Technology Integration Day

The other day, I took all the paper off the tables and pulled out the "toys."

Here's my list of toys:

• Promethean Activexpressions (class set) being run by Activinspire.
• A semi-working collection of old Compaq laptops (roughly 17).
• Wordle
• Edmodo

Here's my objectives for the day:

• Students will voice opinions about grading through questioning, critical thinking and discussion.
• Students will explore personal strengths and creativity through Wordle.
• Students will reflect on how exploring strengths applies to our college focus.

Here's what we did:

• Students walked in the door and grabbed an Activexpression to answer the question on the board. It was a short answer question about the role of grades in education.
• We discussed and went through a few more questions with the Activexpressions.
• Then, we switched gears and talked about our strengths. We've had several conversations about this over the past week.
• They went to Wordle, plugged in their name and every strength they could think of.
• For turning it in, they had to have a specific user name plugged in when they saved it to the public gallery.
• At the end of the hour, I had them all log into Edmodo and answer a reflection question to see if they were making the connection between thinking about strengths and our ultimate goal of getting through college.

It was a great day. The only thing that would have been better is about 4 more laptops for students to use so they wouldn't have to pair up. They used my teacher computer, my laptop, my OLPC XO, and a slow as molasses eMac.

The reflections showed that they were getting it! And not a piece of paper in sight. They had a great time with Wordle. They did the assignment but also had time to put their own creative spin on it.

I see more paperless teaching in my future.