Make Time To Teach Students Life Skills With Mobile Technology

Author: Cory Klinge
Instructional Excellence Coordinator
Eden Prairie Schools, MN

Coming of age in an era where you carry a personal assistant named Siri, Cortana, or OK Google is not familiar for most adult educators, however providing space and time for ourselves and our learners to explore the capabilities of such AI is crucial to their capacity to function in an ever-changing digital world. It is also crucial to provide our learners with an opportunity to explore digital tools for organization, navigation, money management, communication, and more. A recent study by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills as quoted in Stephen Covey's book "The Leader In Me" found in a survey of parents around the world that computer and technology skills were second only to reading comprehension in desired areas of focus for K-12 schools. Are we making time for teaching "life skills" with technology? What follows is a call to action for how to "sandbox" and engage your learners in collaboratively exploring and building capacity on tools that should make their lives easier.

Tools for Organization

Are we teaching kids how to access and use their digital calendars? If not, find out from your district what digital calendar tools are available to your learners. If you have student iPads, there is a built in iOs calendar app. If you have Chromebooks, it's a Google Calendar. If your students are on PCs, it's and Outlook calendar. Then, explore how to add events to the calendar and teach your learners about what to put on calendars. For example, you might teach them to make a project into an event that spans a period of days instead of listing only on the date that it's assigned and/or due. Then, consider how the platform that your learners are using is supported by its AI. So, for example: your learners can use Siri to set a reminder to take a note home for parents to sign, or to set a recurring event for every week of the school year. See the lists at the bottom of this post for command prompts for the 3 major platform Artificial Intelligences.

Furthermore, are we teaching our learners how to write digital lists for themselves in order to get work done? I have had great success personally with apps like Google Keep and Wunderlist (collaborative list and note taking tools) and if I were still in the classroom I might facilitate a personalized learning environment with a tool like Asana or Trello (Project Management Tools) or for younger learners with Google Drive and Google Suite apps Docs and Sheets. On a related note, do our learners know how to organize cloud based storage spaces like Drive, iCloud, and One Drive? Do they know how to share documents and collaborate on them from different locations? Do they know how to comment and chat from within the application in order to move work along?  How about using this curriculum to help teach these skills on Google?

Tools for Navigation, Location, and More

Are we teaching our learners to use maps applications to help them find important locations and areas of interest? iOs has a maps application that has vastly improved in the last couple of years, and Google has Google Maps. Even Microsoft has entered the Maps game with Bing maps. Some suggested skills that you might explore would be how to find routes to important places like home, grandparent's houses, school, areas of interest, etc. How long will it take you to get there in a car, on a bike, walking, etc. Are there multiple ways to get to where you want to go?

Other skills that you might consider exploring would be finding interesting locations "near you" like movie theaters, restaurants, nature centers, etc. Consider including AI into this lesson too by using the links at the end of this article.

Communication

Are we teaching kids how to use voice to text to complete assignments, to send emails, or to send texts? Do our learners know how to hop on a quick video call with a classmate to discuss a project? We need to get ahead of these platforms and provide scaffolding for how these tools can be used in a productive way. For the purposes of this post though, I would urge you to consider 1-2 tools that you could teach your learners to use that would help them digitally communicate outside of school for at least one project a year. Performing work from multiple locations is no longer an optional skill in today's world. It's crucial. Again, ask yourself and your learners: "how can AI help us with communication" and then explore the topic. As with all areas discussed in the post, educate yourself first on the topic. Start with the links at the end of this post and build your skill set from there.

The Ultimate Assistant

Finally, if you and your learners get stuck, don't forget to teach them to use Google and YouTube to search for solutions. If you take away nothing else from this post, please consider teaching your learners to use these two tools properly to teach themselves about any topic. That's a lifelong learning skill that will keep on giving forever!

Here are some guides to the organizational capabilities of Siri, Cortana, and OK Google. 

List of All of Siri's Commands (MacBook/iPad/iPhone)

List of Cortana Commands (Windows 10/Windows Phone/Tablets/XBOX1)

List of OK Google Commands (Chromebooks, Chromeboxes, Android Phones)