MakeShift Tips: Choosing Classroom Tech
There are many reasons for adding a new program or technology into your classroom. You may want to solve a problem, enhance an existing lesson, or maybe you’re just hearing buzz and it piqued your curiosity. Whatever your reasons, there are a few important factors that go into choosing programs that will work well in your classroom.
Whenever I’m talking to teachers about adding or changing technology, I start with these tips:
Tip 1: Always start with student goals and teacher needs.
Teacher Needs: What are the things that will improve your wellness, efficiency, or effectiveness in the classroom?
Examples of teacher needs could be:
To speed up grading, so that your evenings can be focused on other things.
To gather more useful data by increasing the frequency (and relevance) of formative assessments.
To increase the percentage of students who successfully complete independent practice at home.
Student Goals: What is it that you want students to know and how do you want them to demonstrate understanding?
Examples of student goals could be:
To provide students with more voice and choice in how they present learned content.
To increase the number of students who hit particular benchmarks.
To provide students with a more hands-on experience.
To increase a student’s ability to assess their own understanding of classroom content and independently find resources when they have questions.
Tip 2: Look for programs with breadth that can be used in multiple contexts and across domains. This goes back to efficiency and how you use your classroom time→ if you choose the right program, you can teach students how to use it once, then it can be reused throughout the year, even daily, across domains and units.
I generally steer clear of programs and technologies that have one fixed use or application. While there is a time and place for curriculum-specific programs, I love teaching students to use a simple video editing software or an interactive document program in September, and then I build it into my curriculum repeatedly throughout the year.
So what are some of my favorite programs that can meet both student and teacher goals, as well as provide broad use across content, curriculum, and age levels? Here is my list! I’d love to hear your questions or thoughts on how you choose tech for your classroom.
