"Using Computers Makes Learning Fun!"

...said one of my wiser, more sarcastic students. Before you make him out to be a smartalecky, mean kid, I'll tell you that he has been his class's president for the past three years and is basically one of the coolest kids I've ever had the privilege to teach. Mostly, probably, due the fact that I sincerely appreciate his style of humor. His cynicism is always appropriate and meaningful, like yesterday when I had students using laptops to access www.noredink.com to practice some grammar concepts before today's big test. When he said it, all the students chuckled and I replied to agree with him and they were off to the races.

But his statement, although harmless, still made me ponder. Are teachers making their incorporation of technology too pointed? Is it just way too obvious that we're trying to connect to these age-of-informationers using media that makes sense to them? Maybe. But then the next question is, do we really care that they're on to us?

My answer, after a pregnant pause to ponder, is decidedly: "nope." :)

At any rate, I continued with the online grammar review, and they had so much fun! Since they get to personalize the sentences they get on the review, they were all laughing intermittently as the random and creative questions popped up (e.g., "Fifty Cent had run to the store for some lightbulbs." And so on and so on...haha!). My "sharing a new literacy website" screencast is on this site and is posted on our wiki, so feel free to check it out. The formative assessment you can do with this forum is outstanding...for instance, there is a graph that I can view in real time and if most of them are getting it wrong, I announced this and went to the board and re-explained the rule. At the end of the session, I told them, "Ok, you all seem to understand the confusable words because you're mostly all in the 90% range, but man, you guys HAVE to study plurals and possessives tonight because no one got over 75%."  Now HOW effective is it to have that instant feedback? Especially with so many grammar concepts? It's impossible to quiz them and assess them all as a group (or individually, for that matter), but this site makes it so easy. They actually verbalized how thankful they were to know what to study that evening, and some got on the site last night to practice the ones they missed. (the site gives you practice options for any that you did poorly on)

Intrigued yet? I got some other teachers on board yesterday. I'm telling you...if you want them to be engaged, check out this website. I've never had such success with grammar in my life.

So yes, Will, using computers DOES make learning fun!