It Takes Time: 8th Grade Social Justice Projects

(Image courtesy of Cornell University Library)
I was pretty excited today because instead of our usual forty five minute class period, we had a luxurious TWO HOURS to work with the students on their social justice projects. I had been charged with helping the Research group learn to utilize our middle school set of five new iPads. My mission was simple: show the students how to access the cloud on the iPad through Pages and Numbers, multitask between applications, and cut and paste websites and citations from the web into the Research folder on their cloud. Easy, right? I had visions of this taking about ten to fifteen minutes, and then spending the rest of the time exploring different databases and finding articles for their topics. Some of you who have been teaching or tending library for awhile are already chuckling right now. And I should have known better, I’ve certainly been around the block when it comes to effectively dispatching technology in the classroom. But we had TWO HOURS! Surely that was more than enough time to show them a few simple functions. And it should have been. But here’s what happened.

First, some of the researchers had to meet with their whole group to plan calls and visits to professional organizations they had contacted this week, so they didn’t join us right away and had to be caught up. Then, no one could remember their password. And I do mean no one–so I looked them up and gave them out to everyone. Then, the airport in the library that had been working beautifully all week suddenly conked out and couldn’t be revived. So we went back to the crowded classroom, a less than ideal space for a training. Once seated and ready to go, some of the log-ins wouldn’t work and had to be tweaked, then some of their group cloud folders were empty, because our tech teacher CJ had to build a new server last week for this project and not all of the information had been transferred over. CJ gently reminded me that I knew how to do this (which I did, but I forgot) so I spent some time copying the Numbers spreadsheet we had created to track citations into a few of the group’s clouds. Some students could sign in, but then got an error message, which CJ had to fix. Finally, I made sure I watched each students sign in, move between applications, and successfully cut and paste a URL into their Research folder. The touch screens are sensitive, and this was a far more frustrating action that you might expect. It took more than a few tries before students really mastered it. And we had ten Researchers and only five iPads. By the time all the students had been walked through the process, I looked at the clock and saw that there were only fifteen minutes left before lunch. WHAT?! What happened to my luxurious block of research time?

I realized I had come to this class with a lot of assumptions that I really shouldn’t be making at this stage of my career–that the Internet connection would work, that the students would intuitively get the process (because they’re all tech wizards, right?), and that the iPads would deploy seamlessly. When CJ and I chatted afterward and I remarked incredulously that it had taken the entire period to show a few simple functions, he responded calmly well, what did I expect? This was the first time we had collected information in this way, the first time many of the students had even used an iPad. It’s going to take time to do these projects right and show the students everything we want them to learn. And probably a good half of what we do this year we’ll end up revising, refining or just plain chucking next year, which is not only okay but preferable. We always want to keep the assignment relevant and fresh. What I need to always keep in mind is that the process is not only a big part of the project, but in many ways the most important part. Sometimes I forget that in the midst of all my Big Plans. Good thing I have awesome eighth graders to remind me. Oh, and those Researchers used that last fifteen minutes to show their teams how to multi-task and cut and paste on the iPad. Mission accomplished!