How can technology be used to extend student learning in a middle school classroom?
Technology can be, and often times, is used on a daily basis and is immensely helpful to a generation of students who grew up on technology. Technology is something extremely familiar to them and is a bit more enticing than your regular paper and pencil worksheet. We are in a really cool point in time right now where there is countless new apps being created for the soul purpose of education. There are thousands of choices out there that can help middle school kids in many different subject areas and with many different skills, while still keeping them interested in the content. This gives middle school kids an opportunity to focus in on certain areas where they have trouble and work on this content in new ways they don’t normally experience. For example, Miss Noltie’s class rarely used technology, not counting the use of the Smart Board to display daily lessons, except for maybe two times when I was there. There was one time where she used an app and I can’t remember the name, but it was essentially an app where she could share her presentation for the class with every student on their iPad, and they could respond to questions about the lesson anonymously. I really liked this idea because many times the same few people shared out in class, so this forced everyone to share without being embarrassed. I also looked up a few other articles that described some more uses of technology in a middle school classroom, such as 57 Learning Technology Tools One Middle School Teacher Depends On. She gave so many great ideas on apps to use. Some of my favorite were Twiducate, Glogster and Trello. All of these apps have completely unique functions but can be so helpful in organizing or making something interactive with content. The first app, Twiducate, is like a Twitter for book report groups, where they can talk about the book in a language that is a bit more their own. I think that this is going to promote engagement with kids because they know how to tweet, so they can use this skill for something in class, which is not the conventional way of talking about a book. Another interactive idea that she discussed was an app called Glogster. Many times students are asked to make posters in class but that takes a lot of time and supplies. I liked Glogster because it was a technological alternative to the regular poster and in the long run would save a lot of time/supplies, but would still have the same effect that a normal poster has as well. The last app that I really enjoyed hearing her talk about was an organizational app called Trello. I liked this app because I want to do projects with my students, as I think that is a great way to learn, and this app was a great way to organize that. The app allows you to create a profile for each group, and you can assign pieces of the assignments to each of the students. This way the students have some sort of accountability, and the work is also evenly distributed so if one person did not pull their weight, I can know and count off only for that person. These were just three of the thousands of apps that exist for education. I think they can do so much to make learning go faster and more efficiently, but still keep the same engagement that other assignment do. But this way, you don’t have to pour blood, sweat and tears into one assignment, and nothing into another.
Links:
57 Learning Technology Tools One Middle School Teacher Depends On
Teaching Portfolio 