I know this may not seem like that big a deal to many, but for me this was a bit of a breakthrough. Last Monday morning I took my wife to the doctor for a check-up on her broken knee, so naturally I had a substitute teacher. The breakthrough was that almost the entire morning was done on their laptops with a substitute that knew nothing about using them. My plans involved them using our class wiki to access online math activities and later to do schema building pre-reading activities and writing activities and the students were able to handle that on their own.
When I came at lunchtime the sub was just awestruck that the students got so much done and were so on task (with a few minor issues from some usual suspects). “It was easy,†she said. The students noticed too. They thought it was great that even with a sub I could let them use their laptops because they have some basic skill now in using them and our wiki and more. Now understand we still have a ways to go – but they are really on their way to just using their laptops like any other learning tool.
We are pretty sure now that I will be able to roll this class to fifth grade next year and I look forward to seeing where we can go with these powerful learning tools.
Learning Is Messy!
Messy, but SO rewarding!