Once you walk into the computer lab, the magnetism of monitors and mice attracts your students' attention and changes their behavior. Student and project management in the lab can be extremely difficult. Students seem so involved with what is happening on the screen and in their minds that they tune the teacher out ... until they need help. Then, they all want you to help them immediately, even if you are in the middle of helping a classmate.
So, how do you deal with the lab environment without going crazy?
Many traditional management techniques won't work, especially if you are engaging the students in cooperative, project-based learning. This month's column is part one of two that will focus on setting up the lab environment so that you can retain your sanity and the students can do their best.
One method for focusing the student on the content of your assignment and cutting down the number of students who need technical help is to make sure the assignment is within the ability of the students. If you slowly add computer skills to each successive assignment and build on what the students already know, they are more likely to either remember or figure out what to do.
An example for a HyperStudio project would be to provide your students with a template. The template (with the cards, buttons and text fields already in place) can provide the students with the structure you want and limit the number of HyperStudio skills you need to teach the students.
With each following HyperStudio project, you can take away a different part of the template and teach the students the skills necessary to do it on their own.
One word of advice if you are going to use templates. Be ready to allow kids to customize your template. Someone will always ask if they can change something. The rules we use at our school are:
1) students can modify after they have put in all of their information (text, graphics, sound, etc.) and
2) students may not take the teacher's time away from other
students who still need help with the basics.
Another technique we use to lessen our workload of helping students is to create classroom experts. Before teaching classes a more difficult or time-consuming skill, such as scanning, teach a small group (2-4) of students how to do it. Then, when other students need help with that particular skill, they can get one of the experts to help them. As you add skills, pick different students to be the experts. It's important to divide the workload and opportunities among the entire class.
A method of promoting students experts is to require the students to ask at least two other students for help before they ask the teacher, preferably the experts. If you are not careful, the students will ask the students closest to themselves instead of asking the classroom experts. Often that method will work, but it is not uncommon for the kids to get incorrect or incomplete help from their neighbors.
Sometimes experts will "appear." If you are fortunate enough to have a student who discovers how to do something important or cool with the software you are using, have the student share his or her discovery at the end of the class through a mini-lesson. You might want to even seed these "discoveries" by showing a student (especially hesitant students) a new technique and asking them to share it with the class.
One final method for creating and using experts is to have
students with experience in a particular piece of software tutor or
mentor someone with less experience. This is an especially powerful
way for older students to help younger students. Often, the language
your students will use to explain things will be different from your
own, but amazingly enough, their words usually make sense to the
other students.
Students seem to need help constantly in the computer lab. There is no way a single teacher could help everyone with all their questions. It is important to teach the students how to help themselves. The primary method we use is to create "Help Sheets" for many of our mini-lessons that list the main steps along with screenshots of what the students should see on their computer. These "Help Sheets" could be kept in a binder next to the computers or blown up to poster size at a copy center and hung on the wall.
As mentioned above, if the students can't figure out what to do from the "Help Sheets" we require them to ask at least two other students for help before they ask the teacher. Instead of allowing the students to ask anyone, push them to ask the experts.
If neither the "Help Sheets" nor the experts can answer the student's question, have the student sign up for help on the chalkboard or clipboard. By having the students sign up for help that way, you will not be surrounded by students pleading and pulling you to help them immediately. No one will have to stand around waiting. The students can go back to their computer and work on a different part of their assignment.
Often, the students will figure out what to do or find an
alternative solution before you even get to them. An alternative
would be to have the students place a red plastic cup on top of their
monitor if they need help, though this doesn't let you know which
order to help the students in.
To ensure the best use of the limited amount of time most students get working with a computer, it helps to have the students carefully plan before using the computer. There are many different ways to have students plan for projects including KWL charts, index cards, concept maps, outlines, and draft essays. Each planning method has its own strengths and weaknesses; the index cards and draft essays being the most concrete.
Requiring the students to plan before using the computer will cut down on time wasted figuring out what to do (and probably spent playing with the cool features of a program), though sometimes the students need to be reminded that reasoned changes to their plans are OK. As the students grow more comfortable with the software and your assignments, you can allow the students to compose more of their work on the computer and still feel comfortable that they will complete the assignment in a timely fashion.
The ideas expressed above are drawn from experiences at Birmingham Covington School and Elliott Elementary (especially Beth Scholten) and the work of Calkins, McKenzie, Newkirk, Eisenberg and Berkowitz, and many others.
Coming in Part 2
© Jordy Whitmer 1999