4:49 am Tablets
As a teacher of 47 standard level Social Studies students I find one of my hardest jobs is keeping track of my student’s progress and helping them make up class when absent, and/or providing support beyond the classroom. My new (to me) tablet PC has been providing a way for me to capture dynamic in-class discussion and make them available to students via the Portal or by simply handing it to them when they return. Students who struggle to take notes while pay attention and engaging in discussion can forgo standard note taking procedures and therefor concentrate on staying present with the material being discussed. They can access the notes at a later date to review necessary content. I find for many of my students this increases their confidence level and thus their willingness to contribute in the moment.
I have had some successes and failures while using the hardware and software. The normal frustrations that technology presents many of us, some of it caused by user error, some by the quirkiness that comes with machines that seem to have personalities of their own, has caused some moments of utter desperation but alas it’s been a journey of problem solving that my students have been a part of, and for many that is the best lesson they can learn.
Here are the details; by creating a framework for each class with topics, sub topics and guiding questions in Power Point and then importing into One Note I have essentially my lesson plan as a guide to our discussions. I take all notes of our discussion generated by the framework on the tablet PC (at this point I take all the notes but would love to transfer that over in time to my students). The end product is a pdf version of a summary of the discussion. It works well for some discussion but with others I would love to have an audio recording as it’s sometimes hard to capture the entirety of a high order thinking discussion (as I hope all of them are, to varying degrees of success) in written words and phrases. That is the next step. My goal for next semester (with Josh’s help) is to get the hardware and software necessary to audio capture our discussions.
I strongly believe that no audio recording or pdf will ever replace the experience my students have with each other in the classroom but for students with occasional or chronic absences (of which I have far too many) it does provide a vehicle to begin the make-up process. Technology has the opportunity to not only work in a reactive way but also in a proactive way for my student who needs additional support. Knowing that have access to the material at a later date allows them to be more present and engaged. I should note that I do require that students take some sort of notes but my goal this is for their insights and ideas, something to enrich rather than to remediate.
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