Harnessing Technology Tools Used in School at Home!
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Students love technology and they’re excited to use it at a moment’s notice whether it is Prodigy to enhance math skills, create books on Book Creator, make videos on iMovie, create book reviews on Aurasma, code or research with databases. These are all fun and purposeful uses of technology happening at Gardner Road. Our Golden Stars are engaged with technology in a thoughtful way to enhance their learning. As an educator, I want our students to think about the technology they are using and figure out how to use it in an innovative and thoughtful way. When it comes down to it, students innately know and want to manipulate (smash) technology tools in real life projects. So how do we harness this passion and excitement and work in partnership with parents/caregivers at home? We know our kids must use these tools beyond the walls of our school.
A first step in achieving this starts with this blog post. I start with two questions to focus the conversation.
• Why technology at home?
• What technology at home?
Why Technology at Home?
The question really is not about whether our kids should be using technology at home. We know that students already are. My hope is that we can come together about the ‘end game’ for our students. What life skills do we want our Golden Stars to harness as they play on the iPad, game with a friend, communicate with their friends on social media and more. I believe it is about building a digital mindset in our students that revolve around the concepts of flexibility, innovation, intention and sense of audience. Here are my working definitions for our Golden Stars.
*Flexibility: build a working knowledge of many tools
*Intention: have a purpose/vision for the ‘project’ one is engaged in and determine the
Students love technology and they’re excited to use it at a moment’s notice whether it is Prodigy to enhance math skills, create books on Book Creator, make videos on iMovie, create book reviews on Aurasma, code or research with databases. These are all fun and purposeful uses of technology happening at Gardner Road. Our Golden Stars are engaged with technology in a thoughtful way to enhance their learning. As an educator, I want our students to think about the technology they are using and figure out how to use it in an innovative and thoughtful way. When it comes down to it, students innately know and want to manipulate (smash) technology tools in real life projects. So how do we harness this passion and excitement and work in partnership with parents/caregivers at home? We know our kids must use these tools beyond the walls of our school.
A first step in achieving this starts with this blog post. I start with two questions to focus the conversation.
• Why technology at home?
• What technology at home?
Why Technology at Home?
The question really is not about whether our kids should be using technology at home. We know that students already are. My hope is that we can come together about the ‘end game’ for our students. What life skills do we want our Golden Stars to harness as they play on the iPad, game with a friend, communicate with their friends on social media and more. I believe it is about building a digital mindset in our students that revolve around the concepts of flexibility, innovation, intention and sense of audience. Here are my working definitions for our Golden Stars.
*Flexibility: build a working knowledge of many tools
*Intention: have a purpose/vision for the ‘project’ one is engaged in and determine the
appropriate technology tools needed
*Innovation: use technology tools in a creative way (smash apps and tools together if needed)
*Sense of Audience: maintain a mind’s eye on who will engage with the creations made.
A term I hear a lot lately is #futureready. This term grounds me in remembering that future ready is always changing. In order to ensure our Golden Stars are #futureready, we must navigate the evolution of technology development together. We must be vetting new technology and determining how does this tech tool build a digital mindset. So when students are consuming technology at home, consider how are they can learn to also be flexible, intentional, innovative and considerate of those that will engage with them while using technology. Check out these videos!
#FutureReady Video Did you know, in 2028...
What Technology at Home?
I start with borrowing one of my favorite literacy quotes of “teach the reader, not the book” and modify it to the technology world as “teach the digital citizen, not the tool.” Ultimately, there is no right or wrong answer on what technology to have students engaged in at home. Our Gardner Road students are all younger than 11 years old and I think we can agree that we want our students to learn while having fun. So use whatever games, apps, social media tools, websites, coding games that you see that your child will enjoy. My hope revolves around two major concepts:
• We help our kids become aware that we leave a digital footprint they leave
• How do we use technology respectfully and responsibly as a digital citizen.
I encourage our families to utilize the Common Sense Media website and this PDF to learn how to support your child in building the concepts of digital footprint, digital citizenship and more.
