Classroom Management Tips for Integrating Digital Resources

Integrating digital resources in a K-12 classroom environment comes with its own set of responsibilities of modeling, setting clear expectations, and purposeful publishing.

Be a "Connected Educator"
Teachers can model positive digital citizenship by sharing what they have contributed online for educational purposes. They might show blogs that they have written, projects that they've posted, or social media spaces where they have shared in a professional learning conversation.

 Check out the Discovery Education Network to get begin your first steps at being a "Connected Educator!"

Empower Students to Have Ownership in Their Learning
Invite students to research digital resources that will contribute to the learning objectives. Students can create guidelines and tips on how to use the particular Web 2.0 tool, and then present these to the rest of the students. This encourages a classroom culture of teamwork, and will guide students into using tools for learning purposes.

A teacher might find photos or videos of students using digital resources for learning purposes, as a way of modeling appropriate use of the tools in their own classroom. The following photo shows how students are using videochats to participate in The Global Read Aloud project. What digital resources do you notice here? Does it look like all of the students are invested in the learning? Why or Why Not?

Encourage Tech Tours: Students Share with Families through Digital Resources
Encourage students to take their families on Tech Tours to the online learning spaces that they are contributing in. This might be a tour to a classroom blog, learning management space (Schoology or Edmodo), Discovery Education Student Center, or a multi-media project that has been shared on SchoolTube or Youtube.
 Take a look at the Common Sense Media page, Creating with Digital Media!