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).
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.