As a teacher, I’m enthusiastic about the opportunity to use long distance learning to help Vincent keep up with his studies. I wasn’t sure how the rest of the class would react to and behave during this time; but I was pleasantly surprised. They behaved beautifully and remained fully engaged in each lesson. My students wanted to be helpful to their classmate and make sure to keep on task so that he was getting all the information he needed.
We are very fortunate to have Chromebooks for every student in the first through eighth grade here at St.James. The students are so excited about creating slide shows for everything from parts of the Mass to biographical collages. Students are able to manipulate text to create colorful vocabulary pages, publish newspaper stories, and take virtual museum tours.
Recently my fourth graders wrote Haikus about explorers in Social Studies. They inserted tables, uploaded images, and used various fonts for each Haiku. Since students share all assignments with me, even Vincent was able to complete the project at home. As we study the California missions, the class will be working in collaborative groups to research various Native American tribes, discover primary languages, legends, indigenous foods, and basketry on the computer.
For Vincent, who might otherwise be excluded from participation in the learning process, his Chromebook (through the use of an application called “Google Hangouts” ) is his connection to the classroom. He will be an integral part of one of the collaborative groups. Vincent says,
“You can contact your friends when you’re far away, and you can still be in school, and not miss anything,” says Vincent. “You feel like you’re right there in class!”
Instead of attending the computer lab once per week for only 45 minutes at a time, I am able to incorporate technology right into my classroom. It has been amazing to watch my students grow in their knowledge and ability to work, edit and manipulate various documents. They are learning how to use the basics (google document, spreadsheet and presentation) while interacting with the content they are learning. I am finding that they are able to remember how to utilize the technology more frequently because they are applying these skills as they create their own work.
One of our school’s Student Learning Expectations is to become A Creative and Expressive Individual, and I see this being taken to a whole new level with the use of the Chromebooks in the classroom.
Working with Vincent in a long distance situation has sparked up much conversation among our administration and faculty regarding how we can use Google Hangouts for online and distance learning. The school is still in the beginning stages of implementing the Chromebooks; but I am enthusiastic about the future and how these devices are reshaping how I teach and engage my students.