Across the United States, most schools have spent the last decade building and rolling out a one-to-one device program where each student has access to a school-issued computer. An estimated 90% of all middle school and high school students already have a device, with 85% of teachers reporting that they integrate their devices into their lessons a few times a week or more. That said, those same teachers describe their relationship with their devices as one of necessity, not instructional strategy. Teachers are required to use their devices as districts mandate them, and only for standardized testing platforms, grade-reporting programs or for students to use during personal learning time. Rarely are devices used as a learning or instructing tool.
At St. Joseph’s Academy, a secondary school in Southern New Jersey, teachers wanted to challenge this practice. Teachers aimed to see how they could transform their students’ laptops into an instrument that enabled them to better teach and instruct, rather than just for testing and personal learning time. What they found offers a useful model for schools asking the same question.
Using Digital Tools To Make Thinking Visible
One of the most effective ways teachers instruct is by demonstrating a task while narrating the thought process. Common teaching theories, like the cognitive apprenticeship theory, an instructional approach that teaches cognitive and metacognitive skills such as problem-solving, reading comprehension, writing, and math, advocate that teachers make the thinking process visible to learners. In a classroom setting, this has historically looked like the teacher narrating their thinking aloud while students listen to the thinking process unfold. A teacher can mark up a book, while students listen to the verbal narration and aim to reconstruct the thinking process from the teacher’s description. Unfortunately, in this model, the students have traditionally not been able to see the teacher’s pen move across the page, pause over sentences or write in the margins.
At St. Joseph’s Academy, teachers were able to reflect on their traditional teaching methodologies and execute the lessons in a new way using their digital tools. The shift began with implementing a stylus-enabled laptop device where educators can annotate a digital text in real time, casting the notes to the screen in front of the classroom in addition to having students watch on their own screens. In real time, students were able to mimic and learn from the instructor as they use the device. As a result, by using their device with these stylus features, the teacher’s method of modeling did not change, rather, their ability to make the lessons visible was changed. Teachers reported that students engaged more actively with the material and grasped concepts more quickly when they could follow the annotation process step by step.
This methodology can extend to any classroom. An English teacher can annotate a text, a science teacher can showcase a lab technique, or a math teacher can break down an equation. Making the process visible gives students something a verbal description cannot, as narration no longer carries the full weight of instruction.
What does your Device need to Keep Up
This type of teaching and the power to execute lessons visually depends on the device having enough processing power to keep pace in real time to withstand the demands of live handwriting recognition, instant markups etc.In the case for St. Joseph’s Academy, students and teachers were equipped with stylus and devices with sustained processing power. Devices like the ASUS ExpertBook B5 Flip G2 offer this kind of performance, built around an Intel® Core™ 7 Series 3 processor with enough power to handle live handwriting recognition and instant markups without lag. For a teacher modeling in front of thirty students, quality tools are needed to sustain uninterrupted work.
A Problem Worth Solving
The case at St. Joseph’s Academy stands out because it takes a problem teachers have long faced and offers a practical way to solve it every day, using a device many students may already have. By understanding the practical ways classroom tech can address a specific problem, teachers are empowered to explore other ways they can best use their classroom tech to enable teaching methodologies and best support their students.
Learn more about ASUS Education here: https://www.asus.com/us/business/solutions/education/
Learn more about how students at St. Joseph’s Academy use ASUS Technology here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3OvqAc7Rbg