NOW Classrooms, Grades K-2. Meg Ormiston
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students with the basics of operating their device and using common LMS tools like online storage to upload and manage their work. We designed the lessons in this chapter to establish routines and provide your K–2 students with basic technology and platform literacy. We want students to understand basic processes first and learn content more fluidly later.
Introducing Devices to the Classroom
Tablets, computers, interactive whiteboards, and tech toys are cause for much excitement in the elementary classroom and are fabulous tools for education. Knowing that they have their own device gives young students in 1:1 classrooms a great sense of independence and ownership of learning. In a shared technology setting, where you might have carts of laptops or tablets, students will learn the procedures for picking up and storing devices. You can dispense with any fears you may have about your students’ readiness to responsibly use these devices. With proper guidance, structure, routines, and maybe some durable cases, you can trust K–2 students to take care of and control their devices.
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Before you give students devices, plan a process for labeling and distributing the devices. You can use a picture of the student on his or her device, color-coordinated cases, student IDs, and so on. As long as the process enables students to easily find their device in the devices’ storage space, any organization system can work.
Your administrator or technology department should have a general plan for device distribution, but you need to discuss with students appropriate use in the classroom so they know your expectations. If you are lucky enough to have one device per student, the device and the carrying case still should have labels. Some districts use student identification numbers or pictures on their device cases. Although the district might have labeled devices through a district inventory process, the system it used may not well-serve young students. In a K–2 classroom, an age-appropriate system using pictures often works best.
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Add each student’s picture to the lock-screen background on his or her tablet or computer. Students can do this independently by taking a selfie of himself or herself (see chapter 2, page 35, for lessons on taking and using photos). This makes finding their devices easy for all students—non-readers included.
In the rest of this section, we cover storing and securing devices, choosing apps for devices, and teaching students to responsibly use their devices.
Storing and Securing Devices
Once you have the devices in your classroom, the question becomes, How will we store them at school for easy access? And, if they go home, What process do we have for that? If the devices remain in the classroom, then charging devices creates a challenge due to the need to plug them all in. One solution is to use portable carts with charging and security options, but these quickly become expensive. Some other ideas for device storage include charging bins, milk crates, and shelves. You can use Pinterest (www.pinterest.com) as a great source of inspiration for storage ideas if you have not reached a solution. If you need to secure school-owned devices during the day or overnight, have a plan for that too. For example, have a secure location that lets you both charge devices and keep them locked up. Many districts that do not send the devices home have storage carts that, when plugged in, charge student devices.
If students take school-owned devices home, make sure you have a checkout system in place. For example, numbering devices and assigning them to each child often simplify checkout for K–2 students. You can also use a simple pocket chart to organize which school-owned devices go home with each student.
In addition to securing the physical devices, you also need to consider how to secure devices against malicious or inappropriate content. If your classroom uses school-owned devices, your technology should already have uniform security settings the school prefers. For example, one of the great things about using Chromebooks in the classroom is the district typically handles device management. Google has management software it can customize by turning specific features on or off. You just need to make sure you charge the Chromebooks, and then students log in with their school-provided Google accounts.
However, if you must oversee security settings, you should familiarize yourself with the options available to you and consult with your technology department on how to change settings to keep inappropriate content off school-owned devices. If you are in a school in which students bring their own devices (BYOD), consider creating a list of recommended apps and settings that you can share with parents. You should also ensure you’re aware of various student-friendly versions of common resources. For example, using Safe YouTube (http://safeyoutube.net) allows you to filter YouTube (www.youtube.com) in a way that will keep inappropriate content away from students. Student-friendly search engines such as KidRex (www.kidrex.org) can also help keep your students safe online.
Choosing Apps
Once you have done what you can to solidify devices’ safety features, you need to choose some apps or programs appropriate for student use. Each district handles the app-selection process a bit differently. Sometimes individual teachers choose the apps for students to use, sometimes selections come from grade-level committees, or instructional tech departments might have a hand in this process. To the extent that you have input, select a handful of apps associated with your lesson plans, either district-provided applications or ones we recommend throughout this book. Starting with those few apps, organize apps on the devices to make the optimal impact, and then stick to them throughout the school year. If you are working in a BYOD environment, you can ask the parents to set up the devices with the apps you or your school selected. Regardless, helping K–2 students keep their devices organized means ensuring you or parents nicely arrange apps on the home screen or quick launch bar. On a laptop, using shortcuts on the desktop screen or on the task bar makes frequently used applications easy to access. Students need to see the apps that they should use without feeling overloaded with excess options.
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On Apple devices, you can disable the Safari web browser (www.apple.com/safari) and require students to use only the apps you provide on the devices, such as a student-friendly search engine app.
Additionally, when planning which apps and programs to include, always remember content comes first. Ruben Puentedura’s (2012) substitution, augmentation, modification, and redefinition (SAMR) model helps teachers design content-based lessons that use technology to enhance those lessons. The SAMR model framework (see figure 1.1) helps teachers talk about the sophistication of technology use in the classroom.
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Consider using folders to organize apps or tools by topic on a device. In Kirstin’s iPad-driven classroom, for example, she has students put often-used apps on the dock at the bottom of the home screen. They organize any additional apps into labeled folders. If your students use Chromebooks, there are no additional apps for you to organize because everything is organized within G Suite for Education as an add on or a browser extension.
As an example of using this model, students practicing letter formation may visit multiple independent learning centers that you set up around your classroom, such as a sand-tracing center, a pencil-tracing center, a letter-matching center, and a technology center that has a letter-tracing app. The content is learning letters, and the activities allow students to learn letters through a variety of modalities. The SAMR model helps teachers scaffold lessons from simple substitution to redefinition. You can find more information about the SAMR model on our blog (http://nowclassrooms.com/samr-model).