Students Collaborating Using Technology

I write this post right now almost giddy with excitement. My class has been offered an amazing opportunity to be the third keynote speaker at the CNIE Conference in Hamilton on Wednesday.

This is where technology still amazes me. Usually when you’re a speaker at a conference, you need to go there, and in this case, my whole class would need to go there. Not anymore though. Thanks to some amazing wireless video camera equipment, my class can be connected live to the lecture hall at McMaster University, and as the camera is moved around the classroom, the people sitting in the lecture hall can see and hear everything in the classroom. Amazing!!

I will be able to take these 100 educators on a tour of the classroom — showing and talking along the way — and they will never need to leave their seats. Even more incredibly, my students can be involved in this presentation. They can discuss how they’re using these tools in the classroom, and hopefully inspire others to use them too.

In the past, I would have been incredibly nervous about this presentation, and maybe I will be on Wednesday morning, but right now I’m just over-the-top excited! This is not a scripted presentation, and if things don’t go perfectly, then they don’t. Sometimes that’s the nature of technology. But that’s not a reason to stop using it. My students know what to do when technology doesn’t work perfectly, and the fact that they can problem-solve as they do, despite their young age, is in many ways due to the use of technology in the classroom. They are really taking ownership over their own learning, and as a teacher, I couldn’t be prouder!

On Wednesday morning, I hope that the 100 people sitting, watching, and listening to my class are equally as proud of these students as I am. Technology has allowed these young students to learn, create, and collaborate in new and exciting ways, and my plan is for the conference attendees to see all of this on Wednesday.

Aviva