Suburban students to show lawmakers creative uses for technology

Students and teachers from select schools statewide will demonstrate to state lawmakers creative ways technology is being used within and outside the classroom next Thursday in Springfield.

TECH 2018 - an initiative of Illinois Computing Educators - aims to raise awareness of the role personal devices, the internet and digital content play in preparing students for success and the need for increased funding for classroom technology. The student showcase runs 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. and 1 to 3 p.m. at the State Capitol building.

Participating suburban schools include South Middle School in Arlington Heights; Orchard Place Elementary and Iroquois Community School, both in Des Plaines; Downers Grove North High School; Marquardt Middle School in Glendale Heights; River Trail School in Gurnee; Neil Armstrong Elementary in Hoffman Estates; Hampshire High School; Peacock Middle School in Itasca; Laura B. Sprague School in Lincolnshire; Walter R. Sundling Junior High in Palatine; Betsy Ross Elementary School in Prospect Heights; and Scullen Middle School in Naperville.

Fifth-graders from J.B. Nelson Elementary School in Batavia will talk about using Chromebooks this school year for "flipped learning" - teachers deliver instructional content, often online, at home and use class time to provide targeted support and for group collaboration.

"There is a lot more student agency where students can advocate for and be a partner in the learning process with the teachers," said Angie Sutherland, Batavia Unit District 101 instructional technologist who coaches teachers on integrating technology into the classroom. "The teachers can create a more personalized learning environment. Students get that direct instruction at home, whether it is through videos or other means determined by the teacher, and they can practice on what they are learning."

Teachers are seeing unexpected benefits with letting students personalize their learning, such as unassigned investigations, starting their own newspaper and creating videos, she said.

District 101 provides one-to-one devices for roughly 6,000 students in first through 12th grades, and shared devices for kindergartners. Students in sixth through 12th grades already have been taking devices home. Officials plan to provide similar access to fourth- and fifth-graders districtwide next year, if teachers so choose.

Third-graders from Westfield Community School in Algonquin will demonstrate how they use Chromebooks to collaborate on projects with the help of Google Docs and Google Slides.

Middle schoolers will show how they create multimedia Wiki projects using open source materials, such as videos and articles.

"Five years ago, technology was really an add-on. It was not ubiquitous to all of our learning," said Anne Pasco, director of digital literacy and innovation for Algonquin-based Community Unit District 300.

This year, officials supplied 20,708 personal Chromebooks to third- through 12th-graders. Next spring, second-graders also will be allowed to take such devices home.