Digital Publishing In First Grade

A fascinating idea, empowering young authors with the ease of publishing their content. But here are a couple observations that may not have had time to be addresses in the video.

Since students used tablets, most were typing with a single finger. While great authors are not always great typists, this seemed like a missed opportunity to encourage
good keyboarding skills. It may simply be a limitation by the equipment or a failure to select the best tool for the task at hand.

Another observation was the way the teacher shared students' work. Rather than use native cloud based sharing features, students simply placed their tablet on a document projector. Of course there are legal implication of allowing first graders on social networking, but that only emphasizes the problems inherent in the technology. Just because we can, doesn't mean we should.

It's exciting to see younger students using a variety of technology to engage a global audience. While this video showcases one classroom's development of digital publishing, I'm curious to know how well parents and peers engaged in the students' work.