Teacherscribe’s Teaching Tip #13
Since we moved to a 1:1 MacBook Air school, we have had to think more about how we deliver content.
Once a colleague at lunch asked, “How can we compete with Google?”
As they said this, I pictured kids with their laptops open and surfing the net at will, totally un-engaged to what I was saying.
Then the solution hit me, and I told the teacher, “It’s simple. We have to be more interesting than Google.”
That didn’t go over so well.
But it’s true.
Delivery matters. Go back to Teaching Tip #5. HOW we present information must change. No doubt about it.
Case in point: I used to teach a highly engaging murder mystery, “Lamb to the Slaughter,” by Roald Dahl, in my Lit and Lang 9R class.
The story is set in the 1950s. Of course, kids today have no idea what life in the 1950s was like. At all. They think it was just like today. Minus smart phones.
When I began to pre-teach the setting of the piece, I realized the kids were tuned out and bored. Thus, I said, “Stop. Take out your laptops. Find out what life was like in the 1950s. Use whatever sites you want. I’d start with Google.”
Then I put on the board questions to guide them like “How much did a pop cost in 1950?” “What were the popular TV shows in 1950?” “Who was president in 1950?” “How much was minimum wage in 1950?” “What was the most popular occupation for women in 1950?” “Can you find any videos on Youtube from 1950?” And so on.
Suddenly, kids were more engaged. I’m not saying they were living the dream, but they were far more engaged than just listening to me tell them about life in 1950.
That’s when I realized the hard truth behind this line from the article linked above -
If your mindset is that a teacher’s main job is content delivery, then they’ve just been outsourced by Netflix and YouTube.
How has your content deliver changed to engage students more effectively since we moved to a 1:1 environment?
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