This year I am spending soooooo much more time with teachers – which I love. In addition to that, a few principals have initiated Student Tech Support groups or, as we call them, “Geek Squads”! I try to meet with the students once a month and show them how to use tools and troubleshoot through usage. As many of you who follow me know, the hardest part about this job is being away from kids – I miss them terribly. So now, I get the best of both worlds. Today I met with my elementary Geek Squad and we had an amazing time!!
When I meet with each group, I try to combine showing them technical skills through instructional ways. So today’s technical focus was Google logins, Schoology Assignment split screen on the iPad, annotating through Adobe Acrobat, and Flipgrid. That’s a lot isn’t it. But they did a fabulous job of it all!
We used main idea as the curriculum skill and used text about Ruby Bridges to practice the technical skills.
Ruby Bridges with US Marshals on the school steps.
Students opened a Google Doc that I created asking two questions that focused on main idea and supporting details. They then watched a short video clip about Ruby Bridges and took notes in the app. It was so cool watching them work in real time!
After that, I airdropped a piece of text to them using Apple Classroom and they opened it in Adobe Acrobat. They used the Split Screen feature to follow allow with the text (I read) and we discussed potential main ideas and supporting details which they annotated in Adobe.
Using the information they highlighted in the text, they answered the questions and then used that information to put into a FlipGrid video. It was their first time using most of these tools – especially FlipGrid and without headphones and microphones it got pretty loud.
All in all though, I think they did a fabulous job! I’m so proud of the work that they’re doing and always look forward to our next interaction!!
Their FlipGrid videos!
Until the next time!
