Technology Problems

We have all been there. We have an amazing lesson planned using nothing but technology only to find, it is temporarily not working. Panic sets in. You put something up quickly on the board for the students to work on while you (try to) figure something out. How can you count on technology when it is always having issues?

I came across this frustration last week. In Social Studies we are working on the unit Changes Over Time. I had created a triple venn diagram to use to compare and contrast colonial times, parent's generation, and my students generation. I had picture and words students would use to drag into the correct area of the graphic organizer. This was going to be saved, and then printed out for students to use as a writing tool for a paper. Social Studies time came around and I discovered my computer was frozen. No big deal, I restarted it. Now, my program to display the venn diagram would not open. When it finally did open, it had somehow changed the format of the document. After completely getting frustrated and undone, I gave up and we drew in our notebooks. However, time was not used efficiently.

In my experience, I have come to rely on technology. However, always have a

"Plan B" in the back of your mind. I did not have a plan ready. Students deserve to be exposed to 21st century skills; however, if something is not working properly, the students still need to learn the information! Being a teacher means you need to be flexible. Roll with the punches. This can be hard, but it is necessary. While technology is a wonderful asset, we need to be prepared for the inevitable. Something will go wrong with the school's server, the website will be closed due to maintenance, etc. As teachers, we cannot let this get in the way of our student's education. I learned a great lesson last week, and I just wanted to share this with you all.

Math resource

While I had Spring Break last week for grad school, I was still busy teaching away at the elementary school I work at. I have come across a lot of great resources in the last few days (my county had a professional development day on Monday, and today I have been observing other teachers around the county to look at how others teach and strategies they use).

A family friend of mine sent me an email about this math resource at www.tenmarks.com. I am going to be using this with my blog as a way to check how students are progressing in math and integrating technology. This is free for teachers, and is aligned with State and Common Core Standards. Yay! You type in the names of your students, select the grade level, and then create a label for your class. This allows you to group students as a whole group, or you can differentiate and group students based on skills where they need to spend more time.

I can assign different tasks for students to do, what topic of math to focus on, a subtopic if there is on, and change the number of questions, etc. It grades it for you as the student log on and complete the assignment. I can log on and see the report and what each individual students missed.

One thing I wish it would allow is for you to see the assignment before any students takes it. I haven't been able to find if they have that available. It does however, show you an example question for each strand and topic. You can choose 3 albums (strands/ topic areas) from other grades to include on your page for differentiation purposes. This is great for math centers where students who are on grade level can be working on third grade material, students that need enrichment could be working on upper grades material, and students that need extra help can be working on a lower grades material. They would all be on the same sight and working on the same skill, just differing levels. This would allow the students to work on their level while still working on the same skill.

iPad Learning

A few weeks ago I made a PowerPoint about the use of the iPad for a class project. Late last week I went to a meeting for my county. I had the pleasure of listening to North Carolina's Teacher of the Year. She spoke about how students are learning differently these days. Students are not just learning by listening to us as teachers.

She was walking around a school, and a young child asked her to help him tie his shoe. She worked and worked with him, but he just couldn't get it. He left and she went about her way, thinking he was giving up on this chore for the time being. He came back and informed her that he just learned how to tie his shoes. She happily asked how he did that so quickly and his response took her aback. "I didn't need your words. I went on the iPad and Googled for a YouTube video on how to tie your shoes."

When she told us this, I just had to laugh. Of course it would take a child to make such a powerful gesture. Without any assistance, he was able to use the iPad to look up how to tie his shoes. He knew exactly what to do! If we do not allow students to use the technology around them for their benefit, not only are we wasting money, we are putting a ceiling on our children's education and independence.

OK, so since last week a lot has happened. First, my students absolutely adore the class blog! They are always so eager to finish their morning work and get on the blog to see what I have put up for them to do. This week, I have used the blog each day. The first day posed difficulties because they struggled even logging into the site. However, each day they got better and better. I would definitely suggest using the blog daily at first to smooth out as many kinks as possible.

Each post asked slightly more of my students. The first post was just about what they thought of the blog, then about a friend in the class, they took a poll on a math questions, and finally today they took a quiz on the blog. They bombed the quiz. I was really disappointed. I was unsure if this was due to the content of the quiz, or by the act of taking a quiz online. After asking the students about the questions and going over the answers with them, we call came to the same conclusion. It was the fact that they had never taken a quiz on the blog before. They weren't sure how it worked, they didn't know if everyone would see their score, etc. I never explained it to them! Yikes! So, reader, learn from my mistake, explain the process of taking a quiz on a blog to your students. Yes, they CAN use scratch paper to solve the problem, they do NOT need to solve a difficult division problem in their head. Oi!

I have had a lot of positive experiences though. Each student got to choose an Avatar to use as their profile picture. This way they do not have a picture of them floating around on the Internet. We went over guidelines of having a blog. Yes, complete sentences and punctation were required. They cannot use this blog as a Facebook account, etc. After going over the guidelines, we all signed it and I have posted it in the classroom so remind us all of our agreement.

The students have been talking about the blog to each other at lunch, to other students, and even mentioned it to a few teachers. I have also been sharing this journey with the other members of the third grade team. Two of them seem eager to start a blog of their own. They were impressed with the options the blog had. One of them was in the mindset that a blog was just something to vent on, somewhat like a journal. I explained some of my ideas, and she was floored!

In the next coming weeks, I plan to make sub groups on the blog and have literature circle discussions on the blog. I am hoping this works well and helps my students work independently while creating their response, but collaboratively working together via discussion.

As always, please comment and ask any questions! I love feedback!