This year we were lucky to have extra professional development hosted by our wonderful co-worker, Mrs. Alison Doubet, who has provided multiple technology sessions to our staff this school year. Professional development is most useful when you know you can use what you learned from it in your classroom the very next day. I knew that I loved her tech tools and wanted my students to start using it as soon as possible. However, I didn’t feel comfortable enough to introduce certain things to my class yet. This feeling can often make you put great teaching strategies on the back burner until you forget about them.
The best part about working in a Lighthouse School is that intermediate and primary classes pair up for “Tech Buddies”. Mrs. Doubet’s third grade class taught my first graders how to use tools in about 15 minutes! Not only were my students excited to work with older kids but they were motivated to use a new tech tool.
Technology often gets a bad rap for taking communication away from the younger generation. At Joppa View we are using “Tech Buddies” and technology to deepen and enrich our communication across the grade levels.