Image created using Canva's AI, with the prompt: "high school teacher using tech tools in a classroom, style: playful"In no particular order, here are 10 things teachers should know about using technology in the classroom:
- Your approach is infectious - if you’re excited about it, the kids will be too. If you are wary, communicate why and ask for the kids’ thoughts/concerns.
- Know that you may not be the expert in the room on a particular tech tool. It’s fun to have kids come up and teach peers - and you! - tips and usages.
- You are unlikely to wreck anything - don’t be afraid to poke around and experiment.
- Teachers often have free or low-cost access to great tools - like Canva!
- Don’t fight the conveniences of AI. It’s here. Let’s use it to our advantage.
- YouTube is a great source of step-by-step guidance for anything you don’t already know how to do in a tech program.
- Encouraging kids to use coding programs (Kodable, Scratch, Khan Academy) allows them to think of themselves as future developers, and it may surprise you which kids feel the most success and connection during coding classes.
- To ensure that the videos you play as part of a lesson in class are accessible to everyone, turn on closed captioning.
- Do not assume that students already know how to find digital documents they’ve created or shared. File organization, creation and retrieval all need to be taught.
- Keep in mind Murphy’s Law: if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. You just never know when the wifi is going to be patchy or the construction job down the road will knock out the power. Keep a couple of sub plans at the ready in case you can’t proceed with a planned tech lesson.
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