While in my observations I did see a lot of technology being used. For my observations I was at Churchill Academy for my Special Education placement and I was at Bear Exploration Center for the rest of my hours. I did not see a lot of technology being used at Churchill Academy. This could be attributed to the fact that Churchill is strictly a Special Education school for students withthings like Autism, ADHD, and certain Learning Disabilities. I honestly think that technology could have been used a little more in this classroom. I did not even see much Assistive Technology being used to help students with disabilities. Of course every classroom had a smart board and a desktop computer, but at Churchill they have a specific way that they teach students with disabilities and technology does not come into the picture a lot. The teacher did use it for certain activities like watching movies and Math. For my second placement at Bear I saw tons of technology being used in their classrooms. The teachers use everything from the Smart Board to take roll to using iPads for Math games during small group time.We do not normally see technology being used in Math, but as her students explored different parts of math they had a game for it. I did think that my teacher used the technology she was given to the best of her ability. She even encouraged me to use it while I taught my Practicum lessons. All of her students seemed to be engaged and ready to learn every time technology was used in the classroom. This placement and this class add up to me being more confident to use technology in my internship and future classroom. Students learn in different ways and we have to utilize all that is out there to help them learn to the best of their ability.
Blog Prompts
The first blog prompt that I would do would be dealing with the subject of Math. This is an unusual thing to blog about, but I think that this prompt would help kids answer a question that they have been asking teachers for years. The blog prompt would be: Relate today’s math lesson to how it is useful in real life. I feel like Students in every classroom ask their self or their teacher this question way too much. If we get our students to ask their self this question and come up with the answer their self, we will help them know that what they are learning in Math class has a purpose. In grade school I would find myself wondering what the purpose of learning may things was and often my teachers would not answer me so I feel that this blog prompt would answer a lot of those questions on its own.
The second subject that I would like to use blogs for would be Social Studies. The blog Prompt might be something like: How did the civil war effect our country today. This helps students think and reflect on those times and think about present times as well. Social studies would be a great place to use blogs because some students do not think that it is very beneficial to learn about our country’s history because of the fact that it has already happened. What they do not understand is that “History repeats itself”. As a class we can notice those patterns and analyze them. Like myself, some students are very into history and on the other hand some do not see the point of learning it, but if we make them reflect on what has happened in our country them they might have a better understanding of what is going on in our world and how history plays into that.
Google can do some amazing things. We are all guilty of taking out our phones at one point or another and “Googling:” something we didn’t know, looking for a picture we need for a project, and so many more things. If I could guess, I would say that the average person Googles something at least one or two times a week. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It is a great feeling to know that in the click of a button we can find out what we need to know without tearing up an entire library.
For educators and students this is a great thing to have. For an educator we can find lesson plans in seconds, or do things like look for pictures and sources that do not pop up on every search engine. We can use Google to narrow our search and broaden it. There is really no limits to whatever we need to find. For students it is easy to use. They can Google things for school projects and other things. Overall, this makes things easier for both parties. The only thing that is negative about Google is the fact that we have become so dependent on it that we will not know how to look anything up in a real dictionary or encyclopedia. We still need to know these skills in life.
This changes things for us as educators because we can do just about anything on Google. We can use Google Drive to share things with our student’s parents, we can use it to make documents and presentations, and we can even use it for classroom management with Google Classroom. I had no clue that we could do all of these things with Google until I started Educational Technology. As a future teacher, I look forward to using Google and all of its resources. This will not only help me keep my classroom organized, but it will be there even if my computer decides to take a crash. Every teacher needs to use Google’s resources at some time or another.
Project Based Learning
Project Based Learning seems to be a great way to teach. Of course, everyone has their opinions about how and when we are supposed to use it, but it seems to help with modeling how we need to take care of real life situations. Of course a lot of people are complaining or are upset about the switch to Common Core or the College and Career Readiness Standards. As a future teacher I have a year until I have to deal with it, but Project Based Learning seems to be a great way to align with these standards. The only down side I see to PBL is that it is a group effort. Group projects can always be beneficial but, not all students will put in as much effort as their peers. As teachers, we have to take notice of this and somehow get students feedback on their group members to give the students who worked hard a good grade and possibly deduct from the others who did not work as hard.
