When integrating technology into your lesson realize students will need a little "play time" to acclimate themselves to the devices. Remember the first time you passed out those manipulatives in your class? You lost the students right away. All they wanted to do was build something. They began to dialogue with each other. They were so excited showing each other what they could create. No it was NOT actually using the tools in the right way. But necessary, otherwise the teaching moment is over. Sometimes I think... Why don't we just let them play with them?
So as you begin to create and integrate tech lessons, build in that play time. How much is long enough? Organize and limit the time by giving specific things to find out about the device like a scavenger hunt. Instruct the students about the time limit for play time and will need to put screens down when you are ready to begin the actual lesson. So plan on letting the students practice navigating around, otherwise you will loose the perfect opportunity for engagement. We can teach students, or model how to. But the best learning comes from "DOING!"
Here's an article I found very useful.
Four Skills to Teach Students In the First Five Days of School
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I use Google to search various topics from "fact checking" for fun, to research for educational purposes. Just as you do too. We automatically use skills that make researching our topic easier. But students don't have theses skills that come with experience yet! We need to expose them to the correct way use search engines. We can help students streamline their search results by using synonyms, and keywords. Watch Solomon's Story to see how students approach research. Common Sense Media has many resources for all grade levels.
