How Do You Work This Thing? Incorporating Technology into Your Classroom for the First Time

Is this you when it comes to your classroom?

Incorporating technology into your classroom can be quite a hurdle, especially in an age when technology changes faster than you can learn it. By the time someone tells you about it and you can integrate it, something new has come out and your tech is already outdated! 

This post is for teachers looking to integrate technology into their classroom for the first time. Here's some quick steps, tricks, and tools to easily integrate technology into your classroom. 

1. Make a list of things in your classroom that you do on a regular basis. 

This can be anything from making lesson plans, giving quizzes, making tests, looking for resources, communicating with parents, saving documents, collecting evidence, giving presentations, and everything else. 

2. Learn about the SAMR Model and think about how it applies to things you do in your classroom. 

The SAMR Model is the four ways we use technology in the classroom.

• Substitution - Use new tech for an old task
• Augmentation - Adding new tech to an old task
• Modification - Use new tech to change an old task
• Redefinition - Use new tech to create new tasks

Substitution - Taking a quiz on Google Forms 

Augmentation - Using a digital encyclopedia to research for an assignment

Modification - Create a Prezi and publish it online

Redefinition - Publish a blog about a book you're reading

Check out the great infographic on the bottom on how to apply Google Apps to the SAMR model. Start by picking one thing you do in the classroom on a regular basis and doing it on technology instead. Perhaps it's taking a computer assessment, or writing some lesson plans on the computer and creating a Google Drive for storing your work. Start small and as you grow comfortable with the technology, the SAMR process will become second nature for you. 

3. Pick one of those things you listed and reconfigure it to be done digitally. 

Trading Spaces will redo your home in one weekend, but a digital makeover is not as quick. Take some time and pick out one thing. One new piece of software, one new app, or one new digital tool to learn about. Become really comfortable with that ONE THING. Then you'll start to see how different pieces of your professional practice can fit into it. 

4. Here's some places where you should get started. 

I recommend starting with an easy service such as Google Apps or Evernote. Both are really simple to use and have an endless number of possibilities for you, your instructional practice, and your classroom. 

(created by DailyGenius.com)

What if I'm a dedicated paper-pencil person and am not turning back!

Hey! I get it, I get it. Some things are just too well suited for paper and pencil, especially in a classroom where being tied to a device isn't always best (or possible, for that matter). Here's what I recommend. 

Think about using apps to save your written work. Apps like ScanBot and Google Drive are great places where you can save your physically written work. Having all of your written lessons on an iPad will save you a whole lot of trees! 

(Created by GoogleAppsAction.com)