Getting Students Ready To Put Their Best Digital Foot Forward! (and Library Foot too!)

Here we are! It's Saturday, November 3rd, and I have that guilty feeling. You know, that naggly feeling you get when you haven't been doing something that you value, but haven't been able to carve out time for. This time it's been my blog that has been producing that feeling for me. We have been in school for two months! Two months that I haven't been sharing all of the good digital work our students have been doing at OHE! So here I sit at a Caribou Coffee with my coffee at the ready, ear buds in, and laptop charged so I can get in the zone and begin sharing with all of you!

This year, at the beginning of the year, I offered to go to each classroom to give students some overview and get them started on a few things that would help them throughout the year - Keyboarding, Using the Library! & The Dos and Don'ts of Chromebook Use! To my surprise, every teacher took me up on my offer!  Cherished classroom time is hard for teachers to give up, but they found time for me to come in.

One by one, I ran from room to room (50+ lessons), sharing this information.  About a week into my marathoning, I realized that I wasn't exactly being consistent with each class. I would forget a bit here or there. (Something prep providing teachers will be able to relate to, as they are often called upon to repeat the same lesson to many classes.) So I decided to create Google Slideshows to help keep me on track. I don't typically consider slideshows to be the most engaging teaching technique, but in this case, I needed the slides more than the students did!  These slideshows certainly didn't represent the best in digital integration, but they were very practical! I was able to send the link for each slideshow to the classroom teacher before arriving in their classroom.

For the kick off keyboarding lesson, we quickly went through the slides and then each student logged in and tried their first keyboarding lesson.  Throughout the year, our teachers try to insert a little keyboarding practice using typing.com into their class time each week.

The Chromebook lesson gave students much needed practice logging into their Chromebooks and going through the features of the device.

Our OHE teachers go with their students to their book checkout time each week, and are often the only adult with them during their time in the library. Even though I am not there, I really want this time to be productive for our students as it is their best time to get a book that they want to read for pleasure. Our teachers do a great job, but they find it helpful when I can teach students how to find the books they want to read.  (And I think our teachers find the information helpful too!)