“How can I integrate technology into a project, with
students who are living at or below the poverty line and have limited or no
technology access?”
I work in a school with limited technology access, and what
we do have doesn’t work half the time. When it does work, the kids are
unfamiliar with it, can’t log in, or have other issues navigating the
technology. They struggle to find a specific Youtube video, or the class web
page. So for me, this is a regular struggle – the kids practically psych
themselves out every time they have to use a computer.
I’d love to introduce them to technology on a more complex
level than they currently interact with it. I think a good way of doing that
might be to book a computer lab, and have them start blogging about their
learning. Partly because the computer labs are one of the few technology
resources available that reliably work in my building. I got the idea from an
assigned reading from my Learning with Technology class, an article titled “Blogging
in the 21st-century classroom” (Lampinen, 2013).
But because my students interact with technology in such a
limited sense, I worry that they may become overwhelmed – so I went looking for
ways to prevent that panicky overwhelmed feeling. What I came up with was an
article from The Technology Source archives at UNC titled “Combining Technology
and Group Learning” (Kapinus, 2001) It suggested the simple, elegant solution
that had escaped me – have the kids work together in groups on the project.
There’s no reason a blog can have only one author. Why not allow them to
collaborate? That way they can tackle the technology with the support of a peer
or three. Perhaps their next quiz will be in the form of a partner-blog entry
about what they have learned…
Outside Resource I used: http://www.technologysource.org/article/combining_technology_and_group_learning/
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