This question is facing all learners, families, and educational systems: What are the best tools, and what is the best way to make those tools available to students?
At present, I find I have a perfect blend of hardware including an iPhone, iPad, MAC and Chromebook for my own family, personal, and professional work. I use each of these tools in different ways. For software I find that the blend of Google apps, Microsoft Office, and the iSuite (iMovie, Garageband. . .) are my foundation software tools. At the elementary level, I also use KidPix, SCRATCH, and Animoto. Then for practice, my favorite tools to date are That Quiz, Xtra Math, sumdog, and multiple gaming sites for engaging, helpful practice.
What I don't use enough, and want to use more regularly are the following:
- More engaging games/creation sites with grow-at-your-own rate for reading/writing engagement and growth. I want to explore the apps/software for this. We just signed on to A-Z reading and I wonder how that will be.
- More video song/explanation playlists to support learning units.
- Online books. Our system hasn't made the switch yet, and I think I really need to make the time to pilot this with strength starting with the needs of our most at-risk learners. There are some teachers piloting this right now.
- Khan Math. Some of my students use this well funded, researched learning site, and I want to use it more as I know it has some excellent, differentiated learning paths.
- More coding sites.
- More collaborative efforts to design research/standards-based learning experiences.
- Minecraft. I still think our system should allow this for project/creation/presentation work since it taps a different mind process and way of thinking/creating--a way that will increase in use in the years to come.
In the end, my goals for the teaching/learning program are the following:
- Providing students access to the best user-friendly hardware and the most engaging, productive learning software.
- Developing students' learning flexibility, facility, and fluency of mind and skill in all learning endeavor utilizing the best learning paths, streams, and structures with tech and non-tech tools, strategies, and processes.
- Teaching each unit in a way that introduces students to learning to learn behaviors, structures, and process as well as the essential skill, concept, and knowledge of the unit. Creating learning modules that essentially provide students with learning structures that can be applied to other learning units as well.
- Helping students to understand their learning well, and prompting students to create their own personalized learning menu with the strategies, tools, and processes that inform their learning with capacity.
This is the first of many notes I will write to inform my work with regard to the tools, processes, and strategies I choose, use, and promote to teach children well. The decisions we make at this juncture are very important for future student success. We have to make these choices wisely and with long term benefit in mind. An ineffective tool now will cost more in the long run since the ineffective tool won't support student learning as well, and the tool may not last as long or run as well.
