Tech tools such as Google Docs allow teachers to minimize paperwork and make the grading process more interactive with students.
Do not tell Betty Quantz that you lost your paper on Macbeth because your computer died.
It will not fly.
If you are a student in her senior English class at Hamilton High School, you are expected to save much of your work on Google Drive—which basically eliminates “the hard drive ate my homework” from the list of acceptable excuses.
“Even if their computers crash and burn, they can go to another,” she says.
Mrs. Quantz and her English department colleague Tracy Maraschiello are two Hamilton teachers who are embracing technology in the classroom because it saves paper and makes their jobs easier in the short term and prepares students for life beyond the classroom in the long term.
Mrs. Quantz says she wants her students to be comfortable working and interacting online in a meaningful way because that’s what their college professors will expect. She says many students have only a surface-level savvy when it comes to using technology. While they are comfortable using devices, “they don’t know how to use technology for their benefit, for the collection of knowledge, for intellectual development.”
So she does everything she can to help them integrate such tech tools as Google Docs and Google Forms into their schoolwork—which they’re able to do in class because of the Chromebooks on carts that the district provides to students.
Cloud computing in the classroom also has changed her teaching process, Mrs. Quantz says. Grading and commenting on papers and outlines online allows her to give feedback to students more quickly: “Having stacks of paperwork on my desk is discouraging,” she says.
And it’s more discrete: “I’m able to redirect them—without it being public. … I can, in my Google Doc, one on one, quietly, explain to them why [a] topic is not appropriate.” What is the most practical advantages of electronic teacher comments? “Return time is a little faster…and kids can read my handwriting,” Quantz says.
With the help of the Chromebooks and VARtek Classroom Technology Coach Matt Ernst, English teacher Tracy Maraschiello has been cutting down on paper by integrating Chromebooks and cloud computing into her curriculum, too.
Mrs. Maraschiello says that when Ernst first mentioned the possibility of a “paperless classroom,” she says she got really excited. “I thought, ‘Oh, wow—I’m getting on board with 2013 technology.”
Her students now get many of their assignments online and are starting to exchange documents and share ideas with each other and with her. She believes that aside from being a more progressive way to run a classroom, it’s preparing them to do well on important academic assessments, such as the PARCC—an online test of students’ comprehension of Common Core Standards.
“Our instructional specialists keep telling us, ‘You need to give the students more technology-driven assignments and technology-driven questions and activities,’” Mrs. Maraschiello says. “Because that’s what the tests are going to look like starting next year, and that’s how we are going to be evaluated.’”
Whatever the motivation, integrating technology in the classroom requires being willing to be a student of technology yourself, say Mrs. Quantz and Mrs. Maraschiello—both of whom believe there’s more to learn.
Mrs. Quantz says she’s looking forward to those lessons, as she continues to find ways to use all of the tools available to enhance her students’ classroom experience. She says she’s thought about having students record themselves during group projects, so that she can give them feedback on their process. She also would like to have students make videos and use Google Draw as part of the vocabulary curriculum.
Meantime, she says, she will be watching for those papers to be turned in on Google Drive. No excuses.