Reflections on Four Years of Teaching With Technology - The First Year

My last post was about the lead up to GRACE Christian School's implementation of E4 - our one to on MacBook program.  Now, I want to tell you about our first year with it because that is obviously where our learning curve was the steepest.

Our tech team and administrators were the most amazing cheerleaders through this process.  When we originally talked about accountability in the committee, it had been suggested that we require a certain percentage of the lesson be tech related.  I am SOOOOO glad we did not go that route.  Instead of presenting this as a required duty, it was presented as an exciting opportunity.  Sean, Diane, Mandy, and Kathie (our principals) were so ready to help in any way you needed that it was unbelievable.  If you had an idea, you could go to one of them, and they would help you figure it out.  We were trained in big groups about some things, but if there were things that only applied to one department or teacher or lesson, one of them stopped by our room to chat about the tool or e-mailed us a link.

In some ways it was like being a first year teacher all over again.  We weren't exactly relearning how to teach, but in some ways we were.  When writing lesson plans, we were constantly thinking of ways we could do the same differently with technology. (Keep in mind, this was our first year; so we were on level one of the SAMR model.  We are reaching for higher levels now).  One of the best things we did was have story time at faculty meetings.  We shared projects the kids had done and tools we had found.  We shared frustrations as well and tried to problem solve together.  I'll post more about that later.

Our students immediately took on a new paradigm.  They began e-mailing teachers all the time.  They could have sent us e-mail from home before, but they hadn't very much.  Suddenly, we were getting e-mail from them at all times of day.  I got e-mail questions from shy kids who would never ask them in class.  I got kids sharing links with me if there was something they thought would be cool class.  I had kids sending science memes.  Our volleyball team went to the state finals that year.  A small group of kids, our basketball game announcer, and Sean traveled down with them and streamed the game with commentary.  We got to watch it during lunch and had a watch party for the final game in the evening.  Our students began making videos for chapel.  All of this was in addition to the "on purpose" things we were giving them to do for class.  On Grandparents' Day, we had a family skype their Grandparents into class from England.  We stream the Grandparents' Day performance as well.

I think my favorite story from that year was the streaming of the conference basketball tournament.  Whenever we stream a game, we send the link to the athletic director of the opposing team, so their families can watch too.  For one game of this tournament, we were playing a team out of Fayetteville, a school with a large number of military families.  Because of the stream, some of their dads were able to watch them play even though those dads were in Iraq and Afghanistan.   I didn't even mind that we lost that game because those dads got to watch their boys win.

We all learned a lot that year.  We learned from each other.  We learned from every resource we could find.  It was difficult and crazy and amazing all at the same time.

In my next post, I will talk about the three years since.  We hit a plateau, which our awesome tech team helped us overcome.  More on that in a few days.