Technological Advances in Grade 4/5!

Students using iPads to illustrate homework on their Belief Systems.

As you may have noticed already this year, one focus of our curriculum in Grade 4/5 is to incorporate technology into many aspects of what we teach and create.

Various applications and technological devices offer students new and exciting ways to display and explain their learning, to perfect self management and organisational skills, and to practice working collaboratively on projects. In addition, many online services offer innovative methods to practice mathematics, vocabulary, and recording of responses to new information.

However, as you are aware, many of these applications such as Google Classroom, Gmail, Mathletics, IXL, Spellingcity, Front Row, Blogger, Google Docs, Google Forms, Picasa, and Google Slides can present challenges in terms of memorising many user names and passwords. Such applications also perform slightly differently on different devices such as iPads, Samsung Tablets, Macbooks, and PCs. For example, adding photos to blogs on a PC or Mac is dead simple. Adding photos while using the Blogger application on an iPad is slightly more complex.

At times, these differences can create frustration as we adapt and find what I like to term "work-arounds". However, it is my true belief that our students are amazingly resilient and quick to acquire understanding of new methods of using these technological tools, often with help not only from teachers, but from classroom buddies.

At school our tireless IT department is currently streamlining passwords and usernames for as many of these applications as possible, thus the challenges of working with different usernames and passwords are quickly decreasing.

In the world of technology, finding "work-arounds" never decreases, however. In truth I believe this leads to wonderful problem solving behaviours on the part of students (and teachers alike) as we discover issues, ask questions, test new methods, see the results, and adapt our practices.

Thank you for your patience and encouragement as students and teachers learn and become efficient with using these applications and devices. I guarantee that the ride gets much smoother after the initial "bugs" are worked out!