This was our first year of being 1:1 with iPad in grades K-8, our high school went to laptops. I had no clue how much of an impact the iPad would have on me both as a parent, as the teacher and also as the learner. Now that the school year is over and I have had 4 days to decompression (read 4 romance novels, and sit outside) I am ready to reflect on the year. Below are the top 5 things I learned this year.
1. It is hard to be an early adaptor. I loved the idea of 1:1, but I thought the bugs would be worked out before the school year started. I was wrong. I spent most of the first marking period crying at home since I was not able to show students what I was doing on my iPad. I feel that I failed my first grading period iPad class. Of course this had all of my special needs students in there. My amazing husband (and support system) bought me an adaptor to play my ipad. Once that happened, we got Apple TV in the classroom. Things turned around.
2. Nothing will go as planned. Every update that came with the iPad brought new challenges and headaches. I would decide to show an app and the students were not able to download it because wifi was down, or they don't have iTunes accounts. By the end I knew what questions to ask on the first day of every 9 week session to work through some of them. In the end, students were instrumental in helping develop a list of apps that can be used instead of just about anything.
3. Students in school right now might be digital natives but they are not tech savvy. They play games, they face time, they Instagram but when you ask them to problem solve or be creative their are crippled with fear. By the end of the marking period, students were starting to take responsibility for their devices and work with their peers to problem solve. By the time they would come to me they would start the conversation with "I already tried ...." Students were taking risks by asking teachers if they can do something different with a project. It was a quiet victory dance when I would hear that.
4. I expect more from others than others do. As a parent, I wanted the teachers to be using the iPad in class. I was sad when my kids came home with 97% of their battery life. I thought others would be as excited as I was having these devices but they weren't. People complained and I grew tired of hearing it. I felt so bad for the tech coaches. I expected our administration to model what they wanted us using the devices for.
5. It is more than ok to give up control in the classroom. I'm not talking behavior management type of control, more along the lines of letting the students teach me or I'm there to facilitate and encourage. Towards the end of the year, my 8th grade students were working on an assignment where they had to use the plot map to write a script for a stop motion movie. They needed scenery and all that jazz. I looked around the room, they were working collaboratively and I was there to facilitate, to offer suggestions and to be there for them to bounce ideas off of. When I meet the kiddos in 6th grade, I would never thought we would get to that point.
With all of this realized I am in a place where I am looking forward. I can not change how others feel about the technology gift we have been given, instead I am going to use it to my students benefit. Let them become empowered, have the independence and ability to create amazing things. I will continue to search out exciting ideas and assignments that force my students to grow their thinking. I will share my ideas with others that want to learn from it. I will not apologize when I step on people's toes by using the technology or when the students ask their teacher if they can do something different. I hope that at some point others will become excited about these ideas and start to use them in the classroom because the students deserve a change.
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