Techlearning blog

I was on the training committee 6 years ago when the State of Maine rolled out 14,000 laptops to 7th and 8th grade teachers and their students. 6 years ago we had a checklist of items the experts had deemed important, even critical to the success of the program. We were trained to carry out the workshops and share the checklists.

As technology training leaders in a project called SEED, Spreading Educator to Educator Development, we were teachers, training other teachers. As trainers, we had guidance for the project, we had inspirational speakers, we practiced the delivery and in a period of 6 weeks, 40 trainers trained 14,000 teachers. That was 6 years ago and today we are on the 2nd deployment of the ibooks in the whole state.

Oh, back to the 7th grade students who are waiting patiently. The classroom teacher used a class management tip taught 6 years ago, and it is still working, LIDS down! This simple statement focuses the learner on the teacher or the white board and clearly interrupts the relationship between the learner and the laptop. The lesson for the day was explained to the class and we began with the plan.
Classroom management challenges were woven throughout the class. Apparently some students had downloaded images that were not part of the school project in previous days. This was treated as a teachable moment, with the most effective way to impress middle schoolers, peer pressure. The students had been scheduled to take their laptops home, however, since a few had broken this school rule, misrepresented the school culture, the laptops were held back until all student laptops could be checked and all students had been talked to about the infraction. Of course, you need to use what works in your classroom or your school, but these are some lessons we have learned.
As part of the instruction for the day, I piggy backed with the lesson and the rules the teacher was discussing. The teacher explained that their ibook was a state issued ibook designed for school work. As a matter of fact, all teachers in the state of Maine follow this protocol. The laptops are designed to scrub miscellaneous information throughout the day, if students try and download programs to their laptops the programs don't work. This is done to preserve the integrity of the laptop and insures that they will all work as expected.

So, while teaching students that they need to be doing their school work, we also explained that this was the time to learn this, as a student. How do teachers and parents manage technology with their middle schoolers? One way is to check the history in the browsers. The standard rule in our school, and when my children were younger was that if the history was empty, erased, that it was an automatic time away from the Internet. Our students are looking at jobs in the future which will include technology. Their jobs will include company protocol and appropriateness of technology use. This is part of the life long learning, your employer in the future will not give you an opportunity to keep a job while misusing technology.

Here is one of the ISTE standards for students:
Digital Citizenship
Students understand human, cultural, and societal issues related to technology and practice legal and ethical behavior.
Students:
advocate and practice safe, legal, and responsible use of information and technology.
exhibit a positive attitude toward using technology that supports collaboration, learning, and productivity.
demonstrate personal responsibility for lifelong learning.
exhibit leadership for digital citizenship.

With all this background information, you are now ready to witness the actual lesson that took place. The lesson was about learning to open, use the tools and save in a new open source word processing program. That in itself took less than 4 minutes. However, to make the instruction part of the learners repertoire the other pieces were added for the learner. To begin with I made a screencast movie using jingproject.com in order that the students could have access to the information long after I left. The students used a classroom prompt to practice in the new word processing program. Since some students had misused downloaded images, I added another piece and introduced MARVEL, Maine's Virtual Public Library site to the lesson, and demonstrated how they could find and download safe images. By giving them the power to find appropriate images, they now have the tools to add a visual statement to their work.

In one class period of about 50 minutes, not one student went to the bathroom or left for a water break, not one student was off task, all students completed the writing prompt, added a visual, changed the font and size, learned how to center the title, added their name/teacher/class, double spaced their work, spell checked and printed. The classroom/laptop management has paid off, the students know the acceptable use policy, the students are learning to be critical thinkers, and life long learners.

It is about the technology, but more importantly it is about the teaching and learning! Thanks for inviting me into your classroom!