Screen free week

I decided to have a screen free week in my class to start off the term. I was finding that my children didn't really appreciate the technology that the school provided for them. So I decided to see how they would cope with out our iPads and laptops. The results were pretty impressive.

The initial reaction from the children was not surprising. How will we look up meanings of words? How will we find information? What will we do before school? It was as if the world was crumbling around them. I explained that we were not doing such a great job of looking after all these amazing tools that we have in our room. We left them on the floor where people could step on them. I have had kids drop a laptop (I know you cringed when you read that). The behaviours were getting quite reckless, even though they got regular reminders about how to hold the computers when they carried them and how to pack them away. So this prompted me to take the technology out of my room to show the children what life would be like with out them.
After a few days with out screens my first realisation was that our kids don't use some of the skills that are second nature to us. They live in the computer age. Technology is as natural is breathing to them. This got me thinking. How often do I use a dictionary to look up a word? When do I go to a book to find information about something? Well it's not very often. I go to dictionary.com to look up meanings and use google to look for information. So even though the kids life line (technology) was taken away from them for a week, it was still a very valuable experience. The children learned or remembered some new skills that were being forgotten. I also saw them become more aware of the people around them. A lot of the bickering over technology stopped. The changes in my students were huge. Of course not all children took this on board but I had enough kids take on a more mature attitude that they now remind the others of the right thing to do.
I had the children reflect on the week and leave a comment for me on our class blog (http://kidblog.org/Room265/room26pvs/screen-free-week/#comments). Over all I think they found it a positive experience although they were VERY happy to see them back. It made us think about how we treated out technology and what we used it for. Now we can learn from this and re-write some new guidelines about the use of technology to promote a more responsible attitude towards these amazing tools we have in our room.