technology and pointed out the flawed logic behind all of it. My point is -- it's hard to know what is going to be truly useful to us as educators. That's where ISTE comes into play. Using a set of international standards to help us evaluate tech in the classrooms is incredibly vital in a time when it's difficult to gauge what is the best tech to help our "students be prepared to succeed in an ever changing world," if you will. 

When considering the presentations from class and looking at the ISTE standards, there are a few presentations that stand out to me. 

Tammy McManis's 30 Hands fits just about every ISTE standard. Through making videos, it allows students to be "creative and innovative." It also is a great medium to help students "collaborate and communicate." Making videos is inherently communicative in that students are communicating a message. There are multiple ways a teacher could use 30 Hands collaboratively. "Critical thinking" also plays a role with the 30 Hands app. Students are making a video to meet an educational goal. They are answering questions and solving problems as they create. 30 Hands also promotes "digital citizenry" in that it is creating a safe and positive way for students to interact, teach, learn, and share. Finally, "technology operations" also plays a role in this edtech as students must figure out how to use the app to produce a product. 

Using ISTE to evaluate Language Arts Friendzy gives us a way to view how useful this edtech on the classroom. I don't really see how LAF is meeting the "creative and innovative" requirement in that it doesn't really require students to create anything. However, LAF does a great job of helping students develop "digital citizenry" in that it gives students a safe environment to communicate and play against other students across the world. The best thing about the LAF is that it meets the "critical thinking" standard. Students are forced to think on their feet and solve problems as they play learning games. Finally, LAF does a good job of fitting the "technology operations" standard in that kids must apply prior knowledge of other technology to use technology effectively and productively. 

ISTE is a great way to take a closer look at all of the tech that is available to us. In a sea of new tech, how do we responsibly make choices that will give us the most bang for our very limited bucks? ISTE is one way to do just that. 

I'm really sorry if this blog post sucks!

Well, it's almost midnight, and I'm at the ER with my husband. I'll try to hit 500 words, but I can't make any promises. Right now, he is having a nice morphine snooze, so I have a few minutes to write my technology blog. Possible bowel obstruction, if you're curious. 

Anyhoo, let's talk technology. It was another night full of amazing and interesting presentations. And, again, I'm feeling so lucky to have this opportunity to learn about these amazing resources. This class is having a very positive impact on my teaching. I have created an Emaze for my presentation on Wednesday and one for my classes over our Puritan related literature. I used the very cool Halloween theme with bats and witches, which is very apropos of Puritan related literature. I mean, those people were really obsessed with the devil!  And  I'm interested in hearing what my students have to say about it. Emaze is very easy to use, but you have to use chrome to make it work smoothly. 

You know what's really cool? Telling your students about technology they haven't heard of!! Do you know how rare that is for me? As an English teacher, I was completely enthralled by Scott Goodrich's Google Add On Essay Reviser! This is the kind of stuff that an English nerd such as myself just completely freaks out about. I was showing some of my students how to use it on Friday. These very awesome young English nerds said to me, "How did I not know about this?" That was a terrific moment for me. I actually beat these savvy kids to the tech! I plan on doing a lesson over Google Docs and the Reviser as we turn a timed writing into a formal essay. It's a beautiful way to make kids look at their work with new eyes...Googly eyes, that is. 

The other tech that really stood out to me was the comic creator. I thought that was so neat, and I can see so many applications that could be used in a variety of learning environments. That could be used with a variety of grade levels and across the curriculum. Kids would be inventing and creating, so they are at the top of Bloom's. The MoMA App was also a really great way to get kids learning about different artists, art movements while creating at the same time. 

I really enjoyed the presentations this week, and I really hope mine isn't a big snooze inducer next week.  I typed this on pages on my phone in an ER. That's pretty great tech. 

Ok, we are off for a CT scan. Good night! I'm really sorry if this blog post sucks! 

Learning New Tech

Wow! The presentations from Wednesday are making me think about one thing in particular - how do I become paperless? And how do I do it yesterday? There are so many great ways to communicate with students and assess student learning without a million scraps of paper flapping about me like killer moths. Our presentations on Wednesday night made that all the more clear.

