Classroom Management Tips & Tech

Classroom management can seem daunting, especially when integrating technology. Below are some helpful tips for helping create a positive, consistent, and focused classroom while using tech (thanks for the example lesson, Jeff!).

1. "Ask Three Before Me"

This is a helpful reminder for when students have a question. It encourages them to ask three peers, or check three resources (online, book, instructions) before they ask you as the teacher. This helps protect your time as a teacher and also encourages them to interact with their peers and practice being resourceful. I am a fan of this method and am excited to use it in my world language classroom because it also rhymes in French: Demande à trois, avant moi :) 

2. Limit Time (and Award Bonus Time)

One common mistake is giving students too much time to complete a task online or using technology. It is quicker to type than to handwrite and especially if students are familiar with the website or technology resources they are using, they may be able to accomplish a given task quicker than students have in the past. When they get done early, students will find other things to fill the time and may get distracted. 

Instead, underestimate the amount of time it will take students, and then award bonus time if it looks like most students aren't done yet. This helps them stay focused (and makes you the hero!). 

3. Physically Remove Screens

Even as adults, it is difficult to avoid the temptation of checking a screen when it's right in front of you. Help your students by physically separating them from their screens. This does not mean taking away your students' devices. Rather, have them set their phones face down or laptops closed on the tops of their desks. Or, have them turn their laptop screens completely away from themselves so they face the front of the class when you are speaking.

4. Exploring New Tech

When introducing a new technology tool, students may become distracted, wanting to explore and push the limits with how they can use it. To avoid losing control of the class, allow intentional time for students to play around with the new technology beforehand. This can even be just 3-5 minutes in class and then you can even allow space afterwards for students to share with the class what they learned. 

5. Clear Expectations and Explanations

Establish a consistent routine and clear expectations for students. You could start every day with the same entry slide on the screen that outlines what materials students need. For example, is a laptop needed today or not? Headphones? Pencil and paper? This helps students know what to expect and whether it will be appropriate to get out their computers each day. 

Another way to set clear expectations is to use timer on the screen when students have a certain amount of time to get a task done. This helps gives students ownership of their time and practice pacing themselves. 

6. Review Established Procedures

Help students out by practicing already-established procedures periodically throughout the year. For example, before you begin a lesson, you could ask students to demonstrate what good listening looks like (closing their laptops, looking at the you or at their notes, not talking to neighbors). This helps remind students what is expected and makes them feel confident that they know what to do.

Here is a great article that highlights some additional tips for integrating technology into your curriculum.

What are other classroom management ideas that you find helpful when using technology? Please feel free to comment below!

Failures and Successes

I think many educators are scared, or at least skeptical, of changing their ways. This sentiment might be more prevalent among older teachers, but might also be more common based on the teacher’s cultural norms. These teachers desire to keep teaching the way that they are used to teaching, and maybe even used to learning — teaching to their own past. There can be good parts of this, both instructionally and in content. But there are also benefits to incorporating new ways of teaching, as well as changing content to be more skill- or process-oriented. These seek to teach more for the student’s future (in fact, everyone’s future) and naturally tend toward technology (hence the subject of these blogs and this course).

The biggest hurdle in implementing these new practices is implementing them — getting them set in place to begin with. I think a helpful aspect of this is seeing what works and what doesn’t work. I appreciated seeing both the failures and successes of technology use. Even beyond the ability to recognize the potential of a given method, these examples can give insight into the mindset and effort that can make or break a teacher’s efforts. Furthermore, teachers can determine for themselves whether one success might not be successful for them, or better yet, how a given failure could become a success given some modifications. No matter how or what the teachers implement, it is always helpful to see examples of it in action. Just as teachers model for the students, they can also see models from other teachers. 

Here,There, and Everywhere!

There are so many different ways I am going to integrate technology into my classroom, and I cannot wait! After these two days of class I have so many different ideas and plans I want to bring into the 4th grade classroom I will be student teaching at this fall. I would like to integrate research for the students on a topic, say in history or social studies. I then want to assign ( or allow them to pick a country of their interest!) students a country to look through the lens of and present that to their peers, potentially in a classroom Jigsaw activity or make a presentation/movie trailer for the information they want to share with us. Another way I would like to redefine technology in the classroom is to, have the students research a critical world issue, gain knowledge on it and then FaceTime or Skype someone from that country and get their opinion on it / interview them. Not only are they gaining technological skills, but they are also gaining communication skills within a global perspective.

