When Honors Students Complain about Ed Tech...

This is my third school year using an iPad/AppleTV combination to project math problems on the board. It's ended up being one of my main forms of direct instruction.

The projector displays whatever is on my iPad screen. The image it creates only takes up about a third of my white board, but it's clearly visible from anywhere in my classroom. I use a free app called "Educreations" to write problems on the iPad with a stylus, and whatever I write is displayed on the board.

I love it, because I never have to turn my back on the class to write math problems on the board (the classic bane of a math teacher's classroom management attempts). I also get to move around the classroom freely and never be too far away from one section of students for long. Since I've eliminated a lot of the temptation to misbehave by never turning my back on anyone and being close by, I've had way fewer behavior issues.

The students typically love it, because they can actually hear me when I talk about the problem as I write it, and visibility is far superior. Heretofore, it's been a win-win scenario, with me writing fewer referrals and the students learning more math.

This week, though, I had complaints for the very first time... and they came from, of all people, my 8th grade Honors Geometry Students!

These kids are a full 2 years ahead in math... they're even a year ahead of many of our other honors students, who are taking Honors Algebra 1 in the 8th grade. In other words, these are my people, the math nerds. With one voice, they spoke in my C Block this past week: they hate the Educreations/iPad/AppleTV form of lecture I've been doing. I mean, they passionately hate it, and with one voice begged me to stop it. 

I've never been one to ignore the cries of my people, so I went back to traditional whiteboard lectures with that class. But I've been pondering the uprising all week...

• Their stated reason: they told me it's because Educreations only shows a limited amount of material, and with longer problems they want to see the whole problem all at once (rather than have me scrolling up and down to display different parts of a problem). 

This makes a certain amount of sense to me: I think they tend to be "big picture" thinkers, and they want see every part of that big picture all at once. Other students might see one problem taking up an entire white board (as some of our Geometry problems do) and be overwhelmed, but for them it's helpful. 

• What I think might be another, unspoken factor: these kids are heavily invested in THE-WAY-THINGS-HAVE-ALWAYS-BEEN. The traditional classroom model has worked out extraordinarily well for them, and they are heavily invested in its continued preservation. All their lives, a math teacher has stood at the front of the class and written on a white board, and all their lives they've taken that experience and turned it into straight A's and accolades. There's a lot of comfort for them in THE-WAY-THINGS-HAVE-ALWAYS-BEEN, and the pedagogical advantages of Mr. McLaughlin's technology be damned. 

Has anyone else experienced this kind of resistance to technology (or other changes) in honors students? I'd love to hear your thoughts!