Ch-Ch-Changes

David Bowie's song "Changes" started playing in my head once I put the title in on this blog post.  My intention was not to focus on the changes at LPS, but that is where topic of this post landed.

I have been with LPS for years.  I started at a time when the classroom computer sat in the corner and if a teacher wanted to use it, they could.  I don't think many people did though.  Attendance was on paper and grades were figured by hand.  The final grade did get typed into the computer.  There was email but it would crash if someone was more advanced than us and attempted to send pictures.  Beyond that, technology was truthfully hardly making an impact on our classrooms.  And time passed.  And technology changed.

Fast forward to the 2014-2015 school year at the middle schools and you will see every kid carrying a special black bag.  That bag contains their device, 8th graders a MacBook Air while the 6th and 7th graders tote around the Chromebook. LPS took the leap and our students are 1-1.
It is amazing, inspiring, exciting, scary, and many other emotions to see how a classroom has changed from that device being available to the student all day long.

Here are my some of my observations of things happening differently in classrooms:

• Students fully collaborating, researching, and calculating in a math class 
• Students designing and creating artistically to show their understanding of class materials
• Students exploring new programs (new to them and their teacher) to see if there is a better option to demonstrate their knowledge of content
• Students are given the opportunity to make choices on how they learn in class by selecting the a mode of delivery (video, audio, written materials)

Some of you may say you have been doing these things in your classroom for years.  Kudos to you for making waves that prompted the need for 1-1. My examples above are from my teachers who expressed concern and worry about the 1-1 computing.  These teachers have looked change directly in the eye and they are going for it!  

It's a great year to be student at LPS!