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| photo credit: Fuzzy Dice via photopin (license) |
Using Free Tech Tools to Get Kids Active and Engaged
Guest Blog Post by
In my very first year of teaching I worked with 4th, 5th, and 6th graders with learning disabilities in a summer school program. We were in an old, un-airconditioned building and frankly none of us really wanted to be there. My main challenge that summer was to get those kids to continue working on their reading and math skills while making it somewhat bearable. Being an optimist (I still am) and a new teacher (I am no longer), I wanted to challenge their expectations of summer school and make the kids see that learning in the heat doesn't have to be all that bad. Their main teacher from during the school year left me with a depressing stack of worksheets taller than most of the students. All of her games and fun teacher tricks were locked up with a padlock in the corner of the room. I knew I had to do something to make it enjoyable or the summer would drag on forever for all of us. Being a brand new teacher I had very little money and educational technology hadn't really been born yet, so there was no such thing as a 99 cent app I could purchase on my phone.
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| Lisa Berghoff, is a Special Education Teacher at DHS and is the co- moderator of #TbookC Chat |
I went to the dollar store and bought two very large fluffy neon dice. We used those dice to play math “games” that actually utilized basic math skills such as place value and rounding. The kids were thrilled. Every day they asked expectantly if and when we could play with the dice. They loved taking turns rolling them on the floor as they guessed what numbers would come up next. Those dice saved me that summer. The kids were having fun, which meant my summer was also saved and by the way, they scored very well on their assessments. Playing games with those dice also gave me some street cred with the students as I became known as the teacher who did fun things and created games for the kids to play. For the rest of the summer they were more willing to go along with my other crazy activities and when I told them we were doing something new you could feel the excitement in the air.
The neon fluffy dice were not some special tool or strategy that I had learned in graduate school. They weren’t a research-based, nationally normed approach to teaching math to kids with special needs. They were just fun. They were big, they were bright, they were new, and they were different. They made it ok for the kids to be up and out of their desks and they made it ok for the kids to be loud and excited. The students were engaged and working as a team and I managed to sneak some math in there as well.
I often think about those dice when I am introduced to a new website, application, or other piece of technology suggested for educational use. When I collaborate with teachers and suggest some new technology tools they might want to try in their classrooms they sometimes say things like “this is just bells and whistles” and “where does the real learning come in?”
Educational technology is the current buzz and I agree that we as teachers must look at many of these new tools with caution. Some may be complex to use or actually not do what they claim. We also must not lose the basic frameworks of good teaching for the sake of using technology. Would I use those dice for every lesson of every day? Absolutely not. It is important to look at and evaluate tech tools for what they are and understand that they are not all necessarily designed to be the holy grail of educational technology for every classroom. First and foremost we as educators should always use what we know about our students, where they are now and where we want them to go, to make decisions in our classrooms.
I would argue though that there is a place for bells and whistles in education. We know from our own classroom experiences that with increased student activity there is increased student engagement (see linked article from Edutopia). Many of the free online tools allow students to be more active, collaborative, and have a good time while they are learning. So let’s embrace the whistles and the bells, and use them wisely.
Some of my favorites in the “bells and whistles” category:
Blabberize
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Linked source: "How Do We Know When Students Are Engaged? | Edutopia." 2012. 12 Mar. 2015 <http://www.edutopia.org/blog/student-engagement-definition-ben-johnson>
Great post Lisa. Dabbling with gamification before the word was even invented. The balance between bells & whistles and real learning is crucial. Getting it right really does lead to great progress. Thank you for sharing.
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