Picture this, you're back in seventh grade, writing notes to your friends about what you are going to do after school, or maybe about which boy you like in class, or maybe you are even writing a nasty note about a teach or another student in the class. The teacher catches you and tells you that your punishment is that you can't use pen or paper for 3 weeks...
I know this might be extreme, but this is how I feel when my students get their laptops taken away for misuse. Depending on the crime some of my students have gotten their laptops taken away for one, two, or three weeks, and sometimes even indefinitely. Of course most of these infractions and punishments always seem to happen just as we are about to start a digital story telling project that will require the use of a laptop...
Of course these misuses can't go unpunished, but sometimes I really beginning to feel that I am being punished more that the students are. I have to come up with an alternate way of completing this assignment, as well as an alternate assessment seeing part of the rubric for the initial assessment does deal with use of the technology.
I am beginning to be of the mind that we really need to do a better job of teaching these students how to responsibly use the tools that they possess. If we keep taking them away, how are we going to do that???
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Oh yeah, this is a great point. Technologies require us to consider and prepare for all sorts of circumstances that we need to deal with, but we need to realize that the situation is different and we can't just fall back on the closest thing to it from the old days.
Post a Comment