During my fourth year teaching I began to implement a 1:1 classroom with A set of Chromebooks. I loved the machines and was excited to use the technology to modify and redefine tasks with the use of this new technology. I went into the implementation with a pretty robust plan, and some experience with using devices in the classroom. Most of all, I'm a pretty creative thinker when it comes to curriculum design, and integrating technology. One issue I did not foresee was some of the changes that occured in my regular classroom management.
Part of the Utah fourth grade science core focuses on identifying types of fossils. One day I was talking about casts and molds. To give students a background to the lesson objective, I told my students the story of Pompeii, and Vesuvius. When I got to the part that talked about the volcano erupting, I remember saying to my class, "and the volcano put down, like, 9 feet of ash!"
A hand went up. "Umm, Mr. Young?"
A student had their chromebook open and had a furrowed brow. "Yeah, go ahead," I replied.
"According to Wikipedia it was 13 to 20 feet."
What happened next was predictable, and will drive a large number of teachers nuts. Instead of kids crowding around the student that looked up Pompeii on Wikipedia, they all cracked open their Chromebook and found the article on Pompeii. Instead of listening to my exciting story, they were all talking to their neighbors about how to spell "Pompeii." They had turned my story into an organic mini research problem.
I had come to an impass. Should I reign in control? Should I insist that my lecture was the most important thing, or let students use their natural curiosity to set up the context for my lesson objective? Luckily, my instincts got this one right. I let the students run with their sudden curiosity, and instructed everyone to pull up the article. I wrote "Pompeii" on the board, and gave them a few minutes to "whoa!" and "check this out!"
My big takeaway from this experience is that I am no longer the omniscient source of knowledge I'm no longer the Google in the room. Google is.
I was reminded by that this week. For homework I had students watch the launch of the Discovr mission. My students had become obsessed with space travel, and so I was fielding questions about the space shuttle. I told my students, "when the shuttle stopped flying in, like, 2012..."
"2011."
Students pulling up Wikipedia articles and Google searches about the days topic is a regular occurrence. And it needs to be. The role of teacher is changing from all-knowing window into the outside world, to a tour guide that shows students how and where to safely discover that world on their own.
And that's exciting.
