Are your Students Fluent with their Technology?

If you follow our blog, or know what we do here at Sagonaska, then you already know that we put a lot of weight on our students being self advocates.  One of the most important self advocacy strategies we teach for students to be fluent with their devices.

In September and October, we spent a lot of time explicitly teaching students how to use their devices to help them learn.  We are now starting to see the rewards from all of the student's hard work in learning how to harness the power of their technology.  We are at the point now where students are just about independent with their personal mobile devices when it comes to learning.  We simply post a task in our Google Classroom and students are able to fluently navigate their device to complete the task.

Here is an example.

In geography, students have been learning about different landscapes and impacts people can have on them.  Students are also learning about how landforms can impact different societies.  In language we are learning about making connections.

We posted this question and a connections framework (students have used the framework before).  Then we started the timer.

The Question

The Framework

The process of finding and deconstructing the question, putting the framework into a format students could manipulate, took about three minutes.  So, in about ten minutes our students had completed two or three deep, meaningful connections that linked the big ideas we are learning about in geography, to "The Lorax".  

This may not sound like a big deal.  You may be thinking that a student should be able to pick up a pencil and write two or three deep, meaningful connections in under ten minutes.  The amazing part here isn't the time it took.  It is the fact that we took a handful of students who work with a reading disorder and did this.  

By simply teaching students how to use multiple different apps to their advantage, students who have struggled in the past with learning, are transformed into confident students. By teaching students how to harness the power of their technology for learning we have leveled the playing field for them! This is a big deal!