Abandoning the Computer Lab Model
Historically, elementary classes isolated technology from instruction. In this old model, the classroom teacher drops off his or her students at an assigned time each week, and someone else teaches technology. My, how things have changed.
Just as all teachers teach reading, classroom teachers now teach technology. The 21st century model of using technology in the classroom starts with the learning goals and then sees if and how technology will enhance the learning experience. The lessons we created for this book will show you ways of using technology to help facilitate learning goals so that you accomplish both academic and technology learning goals at the same time, because teaching time and learning time are precious in the classroom. We want to put technology devices in students’ hands not to keep students busy but instead to help them focus on learning outcomes.
You may ask, “What does true technology engagement look like?” This book answers that question by demonstrating the opposite of technology misuse. It features students using technology to create, collaborate, explore, investigate, and share their creations beyond classroom walls. This book structures critical thinking and problem solving into every lesson. It includes meaningful lessons with purposeful technology uses that directly tie into International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) 2016 Standards for Students. ISTE (2016) education technology experts developed the following seven standards for students:
1. Empowered learner
2. Digital citizen
3. Knowledge constructor
4. Innovative designer
5. Computational thinker
6. Creative communicator
7. Global collaborator
Each chapter in this book references at least one of these standards and connects them to the lesson topics we explore in that chapter. In addition to these ISTE student standards, when we think about engagement and our learning targets, we must think about the important skills of what the Partnership for 21st Century Learning (2015) calls the four Cs: (1) communication, (2) collaboration, (3) critical thinking, and (4) creativity. The four Cs, which you can learn more about at www.p21.org, make up a critical part of 21st century learning.
We often think about the future jobs for which we are preparing our students, and, although we don’t necessarily yet know what those jobs are, we do know that our students will need the four Cs. To better understand them, take a couple of minutes to reflect on how they break down into the super skills listed in Table I.1.
Table I.1: The Four Cs and Super Skills of the 21st Century
| Four Cs | Super Skills |
| Communication | Sharing thoughts, questions, ideas, and solutions |
| Collaboration | Working together to reach a goal—putting talent, expertise, and smarts to work |
| Critical Thinking | Looking at problems in a new way; linking learning across subjects and disciplines |
| Creativity | Trying new approaches to get things done, which equals innovation and invention |
Source: Partnership for 21st Century Learning, n. d.
As educators, we need to create learning opportunities for learners of all ages that emphasize academic content and the super skills inherent in the four Cs. Look for the four Cs throughout the lessons in this book. Our young learners need these skills for their years of schooling ahead and for their future workplace success.
Using This Series
This book is part of the five-book NOW Classrooms series, all organized around grade-level-appropriate themes adapted from the 2016 ISTE Standards for Students. The series includes the following five titles.
1. NOW Classrooms, Grades K–2: Lessons for Enhancing Teaching and Learning Through Technology
2. NOW Classrooms, Grades 3–5: Lessons for Enhancing Teaching and Learning Through Technology
3. NOW Classrooms, Grades 6–8: Lessons for Enhancing Teaching and Learning Through Technology
4. NOW Classrooms, Grades 9–12: Lessons for Enhancing Teaching and Learning Through Technology
5. NOW Classrooms, Leader’s Guide: Enhancing Teaching and Learning Through Technology
Instructional coaches might use all five books in the series for project ideas at all grade levels and for leadership strategies. We scaffolded the lessons across the series of books so they all flow together, and we organized all the grade-level books in this series in the same way to make it easy for all readers to see how the ideas link together. We believe this series will save you hours of preparation time.
Using This Book
The primary audience for this book is K–2 classroom teachers with access to technology tools, but instructional coaches and administrators can also use the book’s lessons to support the students and teachers they lead. Having access to digital devices in your classroom does not mean you need to have a 1:1 environment in which every student gets a device. We want students to collaborate, communicate, and share with each other, so many of this book’s lessons involve grouping students together around a single device. You can also adapt lessons to work in classrooms with limited technology access or those that still use the old computer lab model.
Each of the chapters includes multiple topical sections, each with three lesson levels—(1) novice, (2) operational, and (3) wow, spelling NOW. Once we arrived at the three levels, it felt almost like a Choose Your Own Adventure book instead of a step-by-step recipe book. Make your lesson selections based on what your students can already do. For example, in chapter 2 of this book, we cover Snapping and Sharing Pictures (page 37). Maybe your students already know how to snap a photo with their device (the novice-level lesson), so you might use the operational lesson, Sequencing Pictures. Students who master the operational lesson can then move on to the wow lesson, Demonstrating Learning Using Pictures, which applies skills in the novice and operational lessons to create new kinds of products.
Each lesson begins with a learning goal, phrased as an I can statement, written in student-friendly language. These statements help students understand the learning goal and make the learning experience purposeful. When students more clearly understand what they can do and where they are going, learning happens. This is important because it means that students are taking ownership of their learning. For example, if another teacher visits the classroom, students can articulate the I can statement to explain the lesson to the visitor. We then explain to you what students will learn from the lesson, the tools you can use to make it work, and we provide a stepped process you can follow to accomplish the learning goal. All lessons wrap up with two or more subject-area connections with ideas you can use to adapt the lesson to different content areas, like English language arts and mathematics. Along the way we provide teaching and tech tips in this book’s scholar’s margins to help provide useful