Digital Connectivity Builds Classroom Etiquette

Misa Gonzales is being honored as a Connected Educator Champion of Change.

In the first part of my teaching career I did not have a guaranteed student base. I had to work to fill my classes, and work to keep my students coming back every week. I have kept that philosophy while teaching high school, and the use of technology in my classroom is one of the ways I interest my students in the worlds of reading and writing.

There are three things that are amplified when technology is used in an effective and efficient way in a classroom: the organization of the classroom, the communication within the classroom, and the community formed in the classroom. Without organization, it becomes chaos and teachers have been searching for years for a way to stay organized, but it never quite works. With a connected technology system, students can save all files, folders, and videos in the cloud and their items are never lost. The dog can never eat the homework, and if he happens to eat the laptop, the homework is still accessible on any other computer or cellphone connected to the internet.

This ability to seamlessly organize between student and teacher allows for a level of communication in the classroom that has never before been achievable. Through Google Docs a teacher can pull up a student’s essay, and can watch them type. He or she can monitor and adjust the student’s understanding as the student progresses through  a paper, and when a cursor bar stops for an extended amount of time the teacher can check in with the student. Instant feedback through Google tools provides students with the ability to achieve their full potential. Communication through technology has allowed online collaboration between students to expand beyond traditional walls of the classroom.

The student’s ability to research across the world from cellphones and laptops has produced extensive opportunities to meet and work with other cultures and communities, and an ability to expand beyond the limitations of a traditional textbook. Students are never limited to what the teacher or the district knows, but are instead able to live and learn in a personalized learning environment. And finally, a whole new type of community is built and strengthened when students are guaranteed to have 100% digital connectivity, thus giving them the world at their fingertips, and allowing them to explore new cultures.

Organization, communication, and community build a bond of respect, trust, honor, and belief in my classroom. I believe in my students, I believe in their futures. I expect my students to walk out of every class with a feeling that they have completed something, a feeling of accomplishment. I will give you the numbers that are the most prominent in my classroom. I have 100% engagement in my room 100% of the time, and with that I also have a 100% turn in rate for all student work, and this is accomplished by 100% digital connectivity for all of our amazing students.

The technology that we use in my classroom helps to move my students forward at a pace that cannot be reached with the traditional paper and pencil format. My students have the accessibility of the world at their fingertips, and the ability to communicate through digital media like no other generation before them.

Misa Gonzales is a Freshman English teacher, at Desert View High School, in the Sunnyside School District, in Tucson Arizona. She graduated with her bachelor’s degree from the University of Arizona in Secondary Education, Extended English in 2011.