So let's go back two weeks...to when a river was unleashed in my building. Torrents of muddy water flowed up through the cafeteria floor as if our building might just be built upon some ancient, sacred burial ground. It was poltergeist level weirdness! I'm lucky that I am on the second floor. I'm lucky that my entire room wasn't destroyed and that I didn't, like many teachers, find myself utterly displaced. However, I did find myself partially displaced. I had "homeless" teachers teaching in my room during my plan and after sixth hour, so during the time that I usually grade, and check my email, and get organized, I was just grabbing stacks of papers and roaming my building looking for a quiet place to work, but by the time I Found a place to work, and chit-chatted with 5 to 10 people I met along the way, and got logged in, it was time to get back to my room or leave for the day. At some point, I even lost a stack of vocab exercises along the way. It was a very frustrating two weeks. But this experience pointed out to me how much easier this all would have been had I had a paperless classroom. As I watched Cindy Nordyke's Showbie presentation, I imagined that my life would have been exponentially simplified had I just had an iPad to pack around with me instead of 20 stacks of papers half hazardly paper clipped together. What if all of my assignments were online? My grammar reviews? My vocab exercises? My tickets out of the door? The Nearpod app showed me ways I could use iPads in my classroom to check student learning in class. This seems like an amazing review tool to keep students engaged in class. And I can check their answers in real time. The Apple TV also seemed incredibly useful. I actually used one the following day during my department meeting. I showed my department how they could grade online using Turnitin.com, and how they could use the Apple TV to instruct as they work the room. There are so many beautiful Edtech things happening and evolving, so....the big question is...why aren't we using them?  We have 70 iPads sitting in our library loaded with a variety of educational apps, so why aren't we using them?Clearly, poltergeist flood or not, this stuff would be making our lives easier.

If there is one thing that the presentations taught me, it's that, as teachers, perhaps especially high school teachers, we don't have a clue about how to utilize all the beautiful technology that is out there waiting for us. We don't know where to begin! You can buy 100 or 1000 iPads for a school, but if teachers haven't been trained to use them in a useful way, then we are wasting our very limited resources. There is some great and useful Edtech out there, and I feel as though I'm really lucky that I am getting the opportunity to learn about it, but it just shouldn't be that way. All of us should be getting these opportunities, not just the 32 of us enrolled in the cohort. There is a disconnect going on in our buildings. We need to be utilizing our PD time to teach teachers how to use this stuff. We need to be asking our more adventurous teachers if they would be on a team to take on using Showbie and other applications to implement paperless classrooms for a year. If we truly believe in our mission statement, then we have a reponsibility to train our teachers to prepare all of those students for that ever changing society that is looming out there. As a teacher, I can tell you, we are ready to do this, but, as a district, we are going to have to spend some time and money and energy in leading our teachers in the right direction.

It's Flippin' Crazy!

As usual, technology class has me thinking about things I had not ever considered. The good news is that nothing about this week's class made me fear that our very existence as human beings is being threatened by technology. I watched Ex Machina last weekend, so that didn't make me any less paranoid about the direction we are headed...that's all I'm saying. Fortunately, for all of us humans, including our students, the Flipped classroom is a nonthreatening concept that I think we can further investigate. 

One of my best friends in the world is a math teacher who teaches in Texas. Although I had heard of Flipped teaching before, she is the first person I have known to actually implement it in her classroom and feel as though it was a successful endeavor. She believes that it gives her more time in class to work one on one with students. Much like Mr. Hazelwood described, she feels that Flipped instruction makes her time in the classroom more meaningful. And before Mr. Hazelwood's visit to our classroom, I had never really considered how Flipped instruction might work in my classroom. I really just viewed it as something math teachers could do to maximize their instruction, but outside of math, it seemed pretty pointless to me.

So Mr. Hazelwood and Mr. Erich have forced me to look at my instruction and my willingness to try new things. How can I implement Flipped instruction into the English classes I teach? How would my students benefit? What problems do I see in trying this? 

On Friday, I took some time to talk to my partner in crime, Brian hunter, about trying out a Flipped lesson together that we could use for our entire AP Language program. I think that if Brian and I created a few short Pro-Tip AP Language exam videos, we could give our students more help in prepping for the exam. I envision creating a few top ten tips videos to prep for each essay and the multiple choice section of the exam. We could ask the students to watch the videos the night before we practice in class, and then students could also watch them to review the night before the exam...if they feel they need to do so. Therefore, instead of spending time reviewing our writing tips, the students can spend the class period writing and sharing their work with their classmates. Much like math, it would give us class time to have some meaningful time to practice and discuss our work. Our students will benefit from having more time to write and discuss in class as well as having a permanent lesson they can keep accessing as they prepare for their exam. 

The problems I see with Flipped instruction would be more targeted to the socio-economical issues. Not every student has technology at home. Not every student has internet access, and, sadly, not every student has 20 minutes to watch a video. My AP kids, generally speaking, have the time and money and the luxury of watching a math or English instruction video at night, but when I think about my on-level kids, and some of my AP kids, I have to think about the kids who work until close every night, or the kids who help raise their younger siblings while their single mom works the night shift, or the kids who have two jobs so they can afford to go on the band trip, or the kids who live in their cars. Poverty is a real thing. Neglect is a real thing. And as a teacher, I believe that if you are instructing your students in a way that is going to further alienate the already disenfranchised and isolated kids who need our help the most, then, well, what is the point? Unless we insure that every kid has the technology and access to a Flipped lesson, then we have to be careful. Really careful! Flipped instruction sounds really cool, but we have to make sure we aren't leaving any of our students behind in our quest to try something new. 

