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These struggling students finally found success in an unlikely place: their phone screens.

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Ken Halla was a relatively new high school geography teacher when he got a particularly tough class to teach.

Many of the students were at-risk sophomores who had failed the year before. They were being forced to repeat a class they never cared for in the first place with a bunch of younger kids they didn't know.  This didn't make it easy to motivate or engage them.

Making things worse, the school — Hayfield Secondary School in Fairfax County, Virginia — was undergoing major renovations. This meant that most of the freshman classrooms were relocated to mobile trailers during the construction, which was isolating and distracting.


On top of all that, Halla had to deal with a lot of absences. Up to six students could be out at any given time — meaning that he knew it'd be nearly impossible to keep them all on the same page.

"You can’t teach traditionally if they’re not all there, and they’re not there on a regular basis," Halla explains. "So that was kind of my first wake-up call that we can’t do everything the same way."

[rebelmouse-image 19530869 dam="1" original_size="1200x759" caption="Photo by IC-RE/Wikimedia Commons." expand=1]Photo by IC-RE/Wikimedia Commons.

Halla had to find a way to pass them before they fell even further behind — and to do that, he would need to focus his attention more on individual students.

But there was only one of him and only so much class time to go around. And the more one-on-one time he spent catching up a student, the less he could supervise the rest of the class.

To top it all off, many students were starting to carry smartphones. This made them even more distracted and more inclined to say, "Well, why can't I just Google the answer?"

So finally, Halla dared them to try it.

[rebelmouse-image 19530870 dam="1" original_size="1280x960" caption="Photo by Globaloria Game Design/Wikimedia Commons." expand=1]Photo by Globaloria Game Design/Wikimedia Commons.

Halla used his students' smartphones to his own advantage — to keep them engaged while he was helping someone else and to teach them how to work in the real world.

"It was just using the technology to teach differently for different kids, or to have different paces for different kids, or whatever method you needed," he explains.

Halla began to record his lessons, which the students could watch on their phones during class time. During the class period, he would walk around the room to make sure the students stayed on task. He'd check in one-on-one with each of them to offer guidance, answer any outstanding questions, and make sure they were all keeping up — while the other students continued to learn on their own time, at their own pace, with their phones.

Now, if they needed to re-watch a video to understand a concept they didn't get the first time around, they could do that without holding back the rest of the class.

"It’s five minutes long, and [the student's] not embarrassed by asking me 14 questions — or more likely avoiding asking me 14 questions — and she’s getting the material and she’s getting successful," Halla explains. "That’s what counts."

[rebelmouse-image 19530871 dam="1" original_size="1024x768" caption="Photo by Brad Flickinger/Flickr." expand=1]Photo by Brad Flickinger/Flickr.

After his early success with that first class, Halla began to explore more ways to integrate video, media, and other smartphone technologies into his classroom.

At first, it was just "Smartphone Fridays."

But soon, he was letting them listen to music in the classroom too — though only if they could show that it was actually making them more productive.

He began to use Remind.com, which schedules, automates, and facilitates text-message tips, reminders, and other help between students and teachers (without actually giving up their personal phone numbers to each other). This kept a written record of assignments and communications that could be sent and received at times when it was effective and convenient — for students and for teachers.

By using technology, Halla had found a way to make teaching more hands-on, blending critical thinking with practical application, all without burdening himself even more. He would eventually come to refer to this approach as "using the cloud to individualize instruction" — which is the subtitle of a book he wrote later on the subject.

Photo by daniel julià lundgren/Flickr.

For Halla's students, classroom tech became their recipe for success by empowering them with responsibility and reward. That little bit of success can go a very long way.

One of Halla's proudest examples involved a student who had relocated to the U.S. from Pakistan just one month before the state exam after his home was destroyed in a flood.

Halla knew that if this new student didn’t pass, it would be yet another burden to weigh down an already difficult year — which, like Halla's sophomores during the school construction, had the potential to snowball into catastrophic results.

But through a combination of interactive videos, online guides, and one-on-one meetings, Halla turned that one long month into an unabashed triumph, setting the student up for a brighter future in his new home country.

