Talk about weaving it all together. The Digital Literacy Coach from James Hill and myself worked side by side recently helping teachers in some of the primary classes. As the school’s action plan involved writing and the teachers wanted the students using I-pads to create stories, Victoria determined the apps she wanted to share with the teachers and students and I worked with her to do some “pre-app” work with the students on the elements of story. I wanted to familiarize the students with the terms they would encounter while working with Toontastic so they had an idea of what characters, conflict, challenge, climax and resolution were. I did the pre-work with the students and Victoria took over to introduce the app.
Boy, did we quickly learn that 45 minutes to an hour was not enough time to cover what we wanted. I was amazed at Victoria’s calmness when technology tools posed a problem…it was usually my tech not working! Even the students tried to help me! So many problem solvers in the room!
Through this experience, I did see the great value in the reflector app as young students displayed their work on the screen for others to see (they tried to help me with that too…my i-pad didn’t work the same way theirs did!). Once asked to show their work, it took them a matter of seconds before their work appeared on the screen for the whole class to view. What a great way to share ideas!
While cleaning up, Victoria and I had a chance to reflect on how things had gone. I believe we were both pleased with the events of the day but realized that it would have been much more efficient if I had come prior to this lesson and taught my “pre-app” lessons because we saw that the students needed the whole time to work with the technology. If invited back, our plan will be to teach anything that needs to be done ahead of using the technology tools so students and teachers can benefit spending the whole time using the technology and having extra hands to work with the students. It was a powerful learning day for me and I hope to continue working with the expertise of Digital Literacy Coaches so I can meld my world of literacy with technology. Thank you Victoria!