The One Thing I Have Left

My school district hopped on the technology wagon and gave every kid in 4th-9th grades ipads this year.  4th and 5th got them first, so we've had them since October.

They decided that 4th and 5th grade will not take these ipads home.  They will have one assigned to them and every afternoon, the ipads will go into a special cart to charge them and then in the morning, they will get their ipad out and use it as necessary.

The older grade get to take theirs home.  I can't being to imagine how that's working.

Back over here in the 4th and 5th grade, I knew it would take some getting used to, so I didn't ask for them to bring ipads the first few weeks they had them.  There has been much talk about how they will take them everywhere but it took their classroom teachers getting used to the idea that kids can indeed carry them down the hall to another class without incident.

My morning classes have been bringing them regularly for a couple of months, but the afternoon classes have been a challenge due to recess, lunch and not going back to their classrooms after they have me in the afternoon.

I've finally figured out a way around that too.

And I'm starting to actually integrate them into my lessons, where they actually have to have the ipad in order to make an activity happen.

And now, I can be heard saying 150 times a day:

"stop touching your ipads"
"why are you touching your ipads right now?"
"whose ipad is making noise right now?"
"show me where it says on the board that this is the time to use your ipad"
"you shouldn't be using your ipad until you have finished all the way through #3 on the board"
"let's flip the ipads upside down so we can resist the temptation of touching it right now"
"I can't see your eyes LOOK AT ME"

And this is where I pull out the only weapon I have left in my arsenal:

"if I have to tell one more person to stop touching their ipad, you will all lose the privilege of bringing your ipads next week"

Kids knew this would happen.  They knew that giving them a toy like an ipad would give us one more thing we can take away, punish and threaten them with.

I have only told one class they can't bring their ipads the following week.  They were sad when I said it but didn't even notice they didn't have them when they returned.  All it really did was shoot me in the foot because I couldn't do the same thing I had done with 24 other classes because they needed their ipads.  So I had to invent something new.

Not fun at all.

And it always makes me wonder.  Did teachers say these things back when calculators were mainstreamed?  Ball point pens?  Trapper Keepers?

What's next?  Little spaceships for teleportation?  "if I have to tell you one more time to stay in this room, I'm taking away your teleporter and you'll have to WALK to the next room.  Just like I did in the old days."

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