My understanding of Common Core is that the students take a lot of the responsibility for their own learning so they can be better prepared to go to college and their future careers without depending on others. This makes things a little harder for the students because it takes things up a notch. While students before Common Core were depending on the teacher to directly tell them what is going on students will have to come up with the answers by reasoning. This is why PBL is a good way to teach under Common Core because they have to come up with solutions on their own.
Project Based Learning seems to be more practical than more work for the teacher. With PBL, students pick how they want to present the information that they found so it would be up to them on how to present it. The teacher would have to set aside valuable instruction time for the students to coordinate and he or she may have to guide the groups in the right directions, but overall she can be a facilitator to her class as they work on their findings and the conclusion of their project.
I do think that students would find PBL engaging. When students have to work towards something it makes them remember it. I know this from personal experience. If students have to work on something that is challenging for them they seems to always remember why they did it and how. I do not think that PBL is more engaging than other strategies that we will use in the classroom. Depending on the standard and the way that our class responds will determine if we need to use PBL again or try another strategy to help our students learn to the best of their ability.
In Elementary School I am not sure how I would/did react to PBL. I liked group projects a lot more then because my group members were willing to put the work in. In High School, I despised anything close to PBL because high schoolers are more lazy than elementary school students in some cases. Overall I feel that Project Based Learning is good for every level according on what is being taught.
Technology in My Classroom
There are so many great things that I can use in my classroom to teach the standards effectively. The website that I would like to use from the Web Wardrobe would be Timetoast. We actually used this in my travel class for Germany this past Spring and it was very easy to use and really helped make sense of things that went on in History. For the specific assignment I had to create a timeline of the employment of Albert Einstein. Even thought it was an assignment for travel class and it did not count that much towards my grade I found it to be very helpful.
In my classroom I could use this in a Social Studies lesson. Each student could create their own timeline, or I could make this part of a collaborative group project. The possibilities are endless. We could even create a class timeline together! This is a very good website to use for the students who are visual learners too because they are placing things on their timeline, which lets them get the concept of how these things happened in history. This could also be used in science. We can create a week long virtual timeline about the weather that week and add to it everyday.
One thing that I liked about time toast was not only could you put the date and a description, but you can also put pictures with each event on the timeline. This might help the students because some remember facts by looking at pictures.
There would be a lot of verbs that go along with the time toast website. First would be under creating and that would be designing. The students in my class would be designing a timeline that helps them map out what went on in history. Next, would be under analysing because we are linking strands of history together to make it easier to connect. This assignment could be linked to many of these verbs, but this is just a few. Overall, this website could be very beneficial to tackle a standard and get the job done.
Here is a link to the site: http://www.timetoast.com/
Ed Tech Experience
I spent all of my schooling in the Autauga County School system. For Elementary School I went to Daniel Pratt Elementary School and for my secondary schooling I went to Prattville Junior High School and Prattville High School. I am proud I grew up in this school system. The teachers always tried their best to help you in any way they could, but we did not see as much technology in the classroom as I see in classrooms now. In Elementary School I honestly did not have a lot of experiences with technology. Of course looking back on it that was almost ten years ago for me. Technology in our schools has changed a lot. I do not remember a big Smart Board in the front of the classroom, tablets used by every student, or the teacher using a laptop at all except to check attendance in our class. Besides the movies that we watched in the classroom on the TV, the most technology I remember is the “laptop cart” that would occasionally come rolling into our classroom. This consisted of a big file cabinet that also served as a storage case for about 25 laptop computers that only worked when you didn’t need them to and almost broke at the sight of students looking at them. Also I can’t forget about the overhead projectors! This is probably where my technology problems stem from. Of course we had classroom computers, but the teachers did not let us get on them that much because we were constantly doing other things. As I progressed into High School I did start to see more technology arising. Smart Boards started showing up in every classroom that I went into. Also, Our band directors started showing us our performances on the big screen in our band room. Teachers started expecting us to work with the internet a lot more as well to write research papers and other things. At the High School level we had to complete a Computer Applications class in order to satisfy our graduation requirements as well. As we can see I did not have a lot of experience with technology before college. I think that technology is growing so much that it is impossible for teacher to not know about today’s new technology. Overall, technology helps you so much in the long run. Teachers can do so much today with it that my teachers never could have imagined.
kcausby 