Engaging Our Students

Engaging our students through technology in meaningful ways starts with the "meaningful" part. If we have access to technology that holds the ability to enhance the experience for both the teacher and student, but we waste it on the same purpose in a different form, we have failed both ourselves and the students. For example, using a Smartboard as a fancy overhead projector does nothing to enrich our lessons or diversify the presentation for anyone. We must use what we can to create a better level of understanding. During one substitute assignment, we were working on grammar - subordinate clauses to be exact - and using a Smartboard, I was able to create a sentence in two parts with separate punctuation pieces and physically move the same sentence into two different positions, pulling the comma into the corner for the form with the clause in the second position.

Technology is especially relevant in the realm of Language Arts. This isn't just a class where we read novels and write essays. Language Arts is truly an interactive and multimedia experience for us as teachers - and especially for our screen-addicted students. Audio excerpts from To Kill a Mockingbird and video clips from "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" and musical lyrics which can now hold the weight of a Nobel Prize need to be rolled into lessons on a daily basis.

It goes without saying that we need to truly understand the extensibility of the technology to which we have access, but we also need to understand the technologies our students are working with on a daily basis. Are we playing Fortnite and Clash Royale too? Are we using Twitter and Snapchat? What else are they using? What else are they used to? How can we choose from our options of possible technologies in order to be closer to their experiences?

Technology is used every day by our students, generally 3-4 screen hours per day. They are already masters of technology in some ways, but so very naive in others. While advancing their understanding of apps and web-based forms of communication, productivity, and creativity, we, as mentors, must be able to educate them in the dangers of social media as well. I've given talks from 5th grade to business owners, and the gravity of that topic has rarely sunk in. I'm hoping that with a year-round classroom I can bring up that topic at every opportunity - with a Language Arts tie-in, of course.