#14 - Creating Tech-Friendly Classroom Management Strategies

Strategy One: Do Your Homework

Make the lesson plan integrate technology. Such as, the internet snowman and writing a short story about their snowman using a power point template. You  need to make sure the computers in your classroom have the software to be able to support your lesson plan. You also need to make the websites you're using easy for your students to find by bookmarking them.

Strategy Two: Identify Learning Goals

You have to tell the students what they'll be learning, and what you expect them to learn from it. The two examples the article gave are: 

Example Goal 1: “After working with snowman shapes online, you’ll be able to describe the difference between an oval and a circle to a friend.” This statement reflects a goal that specifically relates to basic geometry.

Example Goal 2: “Before class is over, you will be able to identify and write down three details about your snowman.” This statement reflects a writing goal.

According to the article, telling the students what they're going to learn and what they can expect increases focus and keeps them on task. 

Strategy Three: Step Away from the Computer

If you sense your students becoming restless or agitated you need to pull them out of the technology and into good old fashioned auditory/listening/face to face learning. There needs to be a balance of all learning styles. 

Strategy Four: Capitalize on Their Desire to Explore

There comes a point when you need to let go and allow your students time to explore the technology themselves. People don't learn everything there is to know about technology in a technology classroom. Often times it's through person exploration. "When students are given the freedom to explore technology, many are naturally motivated to pay attention."

#13 - "Why so many kids can't sit still in school today"

Summary

More and more children are having a hard time sitting still in class. Not only are the children with ADHD suffering, but the other children as well. Students are being forced to sit still in classrooms and if they wiggle, fidget, or need to move they get in trouble. Students as young as kindergarten age are being forced to sit quietly for 30 minutes at a time. As a result their physical and balancing is all messed up because they need so much time to move around for their skills to develop.

How I plan to deal with this issue

When students begin to fidget and wiggle around, the problem lies with the teacher not recognizing the fact that kids need to move to get all that energy out so they can focus. I am quite fidgety in class. I've had this problem since childhood. Although, now I can't just get up and move during class. I've recognized that it is unacceptable behavior as I got older. Now I just play with my pencil, wiggle my feet, fidget with my binder, etc. However, this is still keeping me from paying my full attention to the teacher. There are several different things on pinterest I found to help keep fidgety students occupied. One was to attach a nut and twist to each pencil to allow the children who tend to be a distraction to mess with the pencil rather than cause a disturbance in the classroom. 

Also, I remember certain teachers allowing us to take a 5-10 minute break throughout the day to stretch and walk around the room before we started on the next lesson. This allowed students to break away from the sleepy haze that so many students, including myself, tend to get. 

#12 - Must Watch Videos on 21st Education

1. Classroom of Tomorrow

This video showed a lot of options for technology in the classroom or school setting. However, all it showed was students and teachers with their faces stuck to screens. There was hardly anyone doing any kind of personable interactions. While technology is an important and a nice addition to the classroom, I do not believe it should replace face-to-face classroom interactions. 

2. The Voice of an Active Learner - Education from a Digital Native's Perspective

This video encourages adults and teachers alike to keep up with the students of today and tomorrow. They are going to grow up in the age of technology. I agree that it is important for us to keep up in order to keep them challenged. However, the fact that the video said by 2019 it is projected to have about half of high school classrooms online...that doesn't seem like a good idea to me. I feel like by having high schoolers take most of their courses online, it's setting them up for unnecessary distractions, lack of face-to-face help when they need it, and just not doing the work. 

3. The Future Starts Now - 2012 Edition

This video was extremely well done. It had many valid points as to why we need to integrate and stay up to date with our technology in the schools. Technology does have a way of keeping people interested. I liked that the narrator mentioned using technology to help people better understand harder subjects via fun rather than cram sessions. I believe that technology could be so much fun if it's used in the right way. Interactive technology, like the kind the Narrator is speaking of, would be extremely useful both today and tomorrow. 

4. Designing Schools for 21st Century Learning

Stimulus rich environments improve learning. Research shows that if you don't have enough stimulus you're setting yourself up for failure. Your brain likes things that keeps it's interest and keeps oxygen pumping through. This video is about building new schools in at risk neighborhoods. The environment for a student is crucial. I like the ideas about the open classroom settings but for me, it would be extremely distracting. I could see how it would be useful for group work but for basic classroom instruction or initial teaching, I don't see it as a good idea. The architect believes that you should have floor to ceiling windows to feel connected, but this is not very feasible for the ADHD students. The students who get easily distracted by the slightest thing will be staring out those windows more often than not, unless there is enough going on in the classroom to keep them engaged. However, I do like the interactive atmosphere of their classroom settings and how close the students and teachers seem to be. The teachers in this environment seem genuinely interested in their student's success. 21st century learners need a different set of skills for sure.

5. Tools and Resources for the 21st Century Educator

This video was a little odd. It was just music with a lot of apps being posted around for the 21st century educator. I felt as though this was a waste of 3 minutes because I could read a list of these apps with the description of what they do exactly rather than see the name, "Storify" and wonder what on earth it does. While it was a nicely animated video, I don't think it was the best possible resource they could have used to get their point across. 

6. A Vision of 21st Century Teachers

This video was about teachers integrating technology in the classroom, what it does to help their students, and how much time they spend integrating the technology. One teacher said she spends 4 hours a week maintaining a classroom website, another said she spends 20 hours a week working on interactive whiteboard lessons. Several teachers said their students participate in blogs and actually talk, including the shy ones. They make blogs, music, movies about what they learn, capture pictures of real life math situations, etc. Technology in the classroom in combination with face-to-face instruction is extremely helpful in keeping the kids interested in what they're learning. 

#11 - A Long Distance Love Story