Essential Question: How do you manage the use of technology peripherals with students? What are some things you’ve learned and hope to implement.

There’s three things in the classroom that I just can’t do without.

1. Students
2. SMARTBoard
3. Document Camera

We manage all of them the same way we manage anything: with procedures, clear expectations and with care.

Together, we drive our classroom, our SMARTBoard and our Document Camera.  All three, revolve around our learning – together.  That means for the most part, I’m not the only one using the technology peripherals in the classroom, we all are.

They use the SMARTBoard to show their thinking, their working out, their knowledge and their understandings to their fellow classmates and of course to me.  I get to use it to highlight a teaching point, show a tutorial or video, or use with a small group that needs hands on, visual, auditory grammar practise!

They use the Document Camera to share their work and to show off things that can’t be seen clearly by 20 students crowded around it or to show their mathematical working out process or their writing that they want feedback from their peers.  And then I get to use it to model what I’d like them to see, like the read aloud we’re doing in class, or the writing in my writer’s notebook or the form that needs to be filled in, or the object we want to see up close.

I want students up and out of their seats talking, laughing, sharing, showing, demonstrating, and actively learning.  The technology peripherals help me do just that.  I quickly realised that I was only limited by my own imagination and theirs!  But it didn’t happen just like that.  I needed to model, support, guide, explicitly teach and encourage students to take control of the peripherals.

It takes time but believe me, every year it’s worth it.  Most of all, me, the teacher, needs to take a giant step backwards and let the students do the work.

A wise mentor teacher of mine once asked me ……..

Who’s the hardest working person in the classroom?

Then she said:

If the answer is you, then something’s not right!  It should be the students that are working the hardest!

So what are the things I’ve learnt from CoETaIL Course 4 and hope to implement?
I have a much better understanding of the Backwards by design planner and I’m hoping to embed that kind of learning in the classroom with the 3-5 TAILS .  I want to experiment more with project-based learning and try to keep fairly up-to-date with web2.0 tools and resources that work well in classroom and of course I’m looking forward to the final project and it’s implementation in our 5th Grade classrooms!