bins, milk crates, and shelves. You can use Pinterest (www.pinterest.com) as a great source of inspiration for storage ideas if you have not reached a solution. If you need to secure school-owned devices during the day or overnight, have a plan for that too. For example, have a secure location that lets you both charge devices and keep them locked up. Many districts that do not send the devices home have storage carts that, when plugged in, charge student devices.
If students take school-owned devices home, make sure you have a checkout system in place. For example, numbering devices and assigning them to each child often simplify checkout for K–2 students. You can also use a simple pocket chart to organize which school-owned devices go home with each student.
In addition to securing the physical devices, you also need to consider how to secure devices against malicious or inappropriate content. If your classroom uses school-owned devices, your technology should already have uniform security settings the school prefers. For example, one of the great things about using Chromebooks in the classroom is the district typically handles device management. Google has management software it can customize by turning specific features on or off. You just need to make sure you charge the Chromebooks, and then students log in with their school-provided Google accounts.
However, if you must oversee security settings, you should familiarize yourself with the options available to you and consult with your technology department on how to change settings to keep inappropriate content off school-owned devices. If you are in a school in which students bring their own devices (BYOD), consider creating a list of recommended apps and settings that you can share with parents. You should also ensure you’re aware of various student-friendly versions of common resources. For example, using Safe YouTube (http://safeyoutube.net) allows you to filter YouTube (www.youtube.com) in a way that will keep inappropriate content away from students. Student-friendly search engines such as KidRex (www.kidrex.org) can also help keep your students safe online.
Choosing Apps
Once you have done what you can to solidify devices’ safety features, you need to choose some apps or programs appropriate for student use. Each district handles the app-selection process a bit differently. Sometimes individual teachers choose the apps for students to use, sometimes selections come from grade-level committees, or instructional tech departments might have a hand in this process. To the extent that you have input, select a handful of apps associated with your lesson plans, either district-provided applications or ones we recommend throughout this book. Starting with those few apps, organize apps on the devices to make the optimal impact, and then stick to them throughout the school year. If you are working in a BYOD environment, you can ask the parents to set up the devices with the apps you or your school selected. Regardless, helping K–2 students keep their devices organized means ensuring you or parents nicely arrange apps on the home screen or quick launch bar. On a laptop, using shortcuts on the desktop screen or on the task bar makes frequently used applications easy to access. Students need to see the apps that they should use without feeling overloaded with excess options.
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On Apple devices, you can disable the Safari web browser (www.apple.com/safari) and require students to use only the apps you provide on the devices, such as a student-friendly search engine app.
Additionally, when planning which apps and programs to include, always remember content comes first. Ruben Puentedura’s (2012) substitution, augmentation, modification, and redefinition (SAMR) model helps teachers design content-based lessons that use technology to enhance those lessons. The SAMR model framework (see figure 1.1) helps teachers talk about the sophistication of technology use in the classroom.
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Consider using folders to organize apps or tools by topic on a device. In Kirstin’s iPad-driven classroom, for example, she has students put often-used apps on the dock at the bottom of the home screen. They organize any additional apps into labeled folders. If your students use Chromebooks, there are no additional apps for you to organize because everything is organized within G Suite for Education as an add on or a browser extension.
As an example of using this model, students practicing letter formation may visit multiple independent learning centers that you set up around your classroom, such as a sand-tracing center, a pencil-tracing center, a letter-matching center, and a technology center that has a letter-tracing app. The content is learning letters, and the activities allow students to learn letters through a variety of modalities. The SAMR model helps teachers scaffold lessons from simple substitution to redefinition. You can find more information about the SAMR model on our blog (http://nowclassrooms.com/samr-model).
Source: Adapted from Puentedura, 2014.
Figure 1.1: The SAMR model.
Teaching Device Responsibility
By now, you have done most of the behind-the-scenes setup, and you can start introducing iPads, Chromebooks, laptops, or other tablets to your students. We like to start with a whole-class meeting about responsibility. Chances are most students have played with a smartphone, tablet, or computer and can use their background knowledge to fill out an anchor chart on how to responsibly use the device, like the one in figure 1.2 (page 20).
For K–2 students, use visuals, and make the key points simple—you can modify this example to fit your classroom or add to the chart later. Hang the anchor chart up in a prominent place in your room, and review it daily early on in your implementation. Don’t forget to praise those students you see following the chart.
Figure 1.2: Sample anchor chart for using iPads responsibly.
Although we present multiple options in this chapter, each district, school, and classroom tackles device management in a different way, so don’t obsess too much about it. Instead, find solutions that will work in your classroom for you. Students’ abilities will change throughout the year, as will your expectations of them.
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Have your students take a picture of the device responsibility anchor chart to keep and use as a resource on their devices.
Learning Basic Operations and Troubleshooting
Students become independent when they work with digital devices as tools and can troubleshoot with peers to become technology literate and technology fluent. The NOW lessons in this section focus on equipping K–2 students with device basics, like learning basic keyboarding and navigation, asking for help to solve problems, and solving problems without help. These lessons require repetition for students to become proficient.
Novice: Using Basic Keyboarding and Touch-Screen Navigation
Learning how to properly use a keyboard, whether with an on-screen or physical keyboard, is important to success with technology, and this lesson provides
