A Success, An Opportunity and A Problem
Mounds View Public Schools are on a path of academic productivity in its use of Chromebooks in the classroom. The 15-16 school year being the 2nd in a 3-year rollout plan, the district’s emphasis on implementing appropriate tools for learning– not technological toys for their own sake– is right on.
The benefits of the district’s Google classroom/blended learning approach are many: including collaboration between students and among teachers, more timely & effective student assessment & feedback methods, and increased student engagement possibilities that boost the likelihood more students will truly take charge of their own learning. Yes, the goal of 621’s teachers becoming more the managers for student learning and less the purveyors of information is gradually being realized.
But while the day that a Mounds View District student will be able to effortlessly capture– for future review– her grade 9 to 12 workpapers via Google Docs is drawing near, there is at least one step remaining that would enable district students to harness the brainpower expended and mark their progression on the academic maturity continuum: a well-honed practice of electronic note taking.
In my 15 years of involvement with the Mounds View School District, hardly a month has passed by where I didn’t suggest an idea or support the work of a Mounds View School District employee.
In floating the idea for the note taking instruction, I reached out to Theresa Anderson– Business & Marketing Instructor at Mounds View High School– who teaches a course called “Word Processing for College.”
Responding to the suggestion higher-ed bound students would benefit immensely by becoming more proficient in a Microsoft One Note-type program or by becoming facile with Adobe Professional (which permits edits to be made to .pdf files) the earnest Anderson wrote:
” … Regarding Word Processing for College, we teach a curriculum that meets the National Business Education Standards as well as the requirements for several articulated college courses (go to CTECREDITMN.com, search for Mounds View, then click on the course – it lists all of the articulation agreements and eligible credit). While I agree with you and would love students to learn another tool, note taking tools are not currently part of the curriculum. This course is specifically targeting the use of Microsoft Word as this is what most companies use today for word processing and is also what most students use for theses and APA/MLA formatting. If we acquire the software and an articulation agreement, we could consider adding it in the future.”
If you agree that this curricular addition would be a valuable one for 621 students, please consider joining the MV Curriculum Committee for the 15-16 school year– and supporting this candidacy– to bring students this offering.
As most people would agree, technological use can be counterproductive as well. Last school year’s district production of My Unthoughtful Tweet represented an attempt that both acknowledged and attempted to remedy the issue of technologically-based, teen communication gone awry.
Although additional questions around student productivity and effective communication have been raised in district-sponsored discussion forums, little progress has been made regarding academically-related issues relating to the use of personal devices. To my knowledge, often exasperated district teachers are left to devise their own approaches to ‘what goes’ in an individual classroom regarding the use of personal tech. devices.
If you agree that one or more of these questions is worth tackling, then perhaps you also believe in the need to provide a more consistent structure in the district around personal device use:
- Is it appropriate for a teacher to provide personal gaming time at the end of a class period when a student finishes his in-class assignment?
- When there are limited or no computers available, should students be taking objective format tests or quizzes on their personal cellphone during class?
- Does your student have issues with overly-divided attention, due either to excessive texting at home or during the school day?
- Does your student see no difference between composing a class paper on a cellphone vs. sitting at an electronic keyboard?
- Should the download of a release of a major company’s operating system be atop the minds of students on a given school day?
The attendant-to-tech issues are many, but by supporting John Hakes for Mounds View School Board, you will be well-represented in trying to correct the harmful effects of misguided technological use in the learning experiences of Mounds View School District students.
John Hakes for Mounds View School Board '15 
Thanks John for your leadership on this important topic. I’m glad there are people like you thinking about these issues with technology. As a member of the workforce I see everyday how newer and younger employees are better prepared to take advantages of technology, social media and personal devices to increase productivity. Its a new world and older employees often have a difficult time keeping up. Our high schools should definitely be emphasizing these efficiencies to prepare kids for college and the workplace.
At the same time, there is a proper time for the introduction of these technologies. My son attended a Waldorf school from K-6 and had virtually no exposure to technology and screens during the school day and limited time (television) at home. He has an educational foundation that includes drawing, arts, handwriting, singing, poetry, working with his hands, physical play, etc., that he would otherwise not have been exposed to in the public schools. When we enrolled him into Chippewa to begin 7th grade, he had little difficulty with adapting to the technological classroom and his newly gifted smartphone. While I sometimes wish he used his phone less, his years in Waldorf make it much easier to remind him to put his phone down and go outside to play with his friends, swing his bat or, play basketball in the driveway or find some other way to entertain himself that does not involve staring into a screen. All that is to say that technology must be embraced and encouraged in a thoughtful way, with a gradual introduction in middle school and with increasing emphasis through high school. However, there may be benefits to establishing limitations on its use in the early elementary schooling, imho.