I think that Flipped instruction has some real benefits, and I am pledging to try something Flipped this year in my own classroom. But I'm also going to be careful in implementation and make sure that I am meeting the needs of ALL of my students. 

Where I come from is like this...

This week's question is all about...what is our day to day relationship with technology. At home and at work, how are we living with technology?

In my last entry, I talked a lot about technology at home and how I don't want my children growing up in a world that integrates technology all of the time. There is time and place inside and outside of the classroom to unplug. There is a time to spell on the IPad and a time to churn butter, if you will. I just don't want to live in a world where people, or God forbid my children, are falling in love with their OS, or even worse, a world where Lawrence Fishburne is asking me if I want to take the blue pill or the red pill! It's all about balance.
 
This week, I am typing my blog on an IPad in order to force myself to try something different. And that's really where I am at with technology right now. I am forcing myself to try new things. I am trying to walk away from my very comfortable can of sharpened pencils and do things I have never done before. So let me start with where I'm at with technology at home...

I have two small children, so technology is very important. The iPad is a very important tool in our household. My kids love to work puzzles, watch their favorite shows, and they play with the coolest apps! There is one where the kids tap on every room of a farmhouse and turn off the lights so that all of the different animals can go "Nighty Night." The iPad has changed traveling with small children in an incredible and delightful way. I think about sitting in the back of my parents' car during a long ride at fifteen listening to my Depeche Mode cassette player over and over again. What I would have given for an IPad! Instead, the lyrics to "Personal Jesus" will be forever etched into my brain. At home, we have two personal iPads, and we both also have work iPads.  My husband and I both have iPhones, and both of us will tell you that if we forget our phones at home for some reason, then life immediately becomes an unbearable trial that no one should ever have to endure. My phone makes me feel that I am connected to my husband, and my parents, and the people who care for my children, so it makes sense why I would feel so lost without it. It is the tie to the people I care most about in this world. We also have a desktop computer and a laptop. But the laptop feels so clunky compared to the iPad, so I'm trying to do most everything on the iPad these days. I shop on the iPad, or even on my phone. It seems like a real ordeal for me to drag the old laptop out. My husband has a small server area built into the top of one of our utility closets. I'm not exactly sure how or why or what that is all about, but I know it is VERY IMPORTANT to him. I just assume that if something happened to that closet filled with whirring fans  and cords and blinking lights that the entire house would lose power...and possibly running water. Additionally, we have a TiVo and we access movies and shows through an assortment of devices and services. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon make our entertainment possibilities endless. We have Sonos players in the bathrooms and kids rooms, so that they we can listen to Pandora whenever we feel like it. There is so much more to technology in my home, but it seems impossible to list it all.  So where am I with technology in the classroom...

As I said in my last post, I teach a class that is very pen and paper centered, so we practice with a lot of pen and paper! But I love my SmartBoard. I love to find video clips related to what we are reading or studying. It's a beautiful thing to pull up a John Green Crash Course over The Great Gatsby for my students. He brings humor and philosophy all together in the most brilliant 10 minute clips. As an English teacher, we use computers to research and write papers. I use Remind101 to communicate with my students. I have tried various websites over the years, but I never felt that students actually utilized it. It was just a way for me to say - Look I have a website, and all of the calendars and information is on there! You can't blame me if the kids are clueless! In English, we also use Turnitin.com, a website that allows kids to upload their essays online. This site makes sure that students aren't plagiarizing their work, and it also gives us an online space for students to edit each other's work. This year, I have downloaded the app on my work iPad, and I can grade essays on my iPad. Hang on, let me repeat that! I CAN GRADE ESSAYS ON MY IPAD, PEOPLE! This is a real game changer for me! No more stacks of paper for me to keep up with. I just click on the essay and type some comments. I can even leave voice comments! VOICE COMMENTS! This is a #BIGDEAL for me, to say the least.

That is what I have to say about me and technology for this week. I'm trying to grow and get out of my comfort zone, but I'm also looking for that Lawrence Fishburne to come knocking at my door, so let's try to keep things under control. It's all about balance!