Two more ideas that I would like to integrate are the YouTube video and the pictures as a story activity. Just like we learned today in class, when there is a visual put in front of us we will retain the information 65% more than if there was not. I want to put photos up on the screen and have students think of a story and how it relates to the content we are learning, or about to learn. If I do this activity before a unit I can attain an understanding on the level of what the students know before starting the unit. If I do this activity after a unit I can help understand how much the students learned or if there are any misconceptions in the room I can clear them up for them. I hope to incorporate student choice and allow them to have autonomy in the classroom as well as redefining learning with the SAMR Model.

The possibilities are endless with technology!!

Lastly, I want to ensure that I reflect on the most important thing I learned in class today......LOVE YOUR STUDENTS. 

You shall not pass (if use use credible websites way more accurate than our textbooks)

"If you use Wikipedia in your essay, I'll know."

An iconic lie by three high school teachers and four college professors. This line was about as believable to us students as, 

"It'll be obvious if you don't read the book, SparkNotes isn't a good idea."

Let's be real, most people have never actually made it past the third chapter of Lord of the Flies and have flocked to sources like Quizlet and SparkNotes. 

Anyone that was born before or in this generational gap we are in would probably say utilizing those sites mentioned above is cheating. How?

We are engaging our students in the Internet of Things, they are learning valuable research skills, and at the end of the day, if they the assignment is constructed in a way that encourages critical thinking rather than simple fact-based answers, the origin of the knowledge of  the book is insignificant. 

The bottom line is that these resources are here and they aren't going anywhere. in fact, there will always be even a better and more efficient option taking their places in a blink of an eye. Instead of shunning them and kids taking extreme measures to cover up their inevitable usage. Utilize those incredible sites and take advantage of the wealth of knowledge (and even the occasional radically off base ideas) and have the kids make an impact and engage them in much bigger ideas. 

I love the idea of teaching kids credibility online by using the "World's Rubric" in Wikipedia. I think using that and having students edit those low graded pages is an incredible way to validate student work. 

My parents just, like, totally don't get me

There are a lot of benefits to having parents that are much older than those of my peers. For example, we we had a lot of financial freedom and were able to embark on really spectacular trips and my parents really saw no need in being strict with me. They had been teachers for 20 years, after all.

There are also a lot of quirks.

For example, my dad still believes seat belt laws are an intrusion of his civil rights and my mom has no retention of how to attach a file to an email.

(FYI  :

The cell phone situation has always been a battle with me and my parents. In 5th grade I made a powerpoint presentation of why I should be allowed 1. for more than an hour of TV a week and 2. to have a cell phone.

They were so impressed with my tech savvy ways that I got the screen time and the little flip phone where I was allowed to send AND RECEIVE 25 text messages a A MONTH.

(For reference of how ridiculous this is, I have sent and received 17 messages in the last four minutes.)

Recently I took myself off of our phone plan because they could not wrap their head around the fact that 2 GB of data was not going to work for me.

Today when we were discussing the different generations, all my parents' annoyance with my phone habits made complete sense. They really did not get me. They are Boomers and I'm a Millennial that is REAL close to being a spime, delta, a doom, or whatever those little nuggets want to be called.

They have no comprehension of what my life is like in terms of my social media presence and how my relationships are constructed because when my dad was my age he didn't even have a landline and my mom was off in Europe backpacking with stationary in her bag.

They stopped even trying to explain what my job was when I worked as a social media consultant for restaurants and again as a PR professional for a deep B2B technology agency.

My mother does try to understand, though. In her own classroom in Newport, WA she was extremely passionate about her document camera and the Apple TV where she could connect the HD version of the 1960's version of Romeo and Juliet and easily cut the boobie scene.

My dad, on the other hand, keeps his technology presence slimmed down to Facebook, texting, the DVR and the laptop IF his email stayed logged in. He nearly had a conniption when I tried to show him how to work our Kindle Stick.

I'm so excited to slowly start to incorporate more tech into their lives and watch the smoke flow from their ears.