*Innovation: use technology tools in a creative way (smash apps and tools together if needed)
*Sense of Audience: maintain a mind’s eye on who will engage with the creations made.
A term I hear a lot lately is #futureready. This term grounds me in remembering that future ready is always changing. In order to ensure our Golden Stars are #futureready, we must navigate the evolution of technology development together. We must be vetting new technology and determining how does this tech tool build a digital mindset. So when students are consuming technology at home, consider how are they can learn to also be flexible, intentional, innovative and considerate of those that will engage with them while using technology. Check out these videos!
#FutureReady Video Did you know, in 2028...
What Technology at Home?
I start with borrowing one of my favorite literacy quotes of “teach the reader, not the book” and modify it to the technology world as “teach the digital citizen, not the tool.” Ultimately, there is no right or wrong answer on what technology to have students engaged in at home. Our Gardner Road students are all younger than 11 years old and I think we can agree that we want our students to learn while having fun. So use whatever games, apps, social media tools, websites, coding games that you see that your child will enjoy. My hope revolves around two major concepts:
• We help our kids become aware that we leave a digital footprint they leave
• How do we use technology respectfully and responsibly as a digital citizen.
I encourage our families to utilize the Common Sense Media website and this PDF to learn how to support your child in building the concepts of digital footprint, digital citizenship and more.
There is one additional challenge that I look forward to navigating with all Gardner Road families in the coming years. Kids use many tools and apps and know how to use them better than us. The problem is that many of these tools are being used by our oldest Golden Stars even though the tools are intended for older students. This is a challenge we must navigate together. Our kids today have an opportunity to be creative and innovative with these tools. Until our students have their ‘toolbox’ fully developed, I look forward to learning together how we monitor, guide, coach and facilitate learning for our kids in a safe way. This could be using these tools as a family and have discussions about what we can share, how we share it and when we can share it. Fun ways could be a family twitter page, family website on Smore, a YouTube channel and of course all of the social media tools we know. Students love to create and having a positive outlet while supervised can build their digital literacy and help them harness this learning in a safe way while having a digital mindset.
What Tools:
Okay, Okay… I know I said there are no right or wrong technology tools for your child to learn and engage in. However, here’s a listing of some of my favorite technology tools that our students are using at Gardner Road Elementary. We are starting with a core set of tools to have students learn them well. We plan to cautiously and carefully expand that knowledge base over time with more devices, tools and apps. This way we continue to build our students digital mindset to be flexible, innovative, intentional while having a sense of audience.
Image retrieved from https://l2lbyte.wordpress.com/learning-videos/ & http://esheninger.blogspot.com/2015/01/how-digital-tools-improve-teaching-and.html
Engaging Apps: Epic, PuppetPals, DoodleCast
Word Processing Tools: Word, Publisher, PowerPoint, Excel
Coding Tools: Sphero, Makey Makey, Scratch Jr., Little Bits, Ozobot, Kodable
Creation Tools: Book Creator, Explain Everything, iMovie, Doink, GarageBand
Communication Tools: Smore, Twitter, Seesaw
Presentation Tools: Nearpod, YouTube, ThingLink, Prezi
I look forward to our continued journey on helping our students harness the technology skills they need in school and at home to make sure our Golden Stars are #futureready!
Patrick Patterson – Gardner Road Elementary Principal
Engaging Apps: Epic, PuppetPals, DoodleCast
Word Processing Tools: Word, Publisher, PowerPoint, Excel
Coding Tools: Sphero, Makey Makey, Scratch Jr., Little Bits, Ozobot, Kodable
Creation Tools: Book Creator, Explain Everything, iMovie, Doink, GarageBand
Communication Tools: Smore, Twitter, Seesaw
Presentation Tools: Nearpod, YouTube, ThingLink, Prezi
I look forward to our continued journey on helping our students harness the technology skills they need in school and at home to make sure our Golden Stars are #futureready!
Patrick Patterson – Gardner Road Elementary Principal
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