Educational Technology Bill of Rights for Students
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I have rights!
The following are what I believe are the rights of all student to have with regards to using technology as an educational tool, written as a student to their teacher:
- I have the right to use my own technology at school. I should not be forced to leave my new technology at home to use (in most cases) out-of-date school technology. If I can afford it, let me use it — you don’t need to buy me one. If I cannot afford it, please help me get one — I don’t mind working for it.
- I have the right to access the school’s WiFi. Stop blaming bandwidth, security or whatever else — if I can get on WiFi at McDonalds, I think that I should be able to get online at school.
- I have the right to submit digital artifacts that prove my understanding of a subject, regardless of whether or not my teacher knows what they are. Just because you have never heard of Prezi, Voki, or Glogster, doesn’t mean that I should not be able to use these tools to prove to you that I understand what you are teaching me.
- I have the right to cite Wikipedia as one of the sources that I use to research a subject. Just because you believe the hype that Wikipedia is full of incorrect information, doesn’t mean that it is true — besides we all use it anyways (including you). I am smart enough to verify what I find online to be the truth.
- I have the right to access social media at school. It is where we all live, it is how we communicate — we do not use email, or call each other. We use Facebook, Twitter and texting to talk to each other. Teachers and schools should take advantage of this and post announcements and assignments using social media — you will get better results.
- I have the right to be taught by teachers who know how to manage the use technology in their classrooms. These teachers know when to use technology and when to put it away. They understand that I need to be taught how to balance my life between the online and offline worlds. They do not throw the techno-baby out with the bath water.
- I have the right to be taught by teachers who teach me and demand that I use 21st Century Skills. Someday I am going to need a job — please help me be employable.
- I have the right to be assessed with technology. I love the instant feedback of testing done technology. I live in a world of instant feedback, so to find out a couple of weeks later that I didn’t understand your lesson, drive me crazy. If you were a video game, no one would play you — your feedback is too slow.
- I have the right to be protected from technology. I don’t want to be cyberbullied, hurt, scared or find crud online that I would rather not find. Please help me use technology responsibly and safely. Please stay up-to-date with this kind of information, and teach me to make good choices. I am not you and we don’t see eye to eye about what to put online, but help me to meet you in the middle.
- I have the right to be taught by teachers that know their trade. They are passionate about what they do and embrace the use of technology to help me learn. They attend trainings and practice what they learn. They are not afraid to ask for my help; they might know more than me about the Civil War, but I know Glogster like nobody’s business.
This is a work in progress, please comment below on what to add or change.
- Brad Flickinger, Tech Teacher, Bethke Elementary
Getting students to be more than just iPad Neanderthals.
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Many educators believe that students already know how to use their iPads, but the truth is that most students only know what I call “The Neanderthal Basics.”
The Neanderthal Basics when it comes to students on iPads are:
Game Play: there is no doubt about it students love to play games on these devices — so much so in fact, that they don’t see the potential for all the things that their iPads can do. If they would just close Angry Birds down for a few minutes they could discover all of the great things their iPad can create.
Music and Videos: Every now and then they turn off a game and then they take a step down and just sit back and watch videos or listen to music.
It is time for our students to evolve and start to see what that thin little device in their hands can do.
As you know from my previous posts, I am working hard on my new iPad Boot Camp. I am designing some of the most amazing projects that will push my students to do more with their iPads. Every time I try a new app, and then I adjust it so that it makes an incredible digital artifact I am blown away at what these little tablets can do.
We are also going to cover the basics operations of their iPads — turn them into iPads pros. For this I turned to my friends at Atomic Learning. They have a new series on the iPad (updated for iOS 5) that covers it all.
Many of the parents of the students that I have in the boot camp tell me that they are excited for the kids to come, so that they can learn from their kids how to use iPads themselves.
Today I am breaking down each lesson using the UbD lesson planning method so that I know that my student will get the most out of each project.
Stayed tuned,
-Brad Flickinger, Tech Teacher, Bethke Elementary School
Read MoreiPad Boot Camp for Elementary Kids
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Students can do so much more with iPads than just play games and watch movies.
