No More Hiding-My-Phone Face: Changing Policy
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the first to engage digital literacy if empowerment is our goal?
During summer session, I wanted to try out teaching in a
“flipped” manner (flipped means the students do a large amount
of prep and there is no lecture in class. Class is spent doing what
would usually be homework activities, but now the teacher is there
to guide the “homework.” It leads to a much better quality of collaboration in class). So I read up on Reading Apprenticeship to
use some of the activities in my flipped classroom (Schoenbach,
Greenleaf, & Murphy, 2012). One of the cornerstones of Reading
Apprenticeship is the use of metacognitive conversation to help
model critical reading and thinking to students. Since these are
highly internal skills, the externalized metacognitive conversation
will help students break down these complex skills into workable
habits of thought. As I was studying this model, I was also thinking
about what my technology policy would be. Using a flipped model
meant that I wanted students in my class to feel free to use their
tablets and mobile phones to access the course’s online platform
any time they needed to during class. However, how would I help
them stay on task if I couldn’t have my normal technology policy:
“I don’t want to see it or hear it during class, and I definitely don’t
want to see hiding-my-phone face”?
Then I got it. Technology Apprenticeship. If I were going t