You’d never know it by seeing how effortlessly she projects polynomials from a tablet to the monitor at the front of her classroom, but…
You’d never know it by seeing how effortlessly she projects polynomials from a tablet to the monitor at the front of her classroom, but Summer Winrotte began teaching as an avowed traditionalist. “I can remember my first year of teaching, saying that I would never be paperless,” she says. As a math teacher, her college course work had to be done with longhand computations, not even a calculator. Summer didn’t see the value of using technology in the classroom.
Today she works to create a more equitable learning environment through paperless technologies by serving as Tecumseh Junior High School’s digital instructional coach. Tecumseh, located in Lafayette, Indiana, is a 1:1 school, which means every student gets their own Surface 3 to use at school and at home throughout the year.
Summer’s conversion from teaching traditionalist to tech evangelist began with an emotional conviction. “In order for our students to be successful in the 21 st -century workforce, they need to be capable and confident working in a digital age,” she says. “If we said to students, ‘that’s ok, you can use paper every day,’ we’re really not setting them up equally to succeed with the skills they need in the future.”
How could she best honor her commitment to her students? How could she best prepare them for success, both in the classroom and in their professional futures? Summer made a decision – she wouldn’t let her own skepticism of technology’s place in the classroom limit her kids’ potential.
To her pleasant surprise, the tools she ultimately decided to use – the powerful combination of the Surface 3 tablet and OneNote – weren’t as unfamiliar as she’d suspected.