Since I feel strongly that the future direction of technology in elementary schools is really going in the direction of tablet computers, and more importantly for now at least, the iPad, I decided it was time to do something about this so I have put together the iPad boot camp for my students to go to during the winter break. We sort of have a long winter break this year, even after New Year’s Day we still have another week of winter break so I’m going to do this boot camp at the observatory near my house We are going to meet for six hours a day for five days and really get to the bottom of what students can do on an iPad.
The first thing I am going to cover is moviemaking using these devices. We are going to film with an iPod using a special tripod with an iPod mount on it and a microphone plugged in the bottom movies shoot a legit movie over the five days. It is so cool that kids really can edit video using iMovie on the iPad complete with sound and video effects. I really think that this is the type of things that is a great direction for kids to go with being able to express themselves by making their own videos on these devices.
The next thing I am going to cover is making little animations on their iPods using these funny little apps that allow students a simple way to animate stories and ideas. I’m also going to bring in stop motion animation were we to put the iPad on a tripod and do actual stop motion animation, again these are creative outlets for students to use to express their education in a way that that works for them. Students want to create digital artifacts with their iPads, and with the movie that I’ve mentioned previously and making these short little animations on their iPads, this is going to give them a creative outlet that will amaze you.
Another thing I am going to cover is iPad photography. With an iPad, I am going to show my students how to take great photos and then how to edit these photos by adding the appropriate filters and effects to them to make a powerful image, that they can use to tell a story. In addition to just plain photography the students are going to learn how to take 360° photos. These are immersive type photographs that students can use to show what is going on all around them.
This is just a sampling of what we are going to be doing during this iPad Boot Camp. There are many more apps and projects that the students will be doing.
After talking with my friends at Atomic Learning, it turns out they are very interested in this boot camp and they have offered to help in any way. Together we have decided that every lesson should be standards-based and linked to the new Common Core Standards. So stay-tuned to updates from this boot camp.
- Brad Flickinger, Tech Teacher, Bethke Elementary School
Read MoreYoung Students Can’t (you fill in the blank)
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I get at least one of these excuses when I am working with schools while trying to get more tech projects incorporated into the academic planning…
Young students can’t blog.
Young students can’t podcast.
Young students can’t make movies.
etc. etc. etc.
The truth is they can.
But does this mean that we throw the idea of doing age-appropriate lessons out the window? No, of course not. We do not ask a second grader to blog the same way that we would ask a high school senior, but they both can blog.
When I first started to do movie making with my elementary students, many of my colleagues thought I was crazy. And perhaps I was, but I at least wanted to give it a try. So I started with the idea of how could I make movie making age-appropriate for my young students? And how could I do it with just a few pieces of inexpensive equipment?
I only had a Flip video camera for my first elementary student-made movie. So I knew right then that I would be restricted with the type of filming they could do. The Flip had no zoom lens or external microphone jack, so they would have to just move the camera a lot to get the shots that we wanted, especially knowing that the built-in mic was only good for a few feet. We also had a simple light kit that was made with reflectors that we got from our local home improvement store. That was it for equipment.
The next thing I did was to sit down with the students to get the outline for the movie. The students had been studying dramatic writing so they knew all about how to tell a good story with a beginning, a middle and an end. Since we knew the limitation of our equipment we decided on a few rules:
1) It had to be shot in the school. We had no money to go somewhere else to shoot.
2) Any dialogue would have to be done using a close-up shot so that our audio would be good.
3) All the shots would have to be simple, static shots. We would avoid panning or tilting the camera.
Soon we had our movie outline and script, so we were now able to start shooting. We broke the script down into a shot list and from there we started to shoot. One of the funny things that we didn’t see coming was that the actors had to remember to where the same clothes every Wednesday so that the shots would match.
We shot Wednesdays after school for about 5 weeks. In the end we had over an hour of footage for our seven minute movie. Editing took a little work; as it turns out, young students want to keep everything — they don’t want to edit anything out. The solution was to allow them to make a blooper reel. This allowed them to put the very best parts in the movie and then all the mess-ups and mistakes were for the blooper reel. The students were only allowed to use simple transitions and a few effects, so after another two weeks of editing we were done.
Both the students and myself were amazed at how well the movie turned out.
Dude! Where’s my pencil? http://www.youtube.com/user/bethkeelementary#p/u/0/9TEBqs7kX2k
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