Who Gets the Spotlight: Tech or Students?

About 10 years ago, the Atlantic School District Foundation and school board generously funded my request for a set of laptops that would "belong" to my students. This was in the earliest days of 1-to-1 programs, and although our entire school wasn't ready to hand every student a laptop, I was. My set-up (pre-cloud era) allowed each student to "own" 1/5 of the computer and rotated privileges to take the machine home. 

I spent the next two years learning to manage the technology alongside my content teaching. But as time progressed, the tech slid to the background, becoming support to augment my content rather than demanding center stage as it had at first. 

My entire school went 1-to-1 this year, and many of my colleagues are now learning to juggle TECH demands in their classroom while adjusting to new ways of teaching.



I do mix technology into my daily teaching, but it is in response to the question "How can I increase the engagement of all students?" or "How can I deepen students' understanding?" rather than tech for tech's sake.

Here are the ways I used tech this week in my Comp class. 

Monday: Kids watched the TED Talk  “The Fiction of Memory” by Elizabeth Loftus and group-annotated related online texts from the New Yorker or the Atlantic Monthly.

Tuesday: Using the "See History" feature of Google Docs, my students reviewed two sets of comments from me about their writing. One set was "golden threads"--highlights of lines and phrases that sang to me. The other set is red marks for mechanical issues. This coming week the students will listen to Voice Comments. I use the tech to change up the type of feedback the kids hear from me.

Wednesday: I used a Google Form for formative assessment of my students' preparation for class discussion. We then used a Padlet to share our key questions in preparation for group discussion which I videotaped (using PhotoBooth) for my own analysis.

Thursday: Students had the choice to be a hand's-up student or backchannel notes while watching a grammar PowerPoint lesson. Giving students choices for expected engagement cuts down on that "sit and do nothing" choice they'll otherwise default to during whole-class instruction.

Friday: Because I was at a meeting, my students' assignments, including a quiz, were posted online. Students also submit their Friday papers through Google Docs, which has saved about 420 sheets of paper so far this year. 

Nothing on my above list will inspire wild applause. The tech sets the stage, provides some props, puts a little grease paint on an otherwise ho-hum task. But it is the students who are the stars of the Room 408 show. They get the spotlight.

Day 28: Respond: Should technology drive curriculum, or vice versa?

Reflection: I use a lot of tech in my room daily, but it is no longer something I fret over or stress about. It's in the background, where it should be.