Student Showcase and Beyond

After you have sat in on a few sessions Thursday and your brain is bursting at the seams you can quickly feel overwhelmed. Take a breath, take a break, and enjoy the student technology showcase. Getting a chance to see projects from other schools has been very beneficial to me. Though when I was a first year participant I think I tried to go a little overboard having not seen the event before. I imagined the other schools all had enormously technical projects displaying their student work in hyper-intelligent ways. I was worried my students work would look simple and childish, misrepresenting my school and colleagues. Then I had a comforting thought: I teach children.

You can find all levels of work at the showcase and there are definitely amazing examples of utilizing the latest technology. There are also projects like the ones my students will share this year, using powerpoint to organize information, not exactly revolutionary. Not to make light and say our work is simple, but their should be a “kid element” to what an elementary teacher is showing (fifth graders in my case).

In the end I think the idea is to share projects other teachers can use. This may sound simple but I’m sure there are many in your building, like mine, who still print off emails to read. Once you’ve taken the time to visit the student showcase you are going to realize “Hey my kids can do that,” and you’ll be right. So next year sign up yourself and students to share what is happening at your school.

This brings me to my favorite reason I bring students to the showcase: the ability to connect students to the outside world. You know, that big scary place outside our classrooms. As our world shrinks ever smaller and flatter it is more and more important to provide these connections. To allow our students to be part of something bigger than themselves. Our traditional school settin often inhibits these experiences, and this is where technology can play a leading role…but that is a conversation for another day and I’m now stepping off the soapbox.