Guinea Pigs

The part I love most about my job is going into classrooms and seeing what teachers are doing! I love seeing students engaged with technology and without it! As I've stated before, I firmly believe technology has a place in all classrooms, but it is not the be all, end all of teaching and learning.  These past couple of weeks I have spent some time in a couple of middle school classrooms (English and Math.) These teachers were very gracious inviting me in to observe what they were doing. I was blown away in both classes with not only how the teachers handled the use of technology, but how the students did.

In the English class the students were being introduced to Blogging as another avenue to write and write lots. The preface to the lesson was "Today you are going to be guinea pigs! You are going to start your own Blogs and it might just be a train wreck!"   I love that the teacher used the term "guinea pigs". This lets students know that this is all experimental. Who knows if it will work or not, but we're going to try.  This approach takes the pressure off the students to be perfect or masters of something completely new. Failure was perfectly acceptable and expected! Anyway, back to the lesson!  The lesson started with asking kids what questions they had about Blogs. It was no surprise that the most prevalent question was "What is a Blog?" Students were then asked to research and find answers to their own questions. They had 10 minutes to do this and then had to share their findings. Then a quick demo of how to start their own Blog and join the class blog was given. After that students were set free to start setting up their Blogs. It was incredible to watch these 8th graders have successes and struggles with this new learning. Every student was engaged and busy, even if they were frustrated. Students helped each other navigate setting up and personalizing their blogs. Students were so engaged that when the class was over they all groaned because they weren't finished! (I should note that this particular group of students is a large class, full of struggling learners, who can be prone to disruptive behaviors. Without that knowledge before hand, I would have never known because there was not a single behavior issue!) Student engagement was high, even if they were nervous about Blogging!

The next class I visited was a Math class. The teacher was experimenting with a new learning tool called Pear Deck. (This add-on turns Google Slides into an interactive lesson where students have a voice and can show their learning.) The students in this class were guinea pigs too, they just didn't know it. The teacher was taking a risk trying out something new.  The risk paid off. During this lesson on Slope Intercept Form, students were given different problems to solve using their Chromebooks. Students' answers were displayed anonymously on the screen, so feedback was immediate. The teacher could also instantly see who was struggling and give them extra support during the lesson. Once again in this class, students were completely engaged. (Although few of them goofed off by writing extra things on their screens. This was taken care of by the teacher respectfully reminding the students of how they should be conducting themselves and letting them know she could see who made the comments, even though what was displayed on the board was anonymous!) The students weren't just absorbed into their devices, they were working together to talk out how to solve problems. Although technology was being used, students were still asked to talk and explain their thinking to each other. The use of the technology enhanced their learning by giving them practice and immediate feedback. As I walked around, all students were participating and were engaged in their own learning.

My point to all this rambling is that when we engage students and give them a purpose for their learning, they rise to the occasion! These middle schoolers were focused. They were active participants in their learning! Could this have happened without technology? Absolutely! However, these two teachers were experts at integrating their use of technology to not only increase student learning but increase student engagement. Does this mean these teachers won't have days when their students are completely distracted and not engaged? Of course they will! After all we are working with young minds who are still learning to navigate the world around them!