Teachers from around APS have recently completed a blended learning course, available through Atomic Learning,  titled "A Survey of Integration Strategies for 21st Century Teachers."  Many aspects of 21st Century teaching and learning were covered in the course, with big focus on classroom management towards the final part of the class.  The classroom management discussion helped me reflect on what advice I could give to anyone that has instructional technology integrated into their classroom.  And so, this post was born.

Here are few pieces of advice that may help you and your technology be more powerful and efficient in your learning environment.

1.  I hate to be pessimistic, as it's not the best sharing approach, but preparing for the worst will help your classroom run way more efficiently.  Be prepared for the technology to "crash" at any time.  It may not work when you need it most.  Here's an example of all the issues a netbook may have at one point or another:

Are you ready to go "old school" if you need to?  Our network also has traffic issues throughout the district and tends to be slow from time to time.  We know that and need to prepare accordingly.  Download videos you're going to use from Discovery Streaming and YouTube before the lesson so you don't have to depend on the network to be fast when you need it to be.

Classroom hardware can have issues as well.  Netbooks may need to be rebooted or may run out of a charge.  The Promethean lamp goes out.  Your ActivPen won't work.  The batteries are low on certain ActivExpression or ActiVote devices.  Test your hardware. Make sure it will work when you need it to work.  Have a plan as well.  Being prepared for disaster is way more than half the battle.

2.  Rethink your classroom setup as you retool your classroom environment.  If a classroom has a class set of netbooks/laptops and the students still sit in rows, as they always have, while the computer faces away from the teacher, there will eventually be issues of some kind.  In a broad sense, if a classroom has added a large amount of instructional technology to the room and the physical setup of the room hasn't changed at all, your instructional technology staff gets worried because they know there will be trouble sooner than later.  With more technology comes more responsibility and more management.  It can be done, and it can be done very well as we've seen in many APS classrooms, it just takes a lot of preparation, experience, openness, flexibility, and learning to make it happen.

3.  While good classroom management with and without technology can look, and work well, in any classroom, there is no better management tool than effective instruction and quality content.  When the students are focused in, they are purposefully busy, and are, for lack of a better word, engaged, classroom management takes care of itself.  All of the previous sentence is way simpler to type than to actually make happen, but teachers know it when they see it.  It's a beautiful thing and something I feel should be a goal with each and every lesson if possible.

So there are just a few suggestions, based on my experience and the experience of our department, that you may want to consider as you add or adjust to having instructional technology in your learning environment.  If you have questions, concerns, or need anything please contact the Department of Instructional Technology representatives that are assigned to your building.  We can help.  It's what we do.

~Thanks for Barb Wagers for this.

If you are an elementary teacher and would like supplemental Mondo resources or you are use ipods or ipads in your classroom, then these additional resources are exactly what you need.

 

Image: On Flickr by trevorparker

376 Mondo audio files (created from the Mondo CDs) are now available for you and your students to use on a computer or on your ipods or ipads.  We would like to extend a very special thank you to Kim Duran at Boston K-8 for doing all the work and for sharing these files with all of us.

Over 130 additional Mondo movies (supporting all levels) have also been added to our Instructional Resources.  A very special thank you for that work goes to Tammie Doane from the Assistive Technology department.  

Check out all the Instructional Resources by going to:

Click on this link:  \\U:\Distdata\

Or, go to your desktop and open My Computer.

Open the U drive, Distdata folder and then the Instructional Resources folder.

Promethean released an update for its Inspire software earlier this week.  Version 1.5 includes many upgrades and bug fixes including a brand new driver in case you're having any connectivity issues.  Check the Fact Sheet on the right side of this page for more specific details.

There are two ways to update your software.  Option one: from the Inspire Dashboard, click on "Configure" and then click on "Check for Updates."  Option two: click on the "Help" menu within the software, then click on "Check for Updates."  Go through the update process like you normally would and you'll be all ready to go!

If you have questions or need assistance please contact your building DoIT representative(s).  We're always more than happy to help you.  Enjoy!

Although "One Place" is gone... you can still access most of your favorite resources. Here's the information you'll need to access, Instructional Resources, Discovery Education, NetTrekker, Atomic Learning, and World Book Online.

District Resources

In order to carry on with your education network/s you have created, you must fill out the form found at the link below! If you are creating a new Ning after 7/20/10 you will still need to fill out a form so that your Ning will be free.

http://about.ning.com/pearsonsponsorship/