It was a tough road getting started with technology. When the kids leave second grade in June with all the technology skills they learned this year, it just makes starting with a new bunch of students that much harder. They’re still babies with a first grade mindset. When given a device, you just have to let them play and explore. Give some guidance and set up parameters. But otherwise, let them learn on their own. They’ve known how to swipe a device since they were two.

I always think about a lesson or unit in mind before I decide on what app or device to use. I started the year with the ipads. My first few lessons were to get the kids to access the camera roll. My goal was to teach the children how to take a nice picture. I discussed how one picture can tell a story. Another goal was just to teach the students the basics of taking a photo; i.e. center the photo, zoom in, zoom out. I wanted students to capture the beauty of a photo and be able to talk about it too.

We took our ipads outdoors. We had just completed our science unit on trees. The assignment was to take pictures of the characteristics of trees we had just learned. I gave students an example. I took a close up of the bark of a tree. Then we had a discussion about the caption we could write to go with the photo.