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Student Exploration is Key

The hot currency to kids in my classes is ‘free’ computer time – as in, time on a computer DURING class, where they can choose their own activity. In my experience, so many teachers look down on this as simply a waste of computer lab time and a teacher not doing his/her job – I look at it very differently. A large number of my students don’t have a computer at home or don’t have much access to it if there is one (due to parental restrictions or simply not enough time) – where are they going to learn the extremely crucial skill of technology exploration?

So many activities that teachers do with technology is completely scripted down to “click here” (and yes, I do this at times as well) and students aren’t able to find out what happens if they click “there” instead of “here”. I learn best when trying things and making mistakes – wouldn’t this be the case for our students as well? It’s so easy to say that school is a place for learning, not playing, but that completely misses the point – in my opinion, if the goal is to teach comfort with technology, we need to leave time for the playing. Moderation is key, as with anything, but I think we need to treat technology use the same way we treat reading. Teachers assign students to read required books and then also give free or choice reading time. We applaud students who are reading books of their own choosing because they enjoy it – we need to teach that technology can be used for more than homework or class activities – simply gaining comfort in exploration and troubleshooting can be invaluable as employment skills later on.

You may be thinking that every kid in the world is spending all of their time outside of school plugged in, but it’s simply not true, at least at the younger grades in my district. So many students are so scheduled and have vigilant parents who are extremely concerned about “screen time” which means students aren’t allowed to spend more than a few minutes a day on a computer at home, if that. We need to give students time to explore in nurturing, safe environment – with a teacher nearby to answer questions, but not hovering. Too many of my students have been taught to never click without permission and when they come to a screen without completely scripted instructions, their hands go flying in the air – we need to teach them how to figure things out on their own. Personally, I think it’s great that students have had to learn how to create social networking profiles on their own or with friends because it means that they had to actually figure it out on their own and make mistakes and learn how to fix them. We would be doing them a disservice if we taught a lesson on ”How to Create a Facebook Profile” – we need to empower them.

Think about this – how many of the people in the edtech community learned everything they know about technology in a structured class? Most of us were given a few tips and then sent out to figure out the rest………..the problem is that many people didn’t have or take the time to do the figuring out. We need to make that time for students (and teachers) IN school – my vision would be a technology “study hall” for every student every day or at least once a week. Call me crazy (and many have and will) but I think the unstructured time is almost more important than the structured.

Oh, and guess what my 6th graders chose to do with their 10 minutes of choice time on Friday? Some played keyboarding games, one explored a virtual tour of a ski resort he wants to visit, several girls created signs for their bedrooms or lockers, and one girl took an “intelligence quiz” – I told them they could go WHEREVER they wanted, and that’s what they chose………………

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