Rethinking My Role as a Teacher [module 1.4]

From quite early on I realized that I can’t carry on the business as usual. Up until the moment our first student group got their iPads I had been encouraging my students to discuss and share ideas about the issues at hand. I wanted them to practice the art of thinking and challenge each other and teacher as much as they cloud. And every now and then we managed to create some good discussions in my class - at least at Finnish scale. But not anymore. Things had changed and I wasn't sure whether it the change I wanted.

I had been in favor of using tablets in classroom, but sometimes you should be careful with your wishes - as Oscar Wilde put it - those may come true! After introducing these deceitful devices in my class the student seemed to become more passive and less willing to take part on our common discussions. It should have been another way around!

I thought that using tablets would make my students more active and that they would be somehow initiative in finding new ways to learn. But instead of having a group of active learners I ended up having passive consumers of social media and entertainment - if I may exaggerate a bit. I really had to find some new ways to activate my students. Interesting topics and provocative questions were simply not enough anymore since too many of my students found the attractions of the internet far too tempting. On her video Diana Bannister mentioned rules as one solution for this problem. Yes we can discuss about the principles together and try to engage students to the proper use of tablets, but I am afraid that in my case it is not enough. Upper secondary education is optional and students in this age should start to guide themselves. I can't always be there defining boundaries, they should start to do it themselves. I think that the key is new kind of practices in the classroom and a whole new way of assessing students learning.

I've been constantly asking my students through questionnaires how we should use iPads in the classroom. The most common answer is “making notes” and “to look for information”. Really? You've got a quite expensive notebook there if the only thing you going with it is making notes! Yes they are very skillful what comes to iPad games and entertainment. And at the same time they don’t seem to have any kind of idea how to use these tablets for educational purposes or how to use those as a tool for thinking! But I cannot blame them. How could they know better? Nobody taught them these things and I guess it’s now my job to fill this gap.

What do I need to consider at a classroom level when using tablets? I've been thinking about this question nearly two years and I think I've proceeded a bit, but not much. Let me put here some of the questions I have noticed to be important:

• How to find meaningful tasks or projects which would advance the learning?
• How to create collaborative learning?
• How to assess the learning with tablets?
• How to exercise thinking skills (or 21st century skills / competences) with tablets?

But we don’t have to be alone with these questions, 'cause there is many useful networks. For me the facebook groups were indispensable in finding good practices of using iPads in the classroom. But those groups can be pretty discouraging as well, since they seem to be full of techno-pedagogical superhumans with no leisure time or family. Besides the help of the social media I I've tried to take part as many in-service training events as I could. That is the reason why I wanted to join this mooc, I’m eager to learn more.

And one more thing. Here I have one outcome of our projects (the only one in English):