I am sitting here trying to prepare for the new school year, which begins on August 18th for me. Last year, I piloted 1:1 laptops for the district beginning in March so you would think I would be better prepared to start the year out with 1:1 right? Wrong!
I am looking over my first day presentation and am realizing all the changes I need to make to include my rules and procedures with the laptops. I am thinking about how I am going to introduce them on the first day and how much the kids are going to get to use them. It is so overwhelming! The difference is last year I began 1:1 with students whom I had gotten to know over the course of three quarters of school, some of them I had even had in my class the year before. So I knew my kids pretty well and what to expect out of them. This year I am getting a brand new class with students who I have never met in a classroom setting, so I have no clue what to expect! All I know is that I will be allowing the students to use the laptops on the first day. The entire school knows I have them, so why not jump in? The kids will be expecting it.
I have always been a planner, but I feel like this just needs to be a little less planned than normal and to be quite honest, that drives me crazy. Before I can plan any technology based projects, assignments, or anything I need to know where my students stand with it. It's the same idea with anything, you are going to gauge your students abilities before you jump in to something with them. So here I go... jumping in again. :)
