Every teacher has lessons that are” ringers.” Guaranteed to get kids attention, engage them and lead to meaningful learning outcomes. I always struggle with how to use these older lessons in the face of changing technology. Especially when the new technology provides new learning methodologies. New technology doesn’t mean we abandon tried and true learning strategies. Instead it provides us opportunities to better educate our students. I believe digital imagery is the easiest and most effective way for students to extend their learning in these types of situation. Consider how simple it is to take a picture of a product, event or class activity and have your students reflect, analyze or compare. Here are some reasons why using digital images to enhance great lessons is effective.
Capturing a moment. Often teachers run out of time because your class must end. Capturing digital images of your student’s classwork allows you to capture that activity. The next day, you can bring it back as a bell ringer, learning objective or some other class activity. Students will quickly connect with the lesson and be ready to go.
Sharing is easy. With programs like Google Drive, DropBox and Box, it’s easy to capture and share digital images. You can have student take an image and “mark it up”, make comparisons or create new learning products. These creative activities require students to aspire to higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy.
Technology is Everywhere. Capturing images is easier than ever. The other day I assigned one student to be the class “Photographer.” With one Ipad she captured images for the whole class. We went for a walk, talked outside. After a day with several classes, I had 100’s of great images that I quickly uploaded to Google Drive and shared with the class. Whether its Ipads, cells phones or Chromebook, this is a great add on to any lesson.
In closing, look at your lessons. Are there parts that can be improved with a real-life image of your students work? Consider how much better sharing outstanding work would be if you had it captured in an image collage? Or comparing and contrasting two great examples of student work. The possibilities are endless.
If you are interested in learning more about capturing images or creating image mark ups, check out these lessons.
Bell ringers have long been a core instruction and classroom management strategy. The goal is to get students into the class and get them on task quickly and effectively. Teaching this from day one creates and organized classroom that allows all students to learn. The question is, how do I use bell ringers with a 1 to 1 classroom?
Option 1: Computerized Bell Ringers. The advantage here is students come in, log on and go to a LMS (learning management system) like Google Classroom. The teacher posts an image or question for reflection and students begin to write immediately. This is great because each kid has a rich, engaging bell ringer that they can compose and turn in online. For the teacher there is no wasted paper laying around. The management problem that can be an issue is students can waste time getting computers out and once they are online, its more of a challenge to get them to pay attention.
Option 2: Traditional Bell Ringer: In this case, students walk in, pull out a bell ringer journal (notebook) and begin writing immediately. This is effective because there is no transition time pulling out computers (if you use a cart). It gives the instructor some time to discuss without students being distracted by a computer screen. If you don’t know what I mean, ask 24 middle school kids to log on and listen to you at the same time. Once the bell ringer is complete, I’ll provide students with an agenda of activities and send them off to get their computers.
Reflection: Bell ringers still play a vital role in classroom management and instruction. New technology supports effective teaching. As an instructor we need to remember that proven instruction strategies are still good, we just need to adjust them to support our broadening technology base for instruction.
If you are looking for 1 to 1 instructional resources for your science classroom, check out my Cells for Middle School Bundle. It contains 3 self paced lesson, with videos and interactive notebook pages.
This is a special guest post from Jeremy @ Learningedtech.weebly.com
The Education Technology market is closing in on $1.9B and most public-school systems are utilizing 1:1 initiatives to bring more tech to the classroom (Molnar, 2017). The whole school process is being digitized from registration to homework and it is time to stop and consider the vulnerabilities that are being created through technology. First, consider the technology used in administration; registration software, Learning Management System, Student Information System, Website, local servers, and office software. In administration alone, schools are subject to over five vulnerabilities to cyber-attacks and all these technologies are generally integrated with each other. Now add the classroom to the mix. Until recently, I've used roughly five to seven 3rd party integrations with office software during a school year. Now we have over ten vulnerabilities on any given school year that is subject to exposing student and teacher information across the internet. That information could be addresses, social security numbers, grades, assignments, health records, contact information, and online communication.
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