Technology in the Classroom

Last night, after class, I went home and fell asleep. And I dreamed on and off all through the night about how I like to come home after work and play with my children in the backyard. Audrey is five, and Will is two, and we spend our afternoons hunting for baby toads, which we have had hundreds of this summer. We water our little garden, which consists of peas and peppers and even a few stalks of corn. We check on our accidental pumpkin, which sprouted up from the Jack-o-lantern remains from last Halloween. We build little castles in the sandbox, and I push them in their swings side by side. And I count this time with my children as the very best part of my day. Because I know that I will turn around and Audrey will have no use for chasing down baby toads, and Will will no longer fit in his little swing. This is precious time. And during this time, we are completely free of our television, Ipads, phones, computers, or anything we would call technological. I am free of all distraction, and I simply enjoy my children and the perfection of these moments in time. There is something pure and unadulterated about this time with my children where we are free to play and talk and discover…without distraction. And I think this little narrative is important to discussions about technology in the classroom because when I think about my classroom, I think of it is as a family. My students are my children for an hour each day. What kind of educational experience do I want them to have when they are with me? Because, in all honesty, this time is precious, too.

            The majority of my classes are AP Language. This is a rhetoric course designed to teach students to be better arguers and to better assess other people’s arguments. And at the end of the year, there is an expensive, gargantuan test, which, if students pass it, they will receive college credit. As a teacher, it’s kind of a big deal.  (#Big Deal) I feel a great deal of pressure to get my kids prepared for this monster of a test. I spend my entire year devising every lesson to prep my students for one test. And here’s the thing – this test is comprised of three handwritten essays, and fifty-five fill-in-the-bubble multiple choice questions. Therefore, much of my preparation simply involves the pure practice of ideas and pen and paper. That’s all there is to it. And much like my children chasing toads in the yard, there is something old and pure about students putting pen to paper. And until College Board changes the way they give tests, then I am still going to “teach to the test.”

            So, at this point, you probably just envision some lady who has a home perm down to her waist wearing a little house on the prairie dress she made while living on her compound with a jar of canned tomatoes in one hand and a can of sharpened pencils in the other. And perhaps some little chalkboards for her students to practice their letters and cipherin’. So just let me say, no, I don’t have a home perm, and no I don’t can fruits or vegetables, and, no, I do not have any sister-wives. But I do love a can of pencils…I won’t deny it. But in all actuality, I also love technology. In my home and in my classroom, I love technology. I can’t live without it. I don’t want to think about teaching students without my Smartboard and my access to the internet in my room. When I started teaching in Edmond thirteen years ago, that was the case. It was only ten years ago that I had to borrow the computer/projector cart from the library, wheel the clunky contraption five miles to my room, and run five cords over and under the desks in my room to show my kids awesome videos or web sites that related to poetry or Africa or George Orwell or whatever it was we were studying that week. And today, every room in the building has this ability. And it is incredible. Times have definitely changed.

As well, thirteen years ago, every single student did not have a small computer they carried with them in their pockets everywhere they went. The idea of someone being addicted to one’s phone would have seemed absurd. I feel that in terms of technology, we went from one end of the spectrum to the other in a matter of ten years. In our homes and in our schools, technology has changed so much about the way we live and think and function. For instance, If I forget my phone at home, I kind of consider just ending my life. Maybe I should just call in sick? (cough cough) I would, but how would I do that …without my phone?! And to further emphasize this point, let me say that my aide is re-formatting one of my student’s papers on his laptop so that she can upload it to Turnitin.com as I type this. So what exactly do I want in terms of technology in the classroom?

            So let me back up to my narrative of little Audrey and Will chasing toads and watering their accidental pumpkin. I love this time with my children. But the reality is, we don’t live in the backyard. We live in our house.  You know, the building with the tvs, phones, computers, Ipads, air conditioning. All the things that make life great because they generally make life easier. So how does that parallel to my classroom and my school? Well, I think there is a balance. We don’t want to live in the yard churning butter and practicing our letters by drawing in the mud with sticks, but I don’t want to live in a world where kids are just hooked up to a screen all day long to receive any and all information. The reality is that in a class such as mine, that is still so reliant on the pen and paper experience, I do not need a one to one tech scenario in my room. Some days we do! And some lessons can be incredibly dynamic because of the addition of technology, but sometimes it just isn’t needed.

            So, for me, when I consider the needs of the students and staff in our building, I think we need to be thinking about turning more rooms into media center spaces where students can all be working on laptops or desktops or Ipads. These labs should have “smart screens” and airliners, or whatever the hot, new educational technology is. MAKE IT ALL AVAILABLE TO US! And teach us how to best utilize it! Teachers and students should have access to all of this great stuff, but it doesn’t need to be in every room, and I know it doesn’t need to be every day. For me, it’s all about balance. For Audrey and Will, there is a time to catch toads in the backyard, and there is a time to practice spelling on the Ipad. For my students, there is time practice pen to paper, and there is time to peer edit each other’s drafts online. It’s all about striking a balance which allows teachers to use technology in ways which will best serve her class and allows students to have vast and meaningful educational experiences.