Although I absolutely love using technology in the classroom and that my students now have access to 1-1 devices, this does bring about some issues, like monitoring students to make sure that they are being academically honest (plagiarism and cheating are huge concerns!), and that they are not accessing websites which they shouldn't. Even though our school has an Acceptable Use Policy and filtering, there are still times where students are either off task or are visiting websites that aren't 100% appropriate. That being said, I want to recommend an extremely useful tool that your school district may want to adopt to prevent some of these problems: GoGuardian! GoGuardian is a suite of tools which can be purchased by the district either separately or as a bundle. These tools include Filtering and Monitoring content, Teacher Classroom Management, Suicide Prevention, Network Filtering, and Asset Management. In a nutshell, the administrative tools can be used to block...
When considering things in which teenagers today are interested, one of the first things that comes to my mind is social media! Over the past ten years, trends in Social Media have definitely shifted, but one thing remains the same: using social media in some form in the classroom is a great way to engage students! Now, I want to be very clear in stating that I don't use the actual social media sites during class, because I always have some concerns about legality or some students not being permitted to use social media by their parents. However, I create assignments that use the premise of a variety of social media sites to grab my students' interest! Here are some ideas: Text Messaging: Give students a paper with a text message template (these can be created by the teacher or purchased on Teachers Pay Teachers ) and ask them to create a text conversation that might occur between two (or more in a group text!) characters. This is a fun way for students to portray their unde...