Keeping Students Engaged

This weeks post I wanted to discuss how to keep students engaged in the assignment without fading off onto something else on their iPads. As stated in my previous post, many of my lessons and day to day classes revolve around the use of their iPads. We do assignments from quizzes to web quests and many more. Although, there are many times while using iPads that students become distracted and search pictures, and other off task behaviors on their iPads.

Majority of our school iPads have strict security measures placed on them but that still does not mean that everything is blocked! Therefore, it is tough to truly police what students are one.

There are a few things that I find important when trying to ensure that our students stay focused on the topic at hand. First, be sure to monitor the students by walking around the room, checking in on their progress etc. It is important to stay involved in the classroom activities even when the students are not working appropriately on their iPads. In addition, I make sure to make assignments due on schoology at specific times throughout the class period. This is to ensure the students are working appropriately and in a time efficient manner. Lastly, we use a PBS rewards system at our school by rewarding tickets to students that are doing the right thing. We frequently give out tickets when our students are on task.

In the end it can be hard to keep students engaged in the learning task when using technology. So, what ideas do you have for keeping students on task?

The emerging trend of a 1:1 school

1:1 school is something that I was  extremely excited about choosing as my emerging trend. 1:1 schools are something that I was not very familiar with until I was introduced to it through my ed tech courses and through the school in which I currently teach. At the beginning of the school year I learned that all students i our school would be receiving iPads for both at home and in school use. In addition, we were told that students would all receive access to schoology. It was daunting at first as I had never fully implemented technology to this level in my own classroom almost daily. It took time to get used to using it! But, little by little my co teacher and I were able to incorporate our iPads into every little thing we did. This was anywhere from posting a video for students to watch involving the lesson of the day to completing a discussion board or an assessment. Now fast forward to February and we long Schoology more than ever! We use it all the time and one of my favorite aspects is using it for assessments. Overall, it has shrunk my grading time to a third of what it does before. The program grades multiple choice, matching and fill in the blank answers for you then, all you have to grade are short answers. In addition, when you grade short answer responses all students responses show on one page and it is very easy to do!
In closing, a 1:1 school has proven amazing and I look forward to learning about new developments in this emerging trend as it continues to grow!