They are resilient, smart, and perceptive in a way that, quite frankly, adults rarely are.
On Thursday I went to PES and talked with a third grade class. Ms. Barton has been leading her students in a Genius Hour all year long. After coming up with their topics an doing research, they wrote reports and were ready to share there findings. At that point, i got to jump into the fun and teach the scholars how to use Google Slides.
But before we ever got to that, I asked them about their topics.
Cheetahs!
Minecraft!
LEGOs!
Road Runners!
Dirt Bikes!
Micro Chips!
Call of Duty!
They talked about their topics with such enthusiasm and pride, the knowledge radiated from them.
Then we set to work. We talked about Google Drive, how to find it, and how to find your files.
We talked about how to make a new file, how to create a Slide file, and how to rename it. We discussed the importance of naming all files (who wants 25 untitled documents??).
They got to choose a theme, and had such fun. It was great to see the creativity. Out of the class of 25, very few had the same theme.
They made a title (their name) and subtitle (something interesting about themselves). It was great to see their confidence and personality come out as they named themselves with pride, enthusiasm , and self-respect.
Then we got to the meat of the project.
Adding slides.
Changing fonts.
Changing font colors.
Changing font sizes.
Making bulleted lists.
Four students even presented them to the class, and we talked about what we liked best about the slides, celebrating each student with a chorus of snaps.
And these kids are 8.
Eight years old and tackling new technology, researching complicated topics and asking difficult questions. Learning, adapting, changing. Entering into new technology not with fear but with excitement of the new possibilities ahead of them.
This is why it is so important to get tech into their hands, show them how to use it, then let them run wild.
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