“Have you shared your Google doc with the group?”
The discussion director is hunched over his macbook impatient to get the literacy circle under way.
Extensions like doctopus have their place. However I often wonder if in a quest to make our lives easier teachers are robbing of opportunities to develop their own ICT skills and decide on the right tools for the job.
A few weeks ago this book club was a pencil and paper affair.
Organically they’ve migrated over to google drive and are even using the class set of iPads to take pictures of paper to share more effectively with the group. Each person can see the paper on the screen rather than straining to see one piece of paper.
One of the kids has now set up a shared folder and instructs her peers to put their files in the folder to automatically share with the group.
“We will be able to find things more easily,” she exclaims.
The best bit?
I hadn’t told this groups of Year 4s to do any of this.
“Hey can you share your folder with me too,” I add.
Sometimes it is great to be one step behind the kids…
Teaching the Teacher 