5 more tips for teachers wanting to work with Edtech in the classroom. Part 3- Are we still doing this ?

Here we go with part three. These tips are really designed to help you when you begin working with technology in the classroom.

1.    Don’t be frightened that the students will go ahead: Fact- Introducing technology will change the way you teach. In the old days, the teachers had control over the information the students received. Now students have access to all the information that the teacher can give them and more. This changes the entire relationship you have with your students and can be quite unnerving. Embrace it, you are creating independent learners which is a life skill essential to the workplace.

Your role is to guide the students in their learning, check their understanding and to make them think deeper. It also allows the students which are more independent as learners to get on and for you to focus on the ones that need your support. It makes the classroom more dynamic and exciting as students can be seen collaborating on their work

It will also change the type of work that you set and your expectations. As a teacher I am still working on this and I have found Hyperdocs and choice boards excellent tools for the modern classroom.

Just remember however much technology is brought into the classroom your students need you.

A piece of advice given to me was ‘Teach like Google exists.’ Meaning let the students explore and find out for themselves and use the tools which are available to them. It is not cheating. I remember starting off in teaching I was being shown how to provide reading support to early readers. The teacher training me told me don’t worry that the student uses the pictures in the book to help give clues for them to work out the reading. Looking at the pictures is not cheating.

2.    Get student champions: Take the time to train a few of your students in the apps that you are using before the lesson. You are only one person and you need help especially when introducing new things to your students. In my school I called them Tech experts. They helped me set up and put away the Chromebooks and would help other students that are in difficulty, which takes the pressure off you so you can teach. I also printed for them I.D. badges like the staff have at school. It really gave them a sense of responsibility and pride.

3.    It will take time for the students to learn: You will lose some lesson time right at the beginning when training your students. There are really two approaches to how deal with this. The first is to take a few lessons right at the beginning of the year to intensively train students in the main tools that you are using. The second is to slowly introduce each skill as you go along.

Either way you cannot teach everything at once. The minimum you need is that they can log in and out of their accounts complete basic work and turn it in. Go at the pace of your students and get your student champions to help you. Sometimes those first few lessons can be chaotic and stressful but if you are prepared it will make it easier for you. 

4.    Aim for high quality: This to be honest was one of the greatest challenges I had when starting out. Sometimes the quality of the student’s work did not represent the amount of effort that had gone into teaching them. This can be very disheartening especially when the class next door has their work up on the wall with beautiful pictures and copperplate handwriting. It will take time for the students to get used to using the tools efficiently and produce higher standards of work. That takes practice. I know that the teachers that will teach my class next year will have a far easier time as I spent a lot of effort to make sure my students could use a range of apps and devices. Again, always question if you are using the right tools for the job and maybe using technology may not be the best route. When you start out start with simpler tasks that can be done well. Make sure to do activities with those same type of tasks several times until the students become proficient and then build up from there. Create some success criteria that the students can refer to, to guide them with their work. Many LMS’ have a rubric maker so it gives the students a clear step by step of what is expected from a piece of work. Go through it with them before they even touch a device.

Another challenge is that many students see tablets as an entertainment device not as something for work, so part of their education will be to teach how to use these devices for productivity.

The skills of checking their work and improving it are key abilities for life in and outside school. I found from experience that my students were more willing to correct their work if it was done electronically as it was so easy to fix unlike written work. Also you will have a version history so you can track the development of their work.

Remember as many of the tasks you are giving them are using an online platform your students can work anywhere which means learning never stops. In my primary/elementary class one of my student’s parents called me up concerned that their son was spending too long on his homework. He was perfecting a presentation he wanted to share with the class the next day. I’m here to tell you that quality work happens it just takes time.

5.    Scaffolding : This is attached to the previous tip but it is incredibly important in its own right. When I started using Technology in the classroom the tasks that I gave were too open. This meant that the work I received was in general poor quality. Not one to give up easily I looked at the tasks I had set and looked at ways to improve the standard of work. When I created a new tasks for the students to complete I would not only create a check sheet for children to complete, but the document that I wanted them to work on had clear titles and headings so the students knew what was supposed to go where. Never assume your students will just work it out from the instructions. They can always add in extra. Scaffolding gives them a focus on what they need to achieve.

I actually never thought that I would get to part 3. There are still at least ten more tips that I have to share. I really do hope that you find these useful. One of the main reasons I wanted to start sharing these ideas is that I want this whole process to be easier for you. Teachers have extremely pressurised lives we are forced to take on so many roles. No other profession has this situation where the goalposts can be changed so many times. There is a big focus quite rightly on children’s wellbeing. Sadly staff wellbeing can be relegated to completing a few tick boxes and staff meetings in your own time on the importance of mental wellbeing. Mr P ICT , (https://www.mrpict.com/) who I seriously thing you should consider looking up has several vlogs on the nonsense that goes on in schools. I hope that this advice can at least take some of the pressure off so you can avoid the pitfalls and mistakes I made.

(Rabbi) Jonathon Simons

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