Teaching+with+Technology

WEEK 1

This week's readings were pretty overwhelming,so many pages to read, and all during a progress report week.

I have to say that the advances that we have been talking about this week are things that myself and my friends have been waiting for since our teen years. Even CNN got in on the action of using the most up to date technology during the last Presidential Election, if you missed it, here is the video. They were using real-time 3D holograms to have people from other locations in the New York studio.

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The Cyborg theory was the only one that I had not run across before. Though I have seen it in practice, in my own life and the lives of my students. Many adults, feel that texting, chatrooms, etc. are not real forms of communication, but to our students, and adults that are early adopters of technology they are no different than a phone call or letter. If you ever talk to a teen, they consider their cell phone a part of them. It is like an extension of their arm and their mouth.

I, like many teachers, have a fear of losing control of my classroom. I have tried to give students more freedom, and it mostly ends up frustrating me and I end up with half the students not completing the assignment. I keep trying, but frequently have to take long breaks between attempts. I am incorporating ePals© from National Geographic in my classes this year, but it's been rough to get it started. Getting permission slips in, finding classes to partner with, etc.; so I'm not sure how it will go in the long run. I have created a classroom YouTube site to allow students to get real world feedback or their digital projects, but I do not yet have a network of professionals for them to talk to.

The incorporation of technology is even more challenging when many of your students have no real experience with it. About half of my students have cell phones and gaming systems, but a smaller number have computers and even fewer have internet access at home. The ones that have technology sometimes only see it as a toy, rather than as a tool. I do utilize my students with technological experience during class, but I still often feel pulled in 30 directions at once. I think that monitoring and assistance software for the educational setting will increase and make this aspect less stressful for teachers as well.

These classes, and especially the readings this week, have really gotten me to thinking about how to make the transition easier on the students and the teachers. I discussed with my campus technology specialist two ideas I had about making the incorporation of technology run smoother.

The first idea was a result of my co-workers that would like to use technology, but feel they have little knowledge in it's use. One of the biggest teacher complaints is that we get one full day training in anything new, but never get a chance to "play" with it and learn how to use it. I thought that if the technology specialist could take one hour, a conference period per semester, to give individual or small group training in the development of materials for our Promethean boards teachers would be much more comfortable in using them. Then I thought, but an hour isn't enough time, as you have to stop just when you are making progress. If we could get teachers to cover classes for one conference period a semester, each teacher would get four additional hours of training and experience using and creating activities with the Promethean program. I think that this would have to be done on a voluntary basis to avoid staff resentment due to loss of planning time.

For example, a teacher has 1st period off. The 1st period teacher starts her training, then a teacher with 2nd period off would cover the 1st period teacher's class for that day. The next time the 1st period teacher could cover the class for the 2nd period teacher, and both would get an additional two hours of training. The training would be hands-on, and the teacher would not be out the whole day so there would be minimal disruption to lessons and the classroom routine.

My second idea came from a discussion with the technology specialist mentioning that students were changing settings on their laptops and causing issues with the running of the computers. They also had an issue with not being able to find saved files. I suggested that we create a "cheat sheet" about what setting should be left alone, which could be changed, how to save files, etc. We assume that students know basic computing skills, but we shouldn't.

I'm hoping these ideas might be implemented during the second semester of this school year.