WK 1: Comment Topic #2-Kristi Swartz/Free Choice

Kristi - Topic #2
Kristi -

I too find it quite disturbing to see teachers in the dark about how to hook up technology, or what to do with it in the classroom. Having access to all the technology will not provide the students with quality usage if the presenters (teachers) are unaware of what to do with the equipment. I too have seen full-length videos being shown on TVs and computers. What a waste of the students' educational time -- not to mention good equipment!

Kristi wrote:

I do not presently have a full time teaching position, but have worked at one particular school for 4 long- term sub jobs in the past year and a half, so I will use one of those experiences as an example. When I completed a job last year, it was for 12 weeks in a 6th grade classroom. The teacher had access and used an Airliner with a pad and pen to give lectures to students about the math they were learning. Technology was very interactive for the teacher: it has a pen, shapes, letters and a writing tool and can share internet images, etc. along with smart board documents she created. Sounds great, right? I like a much more student centered approach to learning math with active engagement by the students. When I said something about having the 6th graders show their examples and work using the tool, she said it was not for student use, she stated that the students would not be able to use the tools and it would take too much time. She did not want them using the tool.  

I felt I had to follow her rules as it was her tool and her classroom, so each day, we had to take the sheet she displayed the airliner projection on down during class to expose a real white board where students could share their examples and explanation during math interactively – I only wish I knew then about all of the amazing web 2.o tools like sciblink.com, dabbleboard.com, cosketch.com, scribblar.com and more! I could have saved myself a lot of time up and down the chairs attaching the sheet to the Velcro on the wall! I would have had the students use technology in this way to show their understanding and show their work. What is the use of technology if students aren’t even allowed to use it?? What is that telling our students?

I found technology to be available in the school, but the knowledge of how to implement it to be lacking. Teachers wanted to use technology, but were unsure how to hook it up, or unsure what to use it for, or how to get students involved in the usage. I saw many teachers use it for showing full-length videos.

This year, I brought my Mac Book Pro to class almost everyday, and used the $30 cord that hooks it to the LCD screen to engage the students with technology daily. They loved it! My students were using computers as we could get them in the classroom. Computers were shared among a grade level with 2 laptop carts shared among 15 classrooms. That is not adequate for technology rich project-based learning, but I did the best I could with what we were given. The students did feel that technology was used a lot in the classroom-even though most was through a whole class effort, or teacher modeling with student use from home. I showed them many web 2.o tools and we used them as a whole group. I only wish there were 5-6 computers in each classroom so students could have at least done group work on the computers daily.