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When Emma Mackey got a parcel of 23 used Samsung Galaxy tablets donated to her 1st grade class last year, she put her littlest students to work showing off how they understood their numbers game. Using digital portfolios, the children were assigned small projects explaining how to add different numbers to get to 10. They could use any tool they wanted — dry erase markers, pens, video and even recording their voice were all allowed — as along as it was all done on their tablets.
“When a child explains her understanding orally, if she doesn’t quite get there I can tell, where if I had a worksheet that showed a correct answer I would think this student got it,” Mackey, who teaches at Souder Elementary, part of the Everman Independent School District in Texas, said in an interview. “I feel like using this I saw a lot of misconceptions, where I may not have been teaching it enough.”
Mackey’s adoption of digital portfolios proved interesting enough to more than just her students, as she’s showcasing the work from her class at this year’s Conference for the Advancement of Mathematics Teaching, set for July 16-18 in Houston, Texas. In her session, "Kids are Fearless: Let Primary School Students Use Child Friendly Apps to Build Digital Portfolios,” Mackey is going to explain how to weave tablets into lower grade classrooms specifically when teaching young children math — but also to help identify literacy issues as well...
Tablets before computers
Technology adoption in high school and middle schools is fairly standard — most upper grades require students to file work online, necessitating their use of computers, tablets and at the least, smartphones. At the elementary school level, tablets are preferred — with 53% of students in grades K-2 using these devices, as compared to 15% of the same grades using laptops, according to Deloitte’s 2016 Digital Education Survey.
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Source: Education Dive
