I have been so focused on my "making the digital shift", that I haven't given much thought to my students' shift toward this new learning environment. I just naturally assumed they would easily adopt this new way of doing their work...but that hasn't been the case. It has become more and more obvious that this culture needs to be purposefully built within the learning environment.
Daniel Pink has stated that the most dangerous word in today's economy is "Routine". He stated that any kind of routine work is going to disappear from this country. This will be the work sent offshore to be completed by people willing to complete this work for pennies on the dollar. Preparing our students for the STAAR or any other newly developed standardized testing reflects this new shift in preparing students for the future. So that brings me back to my dilema...how to I transform the way we do our work in our classroom that shifts the work we do from routine and sequential to crafting opportunities for my students to analyze and synthesize content in a manner they find important and significant? How can we develop and apply skills that will be utilized in an economy that values these "thinking skills"? And most importantly, how can we learn to take charge of our learning and value what it can do for us?
I am convinced I need to build this culture within our classroom and fortunately, these iPads are going to be great tools to help with this. So, what needs to be encouraged? These are some areas I am going to begin with:
- Learning to manage time effectively
- Making the most of collaborative relationships
- Maximizing the resources at hand