Are You Ready Yet?

As I wander in and out of classrooms throughout the course of a school day, I witness numerous gifts of skill, talent, and passion-driven teaching.  I see students engaged in learning- sometimes noisy and chaotic, sometimes quiet and focused intently on an activity. Kids are ready to go from the moment they arrive.  As educators, our challenge is to tap in to that readiness, that urgency, that excitement, and get kids learning with student interest and passion in mind. This requires a change on our part. This requires us to be ready to do something different and approach how we structure our learning environment to facilitate student-focused learning.

We are in the first year of 1:1 iPad integration with our 8th grade students. We adopted this change out of a desire that our students be ready for high school, where many will be using iPad's in a 1:1 setting. The impetus for this move was readiness on the part of our students. It required readiness for our teachers as well, to consider how this tool would be used in a meaningful way rather than as a distraction. I don't want to say "toy" because I see a benefit to playful learning. Some would argue Minecraft is using technology as a toy, I disagree. If a child is thinking critically, problem solving, and creating, we're seeing the top of Bloom's Taxonomy come to life- regardless of the academic benefit in question. We cannot continue to contain 21st Century learners to 20th Century structures and practices because we're comfortable. What it comes down to is a matter of readiness on our part.

Being ready can be a point of friction. Kids are ready for different things at different times. So are adults.  When we ask the question, "Are you ready?" we have to accept that the answer might be "No." When that response is given, the ball is in our court to address the barriers to readiness and change the mindset.

Here are some resources to get ready to push kids and ourselves...

12 Things Every Student Should Be Able to Do on Google Classroom

Have iPads? Here is a Bloom's Taxonomy tool for iPad apps.

Edutopia has numerous resources on Technology Integration.

TeachThought is a great resource for shifting the nature of education, especially this article, Tomorrow's Learning Today: 7 Shifts to Create a Classroom of the Future.

Teachers, schools, and districts are in different places in terms of readiness to change and adapting to prepare kids for the future. No matter where you may be, start with one thing you can modify to create a classroom where student drive is championed and kids are ready to meet the future as ready as can be.