Schools in an Ever-Changing Technological Era

     As everyone is aware, the role of schools in the past 6 months has changed drastically.  Teaching through technology has now become the focus, forcing teachers to quickly change their teaching practices and develop a comfort with using technology regularly.  As a fairly new teacher, prior to this pandemic, I had been trained on how to incorporate effective technological resources in my lessons.  However, even for me, I have found my head to be spinning these last few months trying to determine how to make technology at the forefront of my teaching practices.  In some instances, technology has become the only way that I can build connections with students, which to me has been the most challenging part.  It's easy to use sites like Quizizz or Kahoot to make learning more engaging, but developing relationships is something that I have always felt required in person connections.  

    This past week, in my district, we began school in a hybrid model.  I was extremely limited in the way that I could interact with kids in my classroom, so I had to find ways that I could make connections with students I didn't know through technology.  Here are a few lessons that I used in my classroom that I found to be effective: 

1.  Desmos Getting to Know You Activity- I love using Desmos!  As a math teacher, I think that it is an easy way to engage kids in discovery based learning.  This is something that I use often.  Sometimes there is a bit of a learning curve for students, but it is useful because you can track students' progress as well as share and highlight student responses.  This activity in particular was one that Desmos created and I was able to edit to apply it specifically to my class.  The kids really seemed to enjoy it because there was a good mix of questions about them as well as silly questions that sparked a lot of debate! 

2. This or That? - This game I created using Google Slides and the Pear Deck add-on where students just have to pick between two things (such as cats or dogs).  This year is the first time that I have used the Pear Deck add on for Google Slides and it is the best! It is so easy to incorporate interactive questions into lessons that you already have developed.  I definitely have found that it keeps the students more engaged.  Here is the link from the Pear Deck website that talks more about the features: https://www.peardeck.com/googleslides

    Technology has become a very important part of teaching.  It has been great for keeping students engaged and interacting with them from a distance.  However, there are always challenges as well.  For some students, technology poses a distraction whereas for others, it poses an avenue for plagiarism and cheating.  The reliability on technology has become inevitable, so it is crucial as a teacher to become comfortable with various platforms and tools so that students can still engage in learning, even if they cannot be physically in the classroom.  I think that the more comfortable teachers are with technology, the more opportunities students will have to learn.