Stakeholder Communication

When communicating with stakeholders about the integration of technology, three things come to mind for parents to understand:  skills that students will learn, digital citizenship, and how teachers are going to manage the devices in the classroom.  Parents are usually wanting to know what their child is learning.  It is important when integrating technology that parents understand that students are going to acquire many skills when working with technology.  Some of these skills include, collaboration among peers, problem solving and communication.  Teachers can be specific about what the students are learning when implementing tech projects in their classroom and share that with parents.  Digital citizenship is important for all students and parents to understand.  Parents would benefit from learning what the students do about how to be responsible with technology.  Parents also need to understand how the devices are being managed in the classroom and that not every lesson will require that technology be used.  Knowing how much students should be using the devices at home would also help parents understand how the technology works and still give them some control over how long their child needs to be on the device.  If these three things are communicated well with parents, then the integration of technology in the classroom will be more effective because the teacher will have the parent support needed to encourage correct student behavior with technology.

21st Century Skills

21st Century Skills are important for students to learn.  The most important of these skills that students need to be able to master is collaboration.  In my elementary classes (grades 3-6), this is the one skill that all students need to be successful.  Some students will effectively collaborate with other students, but I find that the majority have difficulty working with other students.  Even as adults, we are more successful in our careers if we collaborate with our peers than if we try to do everything alone.  It is so important for teachers to work together for the common good of the school and students, so it is very important that we teach our students the same.  Students are keen observers when adults in the school building do not work together, so modeling effective collaboration is just a important as teaching it.

One way this skill can be used is through Google Apps for Education.  Since beginning GAFE this school year, students are beginning to learn how to collaborate with each other.  It was difficult at first when they were working on an assignment in small groups on a Google doc or presentation.  I have seen improvements since the beginning of the school year with the collaboration of students when using Google apps.  Their collaboration skills have improved in other areas around the school building as well.

The collaborative assignments and projects can be assessed using rubrics  The students can also peer assess the group's effort and contribution to the project.

Learning how to collaborate effectively at the elementary level will help students become more tolerant of each other as they enter middle and high school.