“That would’ve never worked in my original class [before I started using technology]," Halla explains. "But because of that, he was able to get the material, he was able to master it, and he was able to make up for a bad year personally with one good result, which was well-deserved."

[rebelmouse-image 19530873 dam="1" original_size="1200x624" caption="Photo by John F. Williams/U.S. Navy." expand=1]Photo by John F. Williams/U.S. Navy.

Technology in the classroom is still a new and changing field, and Halla is careful not to lose focus on the goal: "It all starts with the kids and where they best need to be served."

"We need to evolve and adapt to learning that best fits our kids — not the people serving, teaching, administering, and tutoring the kid," he adds. "If I thought for a second that technology learning was harming or was wrong, then I would be like, 'Nope, experiment failed.' But it doesn't. Thankfully, it helps them."

Recently, Halla left the classroom to start a new position as the e-learning coordinator for the entire Fairfax County public school system, focusing on expanding online classes and working with other teachers to integrate video, smartphones, and individualized cloud learning into their curriculums.

Once again, he’s seen tremendous results: enrollment is up and AP scores are already higher than the country’s average. Most importantly, the students are finding greater success in ways that work for them.

Planet

Easy (and free!) ways to save the ocean

The ocean is the heart of our planet. It needs our help to be healthy.

Ocean Wise

Volunteers at a local shoreline cleanup

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The ocean covers over 71% of the Earth’s surface and serves as our planet’s heart. Ocean currents circulate vital heat, moisture, and nutrients around the globe to influence and regulate our climate, similar to the human circulatory system. Cool, right?

Our ocean systems provide us with everything from fresh oxygen to fresh food. We need it to survive and thrive—and when the ocean struggles to function healthfully, the whole world is affected.

Pollution, overfishing, and climate change are the three biggest challenges preventing the ocean from doing its job, and it needs our help now more than ever. Humans created the problem; now humans are responsible for solving it.

#BeOceanWise is a global rallying cry to do what you can for the ocean, because we need the ocean and the ocean needs us. If you’re wondering how—or if—you can make a difference, the answer is a resounding YES. There are a myriad of ways you can help, even if you don’t live near a body of water. For example, you can focus on reducing the amount of plastic you purchase for yourself or your family.

Another easy way to help clean up our oceans is to be aware of what’s known as the “dirty dozen.” Every year, scientists release an updated list of the most-found litter scattered along shorelines. The biggest culprit? Single-use beverage and food items such as foam cups, straws, bottle caps, and cigarette butts. If you can’t cut single-use plastic out of your life completely, we understand. Just make sure to correctly recycle plastic when you are finished using it. A staggering 3 million tons of plastic ends up in our oceans annually. Imagine the difference we could make if everyone recycled!

The 2022 "Dirty Dozen" ListOcean Wise

If you live near a shoreline, help clean it up! Organize or join an effort to take action and make a positive impact in your community alongside your friends, family, or colleagues. You can also tag @oceanwise on social if you spot a beach that needs some love. The location will be added to Ocean Wise’s system so you can submit data on the litter found during future Shoreline Cleanups. This data helps Ocean Wise work with businesses and governments to stop plastic pollution at its source. In Canada, Ocean Wise data helped inform a federal ban on unnecessary single-use plastics. Small but important actions like these greatly help reduce the litter that ends up in our ocean.

Ocean Wise, a conservation organization on a mission to restore and protect our oceans, is focused on empowering and educating everyone from individuals to governments on how to protect our waters. They are making conservation happen through five big initiatives: monitoring and protecting whales, fighting climate change and restoring biodiversity, innovating for a plastic-free ocean, protecting and restoring fish stocks, and finally, educating and empowering youth. The non-profit believes that in order to rebuild a resilient and vibrant ocean within the next ten years, everyone needs to take action.

Become an Ocean Wise ally and share your knowledge with others. The more people who know how badly the ocean needs our help, the better! Now is a great time to commit to being a part of something bigger and get our oceans healthy again.

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