Digital Devices
What are digital devices?
Digital devices (like Chromebooks, laptops, iPads, and other tablets) are tools that can make learning more interactive.
Teachers and students use them as tools to record their learning processes, to create unique artifacts like videos or other student productions, as well as to easily access information as it is needed.
Digital devices are also essential for any experimentation with robotics and much of the work that one does in an open creative space.
View LEARN Quebec's video on Digital Devices.
You can set up a few devices at a "genius bar" at the back of the room for easy access to information as it is needed.
Digital devices are tools for creating and sharing our stories around learning.
Perhaps most importantly, they are also tools with which teachers, students, parents, caregivers, and community partners can communicate with each other about learning.
Having a diverse selection of devices available in a school or centre is ideal so that students and teachers can choose the device they need based on the learning goals and tasks at any given time.
Students working with multiple devices - digital and non-digital - to share their understanding of evaluation criteria in English Language Arts.
Pedagogical Models
Stations-based teaching and blended learning
Teaching in stations allows learning to happen in small groups. When using a station-rotation model, where learners rotate through different stations including a teacher-station, teachers can touch base with small groups of students at a time while the rest of the class is busy actively engaged with other activities - and each other.
This is an excellent way to structure the use of digital devices in a classroom so that small groups of students are using them at a time.
This video describes how Lindsay Harrar, a second language teacher at ACCESS Adult Centre of the Riverside School Board, uses stations. She talks about the role of digital devices in the learning process during one of her lessons.
Flexible Classrooms
Digital devices are essential elements of a flexible classroom space. Many teachers have begun to design their classrooms to offer more choice to students regarding where and how they learn.
In some flexible classrooms devices are spread out in different areas of the room and in other rooms there are specific zones for using digital devices. It all depends on what works best for you and your students in relation to the learning intentions.
For more on Flexible Classrooms
Creative Spaces or Maker Spaces
A creative space or maker space is a place where people come together to make things, often by going through a design process, but not always.
Along with other materials, devices such as computers and tablets can be used for creating, researching and documenting process in a creative space or classroom, for example:
creating animation - claymation, Lego, green screen
digital storytelling
creating games with programming tools such as Scratch 3.0
finding information, examples and projects that others have posted online
documenting work in process through photos and videos and written notes in a reflective journal or portfolio
creating and publishing how-to videos or web pages that can be useful to others
connecting computers and the physical world using microcontrollers such as the Makey Makey and Micro:Bit
sharing process and creations with others through blogs and social media
networking with others who are working on similar projects
For more information on Creative Spaces, visit this page: Creative Spaces
Professional Development
Modeling
If we want to see great use of digital devices in learning, we need to model the same in professional learning as well. It is not enough to buy new equipment for a school or centre if teachers do not have time to learn with the devices as well.
For more on using Digital Devices in Professional Development
Reflection
Questions
What are my learning intentions?
What kinds of devices will best support these intentions within my discipline? (for example, writing may be best done on a chromebook or laptop while creating video may be best done with a tablet)
How are the devices helping us to communicate with each other and with others?
Am I allowing for student choice in regards to which devices they use?
How will I design my classroom environment to support the use of different digital devices?