Tech Tuesday in First Grade

Seriously, No Joke, 100% IN LOVE with Kahoot! and Google Drive.

Okay lets back up a little bit... last year our county announced they were taking away our macbook’s and giving us Lenovo ThinkPads. Along with our brand new {not so amazing} teacher laptops, we were told we would be getting new desktops in our classrooms, and a few laptops for our classrooms. Additionally, each grade would be getting a laptop cart or 2 to share. We all thought, great, we’ll pick a morning/afternoon each week and have the kids play on some of the technology that comes along with our curriculum.

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FAST FORWARD to pre-planning week ... a group of teenage volunteers come strolling down the first grade hallway with not 1, or 2 laptop carts but 6!! SIX laptop carts for 10 of us to share (each cart contains 20 computers)!!! This changed EVERYTHING!

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One of these 6 carts lives in my classroom 2.5 days a week. The 2^nd week of school I decided we would have Tech Tuesdays in our classroom. This started with learning how to log-in, and how to navigate a few computer programs. Week 3 it evolved a little bit, but still a lot of “playing” on the computer. While this was amazing... it was not productive, and I actually felt like it took away from our learning time each week.

So I set out to do some RESEARCH. I knew I was not the only person using laptops in a first grade classroom, and I knew that this was such a great idea that someone HAD to have blogged about it!! I stumbled across great blog that had lots of ideas on how to use Chromebooks in a primary classroom. Our laptops were slightly different but some of the ideas were the same.

Week 4 became slightly more evolved. We learned some techie pharses, and learn that there are things OTHER THAN THE INTERENT on a computer!! Again, still some “playing.”

Week 5’s Tech Tuesday started a whole new adventure for us!! It all began on Monday... a few kids asked if they could use their laptop do to this or that during specific centers. I agreed. I carefully watched them log themselves in, and navigate to where they wanted to go with out assistance. All while I worked with writing groups to edit, and revise a story. I even had one student use her “work on writing” time to do some research and take notes about Johnny Appleseed (WHAT?!?!?)

Tuesday we used the laptops to learn how to type final drafts of their stories in Microsoft word. We use some digital leveled readers to read during reading groups. We played a few rounds of Kahoot! And we used virtual manipulatives to further our understanding of math concepts.

I was very proud of these kiddos. These kids who can not listen to 1 step directions 90% of the time were able to log themselves onto their laptop, able to navigate to desired websties, and navigate to directed websties.

We finished our 2.5 days with our laptops by most of us publishing our 1^st story; changing font size, and type, and hitting the print button.

BEAUTIFUL        AMAZING        OUTSTANDING

best part of all this... our brand new principal walked into the classroom, facetiming someone, to show them how my classroom library is set up and got to witness first hand our remarkable my group of firsties are!

You can find my Kahoot!s here and my friend’s here.