I had an opportunity this week to sit in on a panel for a statewide discussion for Digital Learning Day. The Indiana DOE’s Digital Learning team has been churning out some outstanding content for teachers and leaders, so I jumped at the chance.
It was a powerhouse panel:
- Melanie Hackett, dynamic assistant principal at Navarre Middle School in South Bend and an instructor at Indiana University-South Bend
- Tiffany Reyes, a brilliant former first grade teacher at Potter Spanish Immersion Academy in Indianapolis, now in a doctoral program at University of Illinois
- Nadine Gilkison, the tech integration director for Franklin Township schools and a fantastic follow on Twitter
- And some guy from the Region
I was trying to take some notes while keeping up with the conversation, which turned out to be kind of unsustainable. But I did manage to write down two of the most important takeaways:
- Hackett: “You learn how to win by losing.” She wants teachers on her staff to be risk-takers, to try new things, to be unafraid to fail. And to learn. All the panelists shared their best (or worst, depending on your approach I guess) tech fails in the classroom. We’ve all got one we’d like to forget, right?
- Reyes: “The time for thinking about the tech is as we plan, not after we plan.” In other words, as I write each activity for our class period, I should be thinking about what is the best tool for the job. Then planning activities with that in mind, rather than laying tech over the top of the completed plan.
In my class, that looks like deciding among a set of GSlides, Quizizz slides, or a Desmos activity for delivering notes. Is my independent practice in Desmos, MathXL, or on paper? Which of those tools does what I need to help my kids understand our topic for the day? Which of those tools makes it possible for me to gauge the level of understanding in real time? Which one plays best with math symbols? Do my kids need to be able to mark up a diagram with congruence symbols?
It feels like sometime about five years ago teachers who had been infusing tech into their lessons could feel a shift, especially those who are connected online. It seems like we went from “Oooh, new shiny! Look at this cool tool!” to “OK, how does this tool serve teaching and learning in my classroom”. Once I started viewing planning through that lens, the decision on which tech became a bit clearer.
Including the decision whether to use tech at all. There are some very cool three-act math shells in Desmos, including one for the In-N-Out Burger 100×100 activity. But even so there are times when pencil & paper is the highest tech I need.
We had back-to-back snow days on Thursday & Friday of Presidents Day weekend, leaving me with an “extra” grey day this week. We’re close to starting the similarity unit in geometry, so I was looking for a proportions-related activity for the day. I toyed with the Barbie Proportions lab, but I would have had to ask around for rulers and yardsticks. Mr. Weatherman wouldn’t cooperate with any sort of outdoor indirect measurement lab, and again, no measuring tools.
Time to resurrect a classic from back in the day: Capture-Recapture with goldfish crackers. I couldn’t find the materials from the last time I did it back in the Gavit days, but fortunately Julie Reulbach wrote about her experiences with the lab and included all her materials (including this video). Let’s go. I’m in. Made a Walmart run, bought about 4000 goldfish crackers, some paper lunch bags, and little Dixie bathroom cups, spent a couple hours prepping everything the night before.
I was super-happy with how the day went. Kids were engaged (mostly), shared the workload appropriately, found out that estimating populations is kind of an inexact science, did math, snacked on unused goldfish.
And: it was a much-needed refresher on writing and solving proportions. We’re coming up quick on the two-year anniversary of The Shutdown.
And it’s apparent that kids have different levels of recall for some key skills in algebra after five quarters of mostly remote learning. But I feel confident we will be ready to hit the ground running when we start triangle similarity at the end of the week.
Count it as sort of ironic that I rolled out a low-tech, pencil-paper activity two days after being on a statewide call talking digital learning. But this day it was definitely the best tool to serve teaching and learning.
Tweaking For No Reason 
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