Back-to-School Student Technology Checklist

The best guidelines and policies in the world will do no good if students are not tuned in to them. Therefore, it’s important for students to have a strong understanding of both your expectations and their responsibilities. It’s probably not enough just to read through these on the first day of class and expect that students have internalized them. Instead, you’ll want to think of applications and ways to have students further process and internalize your expectations.

One way to do this is to have students collaboratively create T-Charts of what the guidelines look like and sound like in practice, as well as what they do not look like and sound like. This can help bring abstract ideas to life and make them more concrete and understandable.

In some cases, you can have students aid in developing your classroom guidelines and expectations. This is ideal when possible, as it provides student ownership in both the process and the expectations. Students often bring valuable insights forward for consideration, and most times, their expectations will align with those that you would have developed yourself.

In any scenario, you will want to review the guidelines beyond the first day of class. You might consider a quick quiz to check for understanding, or you could even have students sign a contract indicating that they understand the expectations and agree to follow them.

There are a couple of truths when it comes to classroom technology. First, something will eventually go wrong. It’ll happen, so you’ll want to be ready for it. Second, there is only one of you as the teacher and probably 25 to 35 students. There’s no way that you can help them all at once. Therefore, you’ll want to make sure that your students are empowered to be their own tech support—at least for a first level of defense.

You can approach this in a variety of ways. One is to review some basic troubleshooting strategies with the entire class. You might even post an anchor chart of these tips on the wall of your classroom or in your learning management system. Examples of these might be to check whether the battery is charged, to check the internet connection, and to restart the device. It’s surprising how often simply restarting a device will fix the problem.

If those simple strategies don’t work, you might encourage students to check with a friend. It seems like at least one or two students in every classroom take pride in being the tech expert for the class, and they can be extremely good at troubleshooting tech problems. Oftentimes, they are better at it than the teacher because they’ve spent more time with it.

If those strategies don’t work, you’ll need an escalation procedure. Perhaps you want students to come to you, or maybe you send them to the school’s tech help specialist.

Also, consider what students will do if they need a replacement device for the day. Does your school have extras that students can check out, or are there spares in the classroom or department supply closet?

There is no “one size fits all” approach to this, but you’ll want to develop a troubleshooting plan and then make sure that your students know how it works.

Since our students are growing up in a tech-infused world, they need to know how to be good digital citizens in that space. Our classrooms are an ideal place for students to learn how to develop positive tech skills and habits.

This involves concepts like cybersecurity and privacy. We need to help students develop strong passwords and an understanding for how to keep themselves safe in online environments. Digital citizenship also includes practicing respectful communication and behavior online. Having students engage in online discussion forums is a great place to teach and reinforce these skills.

Digital citizenship also involves the responsible use of technology. This includes addressing such topics as plagiarism, academic integrity, and online ethics. Now more than ever, it also includes expectations and guidance around the use of artificial intelligence. What does ethical use of AI look like in your classroom? Students should know the expectations, and it can be effective to engage them in scenarios and conversations around this topic.

Typically, a classroom LMS is the central online hub for all things digital. You’ve probably spent a lot of time setting this up, organizing it, and loading it with content and activities. All of this work will do no good if students don’t know how to use it or access the content within it. Therefore, it’s important to be intentional about taking time to not only review the LMS environment with your students but also to have them practice using it. Students need to regularly engage in hands-on use of your LMS for it to become habit-forming and second nature to them.

One great way to do this is to create an LMS scavenger hunt that requires students to explore your online learning space. Another effective strategy is to have a self-paced learning module at the top of your LMS that teaches students how to use all aspects of your online learning space. It may require them to find your syllabus, engage in a “get to know you” discussion forum, take an interest survey, or submit an essay describing how they best learn.

These LMS exploration activities can have multiple purposes. They can teach students how to use the digital resources while also providing opportunities for student introductions, mixers, and background surveys. They learn the tech, and you get to learn about them—that’s a win-win.

While it’s true that students have grown up as digital natives—living their entire lives in a world saturated with technology—it’s also true that they don’t always know how to effectively use that technology. Yes, they’re probably good with their phones and social media, but can they navigate a suite of Google or Microsoft tools? Are they familiar with good design principles? Do they know how to use more than just the surface-level, basic functions of a piece of software?

In all likelihood, students will need to learn how to effectively use new digital tools. They might be confident that they can learn how to use them, but they will probably still need some guidance. You could choose to formally teach the core skills and then offer a library of tutorial videos that students can seek out when they need them. You might instead pair up students and give them a tech challenge that requires them to use specific functions of a piece of software. Through the completion of this type of challenge, students can help each other figure out how the tool works.

There are lots of ways to approach this skill development, but it’s important to remember that not all students will intuitively know how to use the technology available to them. They may also be unaware of which tool is the best choice for completing different tasks. The classroom environment provides an ideal space to help guide them in this learning.

This checklist item could have theoretically been grouped in with digital citizenship, but it’s being called out separately since it’s so critical. Our students need to be able to discern whether content is credible or unreliable. They must be able to distinguish fact from fiction in online spaces—and this is certainly not as simple as it sounds. Many adults struggle with this, especially as deepfakes and AI-generated content become more prolific.

As students conduct research in our classrooms, we need to help them evaluate the quality and credibility of the content that they find. It’s a good idea to provide a list of specific websites for students to review and evaluate. This can lead to rich class discussions about the nuances of bias, credibility, and persuasion. These skills are essential in a democracy that requires voters to make choices based on accurate and complete information.

Students are oftentimes not naturally adept at managing time or organizing, so it’s important that they receive guidance and engage in practice to build up proficiency with these skills. As their teachers, we can set up opportunities to practice both. We can guide them in organizing their online storage spaces. We can also give them models for how to develop a folder structure with meaningful names. You might even guide your whole class in the setup of a common folder structure that they will use throughout the year. This can make it much more efficient to have students save and retrieve classwork.

You can also have students practice time management. While this is not just a digital skill, it does apply to projects where students are using digital tools to compose and create. You can help them budget their time, especially on projects that span multiple days or weeks. You might have them use digital calendars or project management tools to keep themselves organized. These are important life skills that most of them will use in the workplace and in their personal lives. The classroom is a great place for students to develop and practice these skills.