Twenty-First Century Learning Skills are encompassed around four areas: Learning and Innovation Skills, Core Subjects, Life/Career Skills and Media/Technology Skills. One way our school district intends to meet the Media/Technology Skills need is to implement Worthington City Schools Technology Plan. This plan calls for an increase in technology devices within all schools so that students have an opportunity to use a device more frequently. At Wilson Hill Elementary the technology use has changed over the last few months to meet our needs that correspond with the district technology plan.
One aspect that has changed for our teachers is their ability to become more mobile. Each teacher has a laptop that has replaced their desktop computer within their classroom. The use of the laptops along with Google Apps For Education (GAFE) has allowed our staff to lead by example in an effort to implement technology within the classroom to assist with teaching and learning. Even Mr. Smith has become more mobile!
Another change that has been made is the elimination of desktop computers within classrooms for our students. Our chromebooks are now being implemented at all grade levels within each classroom. Our K-2 classrooms have five touchscreen chromebooks that are utilized on a daily basis. In addition to the classroom chromebooks, our K-2 classrooms have a classroom set of chromebooks that can be accessed by the entire class. Also, our 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th grade classrooms have a set of 30 chromebooks that are used by each grade level. These devices are implemented within all content areas at each grade level. At times the students use these devices in small groups and often students within a classroom have one device for each student. Mrs. Pittman’s classroom has a classroom set of chromebooks that are used on a daily basis with students at all grade levels in unique, engaging and standards based ways. In all, at Wilson Hill Elementary, we have added 185 technology devices since October 2014 for our students! A big thanks to Worthington City Schools Technology Director Mr. Schlarb and his team for making this happen.
In addition to the use of the new technology devices within all K-6 classrooms, our students in grades 2-6 have received google accounts that allow the student and their teacher to communicate and collaborate using Google Apps For Education (GAFE). Google Apps For Education has allowed our students to enhance and improve their learning opportunities that may not have been present in previous years. Students and staff have enjoyed discovering the new possibilities of learning that are present when implementing Google Apps for Education (Example: Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc.).
To highlight some of our students thoughts about the implementation of the new technology and it’s tools I captured some of their remarks:
- “I enjoy working in Google Docs when creating and completing writing assignments; my teacher is able to share their thinking with me so I can improve my work.
- “ I really like to use the tools of google and our new devices, I get excited to complete our assignment and cannot wait until we are able to start the next assignment.”
- “I think it is awesome how I can work with peers on a task and hear their thoughts even when we work from home.”
- The computers are so much faster than those old classroom computers”.
- “Learning is so much fun when using the chromebooks, I never want it to end.”
- “I like we have the opportunity to change our learning styles within our classrooms more often, it keeps learning fun!”
- “Learning is super cool and fun!”
At Wilson Hill “good teaching” is still “good teaching”. We have focused learning targets around the standards, provide differentiation when appropriate, check for understanding throughout the learning process, ensure students receive feedback around their learning, assess student learning to ensure our students have independently mastered the concepts and finally use our data to determine our next teaching steps. The new learning opportunities provided with our new technology and it's tools allow our staff and students to be more efficient and effective in improving academic growth for all students.
To conclude, Worthington City Schools hopes to continue to move forward with it’s one to one initiative (one device per student) and is encouraging Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). As we begin this initiative at Wilson Hill we will learn from our experiences to better meet our student's needs.
Matt Keller-Principal
Wilson Hill Elementary School
Worthington City Schools
