This month, the Grant Wood AEA Digital Learning Team attended (and presented at) the Iowa 1:1 Conference in Des Moines. You can see resources from all those sessions here. For my own part, I wanted to talk about Chromebooks, and more specifically, the ways in which Chromebooks are being used in schools today.
I was inspired to do this particular presentation after a blog post I read from Andy Losik entitled, An American Chromebook Crisis: new report shows sad trends of how students are using the devices. It's not easy reading. It's based on a report from GoGuardian that suggests that there is a lot less creativity in Chromebook classrooms than we might hope there is.
If you look through the slides below, it will look like a long list of tools. Essentially that is true, however, it was not my intention to make this a tool based session. My intention was to try and show the variety of creative things that can be accomplished on a Chromebook. Podcasting, web design, digital storytelling, graphic design, coding and even augmented or virtual reality are very real possibilities on Chromebooks.
The iPad suffered a similar fate when it first came out. It was dismissed as a consumption device. A skill and drill machine that was used to annotate digital worksheets. However, those in the know, those who were using the iPad with intentionality and imagination, they already knew that this was a very creative device that was capable of some amazing things. I'd really like people to look at the Chromebooks in a similar way. So, take a look at the slides below and see if you can find some new ways to use the Chromebooks in your classroom, and keep in mind that most of these tools will also work on a Mac or a PC.
I was inspired to do this particular presentation after a blog post I read from Andy Losik entitled, An American Chromebook Crisis: new report shows sad trends of how students are using the devices. It's not easy reading. It's based on a report from GoGuardian that suggests that there is a lot less creativity in Chromebook classrooms than we might hope there is.
If you look through the slides below, it will look like a long list of tools. Essentially that is true, however, it was not my intention to make this a tool based session. My intention was to try and show the variety of creative things that can be accomplished on a Chromebook. Podcasting, web design, digital storytelling, graphic design, coding and even augmented or virtual reality are very real possibilities on Chromebooks.
The iPad suffered a similar fate when it first came out. It was dismissed as a consumption device. A skill and drill machine that was used to annotate digital worksheets. However, those in the know, those who were using the iPad with intentionality and imagination, they already knew that this was a very creative device that was capable of some amazing things. I'd really like people to look at the Chromebooks in a similar way. So, take a look at the slides below and see if you can find some new ways to use the Chromebooks in your classroom, and keep in mind that most of these tools will also work on a Mac or a PC.
If you are interested in listening to a longer discussion around this topic, you can check out Episode 38 of our podcast, The Edtech Take Out. The episode is embedded below, but you can also find it on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, or in a podcast player of your choice.
If you are already using Chromebooks in creative ways in your classroom, we'd love to hear about it. Feel free to leave a comment below to help others build on their existing thinking and get some inspiration for things that they can try in their classroom.
If you are already using Chromebooks in creative ways in your classroom, we'd love to hear about it. Feel free to leave a comment below to help others build on their existing thinking and get some inspiration for things that they can try in their classroom.
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