Group items tagged

Instead, I focused on student-creation apps. Moving beyond replacing paper math games with flashy math apps, students are now creating their own math videos, writing math blogs, and conducting challenge-based-learning math projects.

Embrace failure. Last year gave me an invaluable lesson in celebrating failure. When the iPad integration didn’t go as I’d initially hoped, I had the rich experience of reflecting and restarting. I teach my students to evaluate their own incorrect math strategies to better appreciate the beauty of one that works. Similarly, I had to fail—and take a good long look at that failure—to truly understand why what I'm doing now works. To be honest, I know that I still have a lot of room for improvement. I'm sure I have more failure in my near future and I can’t wait.

So if you begin to implement a new app in your classroom and it falls flat, react by asking yourself what you’ve learned. Welcome your students into this culture of learning from adversity. By creating a safe, open environment and by being clear that this endeavor is as foreign to you as it is to them, you encourage risk taking—and greater achievements.

nstead of focusing on what was coming out of the iPad, they were focused on what was going into it

first-graders taking assessments of

aha” moments