Fighting that Wifi Battle

I love technology. I also hate it. Some days it works perfectly and others it is a mess. Right now I'm balancing my emotions between loving and hating technology because the wifi in my room and some of the iPads are just not working well.

Instead of just complaining about it, I'd rather share how I'm dealing with it so that perhaps I can help someone out there experiencing the pains of technology integration when the technology isn't your friend.

For one, I'm doing lots of partner work. "Oh, your iPad isn't connecting. Well you can work with your shoulder partner to do this Kahoot collaboratively." Or "I'm sorry that your iPad can't load Zearn, today you'll work with this student to complete the math lesson." In these instances I'd rather all iPads work, but I'm having some unexpected accomplishments. In the instance where Zearn wouldn't load I matched up people or they matched themselves up and the conversations I heard over the math were pretty impressive. I had one girl who really didn't want to work with her shoulder partner, but I told her to look at it as a tutoring opportunity and the two of them took off and did an amazing job. Her partner probably learned more from her and that video than he did during my entire whole group lesson. When they did Kahoots collaboratively, I had all of my students have to complete their work on their white boards before they could answer and those partners could check each other's work. It ended up being really effective.

Don't get me wrong, I still want the internet to stop hating me, however at least I'm seeing some positives too. Sometimes as a teacher you just have to be able to roll with the punches and that's what I've been doing. Collaboration is a great thing and my students are benefiting despite their technology not being 100%. I'd call that a win in my book.

Grad School Helps in the Classroom

So I'm actually taking a class right now on integrating technology into the adult classroom. It's been really interesting and taught me a lot. I can apply some of what I'm learning to my own classroom and this week I tried a discussion post on the Constitution since we are supposed to talk about the Constitution on Constitution Day.

I required my students to either post something they learned or a question they still had after watching the School House Rock Preamble video. I had some lower level questions, some higher level questions and it was informative about where my students are when it comes to an assignment like that. I also required students to post on at least one other student's question or comment about what they learned. That was interesting. I had some, "Yeah, I agree." I also had some who looked up information to answer questions. I had some who brought in their own thoughts. Some were very basic and there is room to improve, but I was surprised by some of the genuine conversation that occurred from fourth graders.

Overall I was excited to try it out in my classroom and I can see discussion posts really improving our critical thinking skills as we move throughout the year with some guidance and facilitation.

Reflection for 9/13/2016's BOAT meeting.

My definition of collaboration is people working together to create something whether it is a product, an idea or a goal. Each person is putting forth an effort in the product or idea created. Collaborating is usually preferred to working on your own because it allows more than one mind to look at a problem or an opportunity. The more minds you have working on something, the more ideas and perceptions are brought to the table. In the end it can be more successful than working on your own.

Tragically I had to say that it CAN be more successful. I don't think collaboration is always successful. Collaboration can be a tricky thing. First finding the time to get together with others is frequently a struggle. Another issue with collaboration is something you see with group work in general. So many times there isn't an even amount of effort put forth in collaborating. Some people might not want to collaborate, others might want to take over and do everything and ignore the voices of others. Collaboration does have its struggles, and I didn't even scratch the surface of the issues that can arise.

Some ways to help fix the issues of collaboration consist of good directions from the instructor. I think having clear expectations and requirements can help facilitate collaboration from a teacher to student standpoint. I think as teachers, our principal or facilitator has to have clear directions on how we need to collaborate. I also think that having people who are willing and able to participate as well as to listen to others we can be more successful.

Then collaboration becomes:

My commitment is to improve the way I collaborate by sharing more with others.