Technology in The Classroom

At my school that I am assigned, I feel like it is hard to have a technology rich lesson plan that is super new and exciting to the students. They have a projector, smart board, Elmo, surround system, digital cameras and laptops. So to say the least, a technology rich lesson plan can totally happen, it is just that I want something that is new and exciting. I feel like I would be able to incorporate all of those things into a lesson, I feel like the students will have a "so what?" attitude. I'll have to ask my teacher how she keeps things new and exciting because I am excited about the opportunity to learn how to use all of this stuff. I am most excited about the Elmo right now because we won't have to make over head transparencies. I really like that our teacher is just letting us role with all of these resources in her classroom because I could see someone being protective over it. I think that I would be like that, just because you want things to last, even though technology is ever changing. In psychology, we learned about 5th and 6th grade classes in Nebo school district that have wiki's that they are able to talk about their homework outside of class and help each other. I really like that idea of making a community of learners digitally. It will allow for shy personalities to shine through and students will be able to learn from each other, which is where the best learning happens.

Online Access

Learning Google Sites has opened up the possibilities for contact as a teacher. This is a great way to keep the parents of your students informed about what is going on. The sites you can make are endless to the possibilities that you can create on keeping parents up to date on what is going on in your class. I like the idea of the Home Page being a way of welcome, and you can have your contact on the very first thing they see. That is easy access which is a great tool for those people who really need to get a hold of you for some reason or another. I really like the announcements page and calendar page. This is what will keep a classroom moving smoothly because the parents can get updates on what is going on or what they are responsible for. This is also a great outline for a teacher as well. I like to be organized and this is a great way to keep everyone on the same page. Not only for events coming up but for classroom instruction as well. I like the Homework page as more of a reminder for the student. I think it would be fun that they student would have to go home an get their assignment instead of just getting it the old fashion way on paper. It would be neat to have links the students could use for homework help and really practice rather than learn new things. I think children of this day would really open their minds up to something digitally rather than having to do homework in a way that is not practical for them. This is something that they will for surely be using in the real world and I like the possibilities of having this site for classroom use. I thought it would be fun to have the students granted access to the site for a week and they can submit their book reports on the site and display it for the parents. We could also show this in class and just connect to our site. I see this way of doing a book report a lot more eye catching for students then the old poster. Sure students will have the same information on this, it will just be in a cooler hip form.

Digital Story (continued...)

So we have put the final touches on our digital story, the experience was very good for us. I really feel like if you wanted to integrate technology in a fun and inviting way, this is a good for that. I thought that our story came together well and I particularly liked learning the Audacity program. It is amazing what you can do with it. I really like that you have such mobility with it because you can put in so many aspects that you other wise can't in Photo story. I also thought that looking for music was one of the funnest parts because I really feel like music is the something in a story or movie that makes you feel what the person is trying to make you feel. I think that scary movies wouldn't be as scary with out the music; it just gets you in that anticipation mode. I thought that the music we chose was good for our story, it gives the feel of our topic. Also, it was really easy to find pictures, just it was hard narrowing down what you wanted, and what worked with the content. That was probably the hardest part for us. It was fun doing the recording and it was amazing that our microphone was so good. People were turning on the computers and it was making noise, there were printers printing and some really considerate people next to us were talking really loud. However none of that was picked up, which was really nice. I had fun with the recording too, it is always weird to hear your own voice played back to you.
Now to some other class content, my group for Classroom Management has decided to do a PowerPoint, no big deal. It was interesting to me to hear one of our group members say that when there is a PowerPoint she learns the content of what the other groups are trying to portray better than with out one. I thought it was interesting because not every class the teacher has a ready and waiting PowerPoint. That made me think that technology is not only tapping in to the visual learners it is tapping into the auditory too, like our digital story that has narration and music. I thought it was as good learning experience to hear how she learns, because that will help me in the future if there is a student that learns better with a PowerPoint then why not put one together for them.

Technology in the Classroom

So I went and met my cooperating teacher and her classroom ROCKS!! She has a super technology filled classrom. She got a grant where she has to take two years of classes and she has technology in her classroom in return. This grant is only for upper grades so they were able to have this technology implimented in their classroom. So she has some really cool things, like, a Smart Board, an Elmo, a PROJECTOR, digital cameras and hopefully by the time I am in her classroom the laptop cart is coming in November. It was so eye opening because she let us in her classroom while she took the students to the lunch room and I was looking around, I saw the celing and there was the projector. Then when she came back to explain what she wanted us to do and then she showed us around her classroom. She explained the Elmo, it is awesome! No more making transparencies you just put the picture on the Elmo and you can even zoom in to see the fibers in a shirt. I am really excited to learn how to use the Smart Board, she was saying that you can save lesson plans on it. Oh and also, her classroom has a sound system. A surround sound system. It was funny because she was explaining all of their resources like it was everyday for them. There are very few classrooms with the type of technology that hers has. Also something that I am excited about is that their school has two computer labs, one is for classes where they have a specialist and one is for check out. There are a lot of resources at this school and I am really excited to learn how it all works. I have only heard how cool the smart boards are but have never actually touched one. This is going to be fun!!

Digital Story Cont...

Earlier I talked about how as a teacher you could make Digital Stories to pertain to any content you need. I think that digital stories are a great tool because of this flexibility to do anything with them. If you can't find an interesting way to present a topic or can't find a video to go along with a unit of topic you are introducing, you could make a digital story. The only drawback I see to this is that it is time consuming. If you weren't able to find time to squeeze this in, it could be difficult to get the quality of digital story you want. I think that this would be a great as a project for older grades, I personally would want students to do one on a topic that we are studying however, I think it would be fun to see what they would choose as a student choice topic. The only draw back I see to this is, in elementary school, everyone shares the computer lab, unlike high school, or my high school each subject (English, math, and science) all had their own lab and then we had an additional lab. So there was always a computer lab that you could check out. In the elementary schools that I have been in, the have one lab that you get to use once a week. However, I really want to get a laptop station grant so that my class or as a grade we could have our own so that we could have the opportunity to actually use these great tools.
I think that this digital story is going to be a lot of fun. My partner and I have started our story board and I really liked the sticky note idea. I really like the mobility because it doesn't have to be concrete because you can just move the sticky note. We are doing our digital story on volcanoes and I am enjoying relearning things about them. This is a great tool, I just hope that my classroom will be able to have the opportunity to use it.