Georgina Meza, EdTech Program Manager extraordinaire, and I have the pleasure of visiting Sweetwater schools to check in with our Blended Learning Specialists, Librarians, Administration, and other leaders who are overseeing the integration of technology into the learning process.

And, what we are seeing is highly encouraging.

The rollout of devices to Sweetwater high schools has been gradual, beginning with 9th grade three years ago and culminating in the 2018-19 school year with seniors.  Because of the gradual nature of that rollout and the high volume of mixed grade level classes, many teachers have been understandably reluctant to fully embrace the use of devices on a daily basis.  However, plenty of teachers have jumped in with both feet and are making great strides.

Here are just a few examples we came across this week.

Marc Gonzalez teaches Social Sciences at Hilltop High and we recently saw how he starts a class with a controversial question that students answer in Google Classroom, where they are able to comment on their classmates opinions.  It’s a great way to practice healthy debate and argumentation in an open forum.  Students were then analyzing an infographic on North and South Korea to gain background knowledge for a Socratic Seminar that was soon to follow.   Mr. Gonzalez’s class was a great example of a class in which the learning was at the center of every activity and the technology simply faded into the background, supporting those primary learning goals.

We also jumped over to Otay Ranch High where we saw Ms. Jorgina Hall teach Biology, masterfully expounding on the properties of chromosomes and gene transfer in fruit flies.   She did this by embedding her lecture notes and presentation into students’ One Note notebook.  Students not only had access to her notes during the lecture, but they were able to annotate those notes while she discussed the topic.  This was beyond substitution (see SAMR) as these notes also include links to resources and videos that would not be possible with paper and pencil note taking.

We also spoke to the leadership team at Olympian High School where they have  moved their 9th grade student portfolio to Google Sites.  Olympian has a well developed plan for each student that begins in 9th grade with the aforementioned student portfolio and culminates in the Common Senior Experience.  The digital tools are a natural enhancement of that project as their students can now curate all their best work in one location and reflect on their growth within the same tool.  Olympian has plans of continuing their evolution from an analog to digital student portfolio over the next few years.

In each of these cases, technology enhanced the learning environment and these were just a few of the examples of outstanding teaching that we observed this week.  So, for all those teachers who are getting ready to dig deeper into their technology toolkit, I can’t give you any better advice than the advice that students at Hilltop High School left on their lunch area asphalt.