Give up some control...

As teachers, we like our classroom to run exactly as we planned in our lesson. Unfortunately, students don't learn in the same manner as they used to. They are MUCH more "wired" than we are.

I think we try so hard to keep up with technology, we sometimes forget to give some of the responsibility to the students.

For example:

Challenge:I want to be able to share a google doc with my 3rd hour class. I don't want to have to type in all of their addresses manually. That would take a lot of MY time.

Solution: Have a computer set up in a wordprocessing document. When students walk in (or as part of a center) have them type their school email address on the page and then press enter. Once the class is done, you now have a document with the email addresses of each student. You can copy/paste this into the share box or even use it to email all the students.

Benefits: Students have taken ownership. If they didn't type it or type it in correctly, they won't be getting the documents they need. The teacher has just saved a lot of time, especially if they teacher several classes. We are modeling the fact that we all have to work together as we journey towards success!

You can't do it all! Just do your best job at what you can do!

Don't sweat the small stuff :)