Most of my PLN comes from Pinterest or Twitter these days. I see amazing things happening in classrooms all around the world, and I think, "How can I do that in @Gaffclassroom?!" Well, this is one of those brilliant ideas; I can't believe I didn't think of it first; Now tech is going to be so much easier to implement; Whew!
The inspiration for adding an additional week of tech integration to my already full 180+ days is SimplySuzy. She teaches fourth grade and starts the year by requiring students to earn iPad licenses, so I've had to take the idea of earning a "license" to use iPads and tweek it for middle schoolers who use Chromebooks, as well as BYOD.
Get the License and pre-reqs check off sheet here. Please MAKE A COPY before editing anything in this folder. I created the actual license in Microsoft Publisher with a gift certificate template, but had to upload it as a PDF. I'm sure there's a way to create it in Google Drawing, but I'm not that familar with Drawing yet.
Each year, we've been lucky enough to improve our technology. Now we share a set of 32 web-based Samsung Chromebooks amongst 7 teachers (really just 4). It's better than constantly-outdated, slowing-down, heavy-as-all-get-out, 2013-era mini-laptops everyone else requests. 7th grade teachers like to keep on the forefront of technology:) I digress. Last year was our first year implementing these chromebooks as a grade-level, and I'd say we did a pretty good job, because we had no idea what we were doing. However, by March, we were getting fed up with students not knowing how to do simple things, like titling a document, going offline (when our infrastructure can't keep up with all the devices we have using it), and most of all, PUTTING THEM AWAY NEATLY and CORRECTLY! Oh, how many times my colleagues and I cursed those "irresponsible students" for leaving the cart a mess after class! Well, okay, <hangs head in shame> it was partly our fault. It's not that we didn't teach them, we just weren't all consistent across classes to enforce the expectations.
This year, as the resident eLeader on the hallway, I will be in charge of a series of specific requirements students must complete in order to earn their Chromebook License. I will use a spreadsheet to check off each step and when the student is through, he or she will earn the coveted Chromebook License! Since I am experimenting with the #flipclass and #blendedlearning environments, I've made screencasts of some of the requirements and posted them to YouTube. If you can use them in your class, feel free! Find them on my Channel here.
In order to bring in their own device, they will have an optional "BYOD Endorsement" list of items to get checked off. Students can earn the BYOD Endorsement at any time during the year (maybe they get a new device for Christmas), but still have to complete the required steps.
At any time, the license and/or endorsements can be taken away, or "suspended" for a specific amount of time, a required re-licensure, or maybe even never-to-be-returned. I think I'm going to design a "jail" for the licenses similar to this:
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