Electronics in the classroom - a collaborative approach

Sometimes an classroom issue needs to be given time to resolve itself in a safe and respectful environment. I was watching closely the development of the issue of personal electronics in our classroom. Today I decided to step in and help the class out with this issue.

Our class has recently had an influx of personal electronic devices in the classroom.  It started with two children bringing in their electronics for academic needs.  Soon others started bringing theirs in, primarily to listening to music while they were working.

Now, these are curious 4th graders, so soon others started bringing in devices. They wanted to share the electronics, people wanted to play video games and share music at lunch.  Some students felt that it wasn't fair that some had devices and others not.  The issue got bigger. One student was frustrated that while he was working, others would type on his page, another said that people were trying to guess his password.

After a while, the students began to make decisions about the issue.  Some stopped bringing their own devices in and used their headphones to listen to music on the classroom computers.  Others found spaces to work on individual projects, so they could listen to their music quietly. The issue started getting smaller again.

Still, however I felt that some guidelines needed to be discussed, just so we were all clear and that we could respect those who had and indeed did not have personal electronics.

We had a wonderful discussion.  The children felt safe to voice their opinions and some felt strongly about their stance.  They worked in small groups to develop guidelines, then we had a class discussion.

These were the main ideas:

• Whatever the guidelines are we must follow them or we would lose our personal electronics for the day.
• The whole issue was unfair - family rules mean't that some children were not allowed to bring electronics to school, so to be fair no one should have them.
• Personal electronics should be allowed but with guidelines - no video games
• Want versus need - a fair idea
• We have always been fine without personal electronics before - why do we need them now?
• People should respect both personal and classroom electronics.
• They should only be for work.
• Idea - how about music from the CD player in a space in the classroom for quiet work.

Well, this was debated and even though the children understand that they will need to follow a lower school policy when it is made, they came up with, I think a well thought out set of guidelines.

Here they are:

• Those that need personal electronics can use them only for academic work.
• Music has to be quiet enough that it is not disturbing others.
• If headphones are being worn, that is a sign that the person wants to work quietly.
• Respect all people using electronics - don't hack, or type on their work.
• Electronic devices need to be treated like our journals.
• Those that don't follow guidelines have to put their device in their backpack for the rest of the day.

I think that the students really thought this through.  The discussion, although full of opinion stayed respectful and not personal.  I think that allowing the students to work on this issue by themselves, it enabled them to see it from many points of view.  They differed in their opinions but were able to come up with a set of guidelines that they felt were fair for everyone.

It is important to make our classroom investigations valuable to the students, then they can take ownership of their learning.

This afternoon I received via email a photo of two of our class who had gone to a Chinese New Year Celebration over the weekend.  I love getting photos like this.  It reminds me of the importance of making our work in the classroom both enjoyable, and of value to the children.

When the students voluntarily take their own time to learn more, to find out more to share with the class, it demonstrates that the learning is valid, it is important to them and they are taking ownership of their understandings.

How far is Beijing leads to an investigation into longitude lines

Our investigation into China has deepened.

We started our investigation into Mandarin, learned a few phrases and the students went home with much enthusiasm to have conversations with their families.  The next morning they all greeted each other with Ni Hao!  They were so excited to learn Mandarin that they were asking for all sorts of new words.  I know very little so we moved towards the numbers, they soon saw how the pattern worked and began counting, they now know up to 99! Further questions are how to say zero and 100.

In a constructivist classroom it is easy just to  "go with it", to let the project evolve completely from the students leanings, but I must also be sure to listen out for those ideas that will lead the investigation further and deeper.  As we were working on the numbers a child asked about the One Child Policy in China, another asked if we could actually go to China.  Both of these questions are very valid, and both could lead to deeper investigations.

So which way to go?  Which one would be more interesting, which one would lead to the goals I had set for the investigation?  We decided to go with "going" to China.

This led to a fantastic discussion into our world.  The size of the earth, how far Beijing is from Richmond, Virginia and would it be possible to fly all the way there without stopping.  The general consensus was no it seemed too far.   We looked at scale, and on a world map calculated the distance - about 8000 miles - still too far was the opinion.

We then looked at airline route maps, it seemed that by going via California we may be able to get there, still not sure though.  Then a student brought in the proof - her father had traveled all the way to China without stopping and she showed us the route - yes it could be done!

Then the children became interested in the globe, looking up the route and investigating the markings on it.  Soon the words longitude and latitude were coming up.  What do those words mean I ask.  And as in an earlier blog, I noted that the students had learned a vocabulary word but had no real idea of the meaning of it. They knew they were lines on the globe, but nothing further.

So, an investigation into the longitude lines on the map ensued, groups of children gathered around globes, observing the lines and numbers they saw.  It was noticed that there were 12 longitude lines on one globe.  When this information was shared, we found all the globes had 12 lines, could this be to do with time, one student asked - YES, of course time zones, it must be!

In the constructivist classroom, it is always important to acknowledge the ideas of the students, right now it really doesn't matter whether the longitude lines have anything to do with the time zones, or that there may indeed be more than twelve of them.  It is not time for the teacher to reveal that information yet.  But I have been asked to find a time zone map, and we'll see if the time zones do match up with the longitude lines.

Using popsicle wrappers to start an investigation of China

So what can you tell about China from a few wrappers?

We started our investigation into China last week and the initial provocation was for the students to investigate some popsicle and candy wrappers.  They had to describe the wrappers, try to figure out what was inside, then comment on what they can glean about China from the wrapper.

Well - these are some of the ideas:

It must have been hot when I was there because so many of the wrappers are from popsicles.

Chinese people eat popsicles.

Chinese people eat some of the same candies as we do.

A different language is spoken in China.

Chinese is written using different letters than English.

Words are written using Chinese letters and numbers are in English.

The Chinese like to use cartoons.

Some Chinese foods are familar and some are unfamiliar.

Apart from the flavors, that are still a mystery - this we will investigate further another day, the other main interest was the language of Mandarin.  One of the wrappers was for Mentos so one student commented that if we know the letters that make the word Mentos in Chinese we could use those "letters" to make other words.  Then we would be able to read other things in Chinese, and maybe figure out some of the unfamiliar flavors.

I was interested in the misconception about the Chinese language of Mandarin.  Students will always build on previous understandings in their construct new ones.  All of the students were familiar with Spanish, which uses the same letter system (for the most part) to English, and they had applied this knowledge to a language new to them that of Mandarin.

So, on to speaking Mandarin.