Traversing the EdTech Slopes
I love to ski. It is part of my identity. I don't remember learning how to ski. My parents taught me themselves when I was 3 years old. For me, skiing is as natural as walking or breathing. Want to see how much I love it? This is a cliff in Steamboat, Colorado.
Our students are like that with smartphones, iPads, and laptops. They have always lived in a world of YouTube, apps, tweets, and snapchats. They thrive on the relationships they build partly through tech integration. But many of them go to schools run by adults who are intimidated by the complexity of these tools.
I tried snowboarding when I was about 15. I'd already been skiing for 12 years. I thought I'd be a quick study. I wasn't. It was hard. I fell a lot. It hurt. Many long time teachers have become comfortable with more traditional methods. They're good solid methods. They're used by good solid teachers. The thing is, these teachers are still skiing while their students live to snowboard. These teachers are using time-tested methods, but there are new methods worth learning and adding order to incorporate the skills needed in a tech saturated world. Skiing is a solid foundation, but the future is snowboarding.
Earlier this evening I was chatting with Andrew Marcinek about the importance of leveraging some students' innate tech integration skills to help move schools in the right direction. Administrators, teachers, and tech staff are often weighed down with standards and initiatives. The idea of finding the time to learn a new unfamiliar method can feel overwhelming and scary. Why not let students have a voice in how and where tech can be integrated so that it truly engages them in their own learning?
Student Tech Teams might be one way to help bring these ideas together. Andrew wrote an article for Edutopia recently about how tech teams work and how they have started to pop up in schools all over the country. Teachers certainly provide the guidance and expertise that students need in schools, but why not allow students to have a voice in how that expertise can be combined with powerful tech tools to create something neither of them ever imagined?
I've been rolling out the pilot of Rockets Help Desk at my own high school, and already I've seen my students have a real impact on teachers in our school and district. A science teacher reported using the Prezi tutorial to give students a choice for more animated presentations. The school nurse stopped by for a quick face to face lesson on sharing Google Docs so she could collaborate with her counterparts in 7 other schools on a new district wide policy. An elementary math teacher invited Rockets Help Desk to show her 5th graders how to use Google Forms to collect survey data. There are many more examples.
Rockets Help Desk launched September 6, 2014. To date, only 10 weeks later, there are 17 formal requests the students have filled for teachers, and many more informal ones that haven't been tracked or recorded. In each case, teenagers filled a real need for the adults in their school. The teachers provided the education vision and the students provided the tech tools to amplify the learning.
So if you've never tried to ski or snowboard, here's my advice. Take a quick lesson from a coach. The coach will likely be younger than you, but don't let that stop you. You will fall and it will hurt, but don't let that stop you. The satisfaction you'll feel and the fun you'll have when you finish that first run on your own will be well worth the frustration.
We need to remember that trying something new is hard. We might fail a few times before we succeed. The success will be well worth the struggle. We, educators and students, can work together to make it happen.
Our students are like that with smartphones, iPads, and laptops. They have always lived in a world of YouTube, apps, tweets, and snapchats. They thrive on the relationships they build partly through tech integration. But many of them go to schools run by adults who are intimidated by the complexity of these tools.
I tried snowboarding when I was about 15. I'd already been skiing for 12 years. I thought I'd be a quick study. I wasn't. It was hard. I fell a lot. It hurt. Many long time teachers have become comfortable with more traditional methods. They're good solid methods. They're used by good solid teachers. The thing is, these teachers are still skiing while their students live to snowboard. These teachers are using time-tested methods, but there are new methods worth learning and adding order to incorporate the skills needed in a tech saturated world. Skiing is a solid foundation, but the future is snowboarding.
Earlier this evening I was chatting with Andrew Marcinek about the importance of leveraging some students' innate tech integration skills to help move schools in the right direction. Administrators, teachers, and tech staff are often weighed down with standards and initiatives. The idea of finding the time to learn a new unfamiliar method can feel overwhelming and scary. Why not let students have a voice in how and where tech can be integrated so that it truly engages them in their own learning?
Student Tech Teams might be one way to help bring these ideas together. Andrew wrote an article for Edutopia recently about how tech teams work and how they have started to pop up in schools all over the country. Teachers certainly provide the guidance and expertise that students need in schools, but why not allow students to have a voice in how that expertise can be combined with powerful tech tools to create something neither of them ever imagined?
I've been rolling out the pilot of Rockets Help Desk at my own high school, and already I've seen my students have a real impact on teachers in our school and district. A science teacher reported using the Prezi tutorial to give students a choice for more animated presentations. The school nurse stopped by for a quick face to face lesson on sharing Google Docs so she could collaborate with her counterparts in 7 other schools on a new district wide policy. An elementary math teacher invited Rockets Help Desk to show her 5th graders how to use Google Forms to collect survey data. There are many more examples.
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Rockets Help Desk launched September 6, 2014. To date, only 10 weeks later, there are 17 formal requests the students have filled for teachers, and many more informal ones that haven't been tracked or recorded. In each case, teenagers filled a real need for the adults in their school. The teachers provided the education vision and the students provided the tech tools to amplify the learning.
So if you've never tried to ski or snowboard, here's my advice. Take a quick lesson from a coach. The coach will likely be younger than you, but don't let that stop you. You will fall and it will hurt, but don't let that stop you. The satisfaction you'll feel and the fun you'll have when you finish that first run on your own will be well worth the frustration.
We need to remember that trying something new is hard. We might fail a few times before we succeed. The success will be well worth the struggle. We, educators and students, can work together to make it happen.
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