Building file management into your technology pedagogy is important in ensuring these skills stick. If you start something new in the classroom, spend the last 5 minutes ensuring students save their work to the correct place. I suggest even setting a the name for the file. You can check out this past blog, which covers this topic a little more deeply.
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It is important to model these expectations in your own emails to students. Good email etiquette is a valuable skill to develop in students and one that will continue to serve them into the future. It is worth spending a little time on it at the start of the school year.
This week, I am sharing some tips to help teachers start the year well with classroom technology. In this Blog, I share some advice about student passwords. Single sign on (SSO) allows students to log into multiple platforms with the one set of credentials. This is usually a Microsoft or Google account and although it is becoming increasingly used, many schools will find they are not quite there yet. This usually means that students have a collection of passwords for the many different platforms they log into. Especially in the years of primary schooling, students will have a tough time remembering all their different passwords. Password Cards
Letting the browser do the work Google Chrome, Safari and Edge browsers both have the capability to remember passwords. Teaching your students how to create and edit the passwords their computers remember is a good skill to develop. While you are at it, teaching students to create internet favourites or bookmarks to the websites you will be using frequently during the school year is also a great time-saving idea. You could even create a splash page of links to your most frequently used websites yourself and have your students browers set to open that page whenever they open a new internet browser window. Taking the time to teach students about managing their passwords, will save you headaches during the school year. You are also teaching students to be responsible for a lifetime of password management.
Do you have some other suggestions? Please leave a comment below! There is so much to get organised at the start of a school year. This week many teachers are creating resources, labelling, cleaning, organising furniture, planning units and making their classroom generally spectacular for their new classes this year. Amidst the tornado of activity, the management of classroom technology is easy to overlook. With so many schools adopting BYOD models or laptop schemes, teachers are increasingly required to manage 1:1 classrooms. For many teachers, this is not something they are used to considering. However, a little bit of prep and time spent at the start of the year will make 1:1 classroom life a lot easier as the year progresses. This week, I will be sharing some tips to help teachers start the year well with classroom technology. In this Blog, I share some advice about storage. "....as the children started arriving, I realised I had no place for their computers. They ended up in a pile on my reading table. Later that day, a child went to pull his laptop out of the pile and several computers slid off onto the floor. Two broken screens later, I wish I had given it some more thought..."
How do you invite children to go and get their computers? Sending the whole class at once will result in chaos and perhaps even end in broken devices. Send children in small groups to retrieve their device or designate classroom tech assistants to hand them out. Consider creating a classroom charging station. No matter how much you remind students to bring a fully charged device to school, someone always forgets. Aging devices also don’t hold charge like they did when they were new. "Well, I guess you just cannot do this activity then" is not an acceptable way to handle this. As frustrating as it can be for a classroom teacher, punishments should never be at the expense of a student's learning. Technology is no longer an added extra in the classroom and is a legitimate learning tool. For continually forgetful students consider motivating them in other ways or allowing so many free charges per term. One fun idea I saw was a fuel card that the teacher punched. Students who didn’t go over their limit were rewarded at the end of the term. "Punishments should never be at the expense of a student's learning."
Do you have any great ideas for technology storage in your classroom? Share in the comments below!
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Laura's BlogRead all about my thoughts on teaching in the 21st Century, my experiences with technology in the classroom, running a Maker Space, launching STEAM and Design Thinking with students, coding, robotics and much more! Email UpdatesRSS SubscriptionClick the button below:
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