Student Voice and Choice

Hard to believe that another year is in the books.  As 2015 comes to a close I want to reflect on a part my job as the Instructional Technology Teacher at Algonquin that has really had a big impact on me.
 I wear many hats in this position and enjoy the day to day diversity but for this blog post  I will focus on my role as adviser to our student tech support team.  At this time last year the S.W.A.T.(Students Working To Advance Technology)team was just in its planning stages.  The first semester was coming to a close and I was working hard trying to put together a program for the second semester. I spent a lot of time researching and communicating with other schools who had  student tech support teams and looked to them for guidance.  I was really inspired and impressed by two well established programs: the Tech Sherpas from central Maine and the Burlington High School helpdesk.  Using the advice I received from them and others I began recruiting students and developing a curriculum.  The Algonquin guidance department also helped me a great deal to get this new endeavor up and running.  The S.W.A.T. class officially kicked off in January 2015 and is still going strong.  I have students enrolled in the class that help out during the school day and we also have a very active after school club.  The assistance these kids provide and the work they have done has well exceeded my expectations.  They are extremely professional, proficient and willing to help out in any way.  Along with the various tasks they do the S.W.A.T. students often test out ipad apps, chrome extensions or websites and provide feedback about ease of use and whether or not they think the tools will help them learn.  These opinions have been extremely helpful to me as I try and promote technology use in the classroom to advance student learning.  I was a math teacher for over twenty years and I spent a lot of time planning lessons and designing assessments.  I collaborated many times with other math teachers and always appreciated their help.  As I look back on all of those years of classroom teaching I wish I had spent more time asking the students for more input about what I was doing as a teacher to help them learn more effectively.  It is so important to give our students more voice and choice, to empower them as learners and to help them to take an active role in their education.  I think this picture that Gary Stager shared in his blog post "Less Us, More Them: Raise expectations and standards in our classrooms by granting more responsibility to the learner" says it all

So I started my blog post reflecting on my role as "adviser" to the S.W.A.T team, but as you can see I really appreciate how much the students advise me.  Coming soon to a theater computer near you the S.W.A.T. team can advise you too.  The students are in the process of organizing a Google hangout on air where they will be sharing some of their favorite classroom technology tools and discussing how these tools help them learn.  I am excited for all of you to hear their voice and choice of classroom technologies for 2016!