Tuesday Tech Tip

Practical Use of Personal Electronic Devices

Allowing students the freedom to use their own electronic devices can be a liberating and empowering experience for all shareholders. Teachers no longer have to fight over the one computer lab or laptop cart and students are already familiar with the basic function of their own devices.

Among the many ways teachers can start to embrace this trend is by:

• Using Twitter for classroom conversation once a week. Create a class hashtag and provide an opportunity for students to prepare for class discussions. Let them pre-read articles, review materials and then provide a forum for them to share ideas.
• Filming classroom projects - students can use their phones to quickly take and upload footage for movies and then edit them from their phones for creative, synthesized class projects.
• Podcasting by using simple voice recorders - great for teaching and practicing interviewing skills.      Students can review recordings and learn to edit them for convergence articles.
• Use Google Drive to create a paperless classroom - students can collaborate with each other and review and share feedback readily using Google Docs or other Google Drive features. Excuses about missing work, be gone.
• Using devices as e-readers - kids will no longer have to purchase a book and schools won't have to purchase class sets. Kids can read, annotate and review texts from their phones.
• Research is easier as well, now students have the entire internet at their fingertips. During a class discussion, students are able to do fast research to contribute more information and/or seek deeper understanding of a particular text or subject.
• Citing the research is also easier when writing as there are countless apps dedicated to MLA, Chicago and AP style citation like EasyBib.
• Dictionary apps also help students easily mine text without having to find a paper version or share the only 3 copies a classroom has.

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