Saturday, November 19, 2011

Keeping Up with My Students and Technology

I find that one of the most difficult aspects of teaching elementary music is only getting to see them once a week, for a limited amount of time.  Due to holidays, teacher workdays, professional development and an assembly, I have seen my Friday classes two times in the last eight weeks.   Staying connected to my students is difficult with a normal weekly schedule, but we've become strangers with the "Friday situation".

There is hope and it's name is technology.  Through a great web tool called Edmodo, I have been able to share with my students, collaborate, give reminders and provide online documents, videos, audios, and websites to keep the lessons moving forward to some extent.  The students have grabbed onto this tool wholeheartedly.  The technology staff is taking the time to teach them how to use the tool and correct educational environment behavior versus social networking, and the students are catching on.

Unfortunately, the teachers at my school don't have the eagerness to learn something new, willingness to invest time to save time, and the understanding of how important it is to teach 21st century skills to our students.  Learning (and teaching) doesn't stop when students walk out of the brick building.  And I'm not referring to "homework".  By using the 21st century tools, students are excited to go home and continue their learning, in a unique and engaging manner.  Some innovative teachers have gone one step further and designed flipped classrooms.

There are so many tools out there to engage students and develop a love of learning, but not enough time to do it all.  My students in class ask me "when are you going to .....?" on my Edmodo website. Because my students crave this connection and source of information, I try to set aside time each day to work on it. The saddest question I got from a student was "when is my classroom teacher going to get on?"

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