I also liked the idea of floating a wireless keyboard around the classroom to allow students to become more involved in using the SMARTBoard without leaving their chairs. On the other hand, having students up and moving isn’t a bad thing, especially when they are kinesthetic learners. I see how incorporating a SMARTBoard into lessons adds variety and would be a great differentiated instruction strategy.
My “aha moment” during the lesson on SMARTBoards arrived when we were shown how to use the screen capture tool. In an earlier class, I was part of a group that was creating a lesson that involved writing a list on the whiteboard of the different types of communities that exist. The lesson was for a Grade 1 class, so we thought it would be best to record students’ answers so they could copy them down on their own sheets of paper. But, being Grade 1 students, we would probably only get as far as the list and then move on to something else, and return to the communities lesson another time. Traditionally, the teacher would have to rewrite the brainstormed list. With a SMARTBoard, a screen capture of the list could be brought up at a later time and save the teacher from having to transcribe it again after writing the list on a separate piece of paper for later reference.
I also liked the idea of floating a wireless keyboard around the classroom to allow students to become more involved in using the SMARTBoard without leaving their chairs. On the other hand, having students up and moving isn’t a bad thing, especially when they are kinesthetic learners. I see how incorporating a SMARTBoard into lessons adds variety and would be a great differentiated instruction strategy.
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“Because when you are imagining, you might as well imagine something worth while.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables Dear, Ms. Anne. We have a problem. As a pre-service teacher, it hurts me to read that you, Anne of Green Gables, would feel very much at home in one of today’s typical classrooms because there hasn’t been a drastic technology integration over the past 100 years. I read the rah-rah about technology enhancing lessons (hello, SMARTBoards) and opening doors to information not available in classrooms of yesteryear (hello, Internet). In PSI, there’s an entire class dedicated to showing pre-service teachers how to integrate technology in classrooms. And that integration is happening in classrooms. I was at the Teaching Centre’s “Talking About Teaching” session in the library on Friday (Sept. 20) that focused on innovative strategies and technologies to help teachers “disrupt the regular grind of your class and help students better engage with you, fellow students, and the materials in the course.” The four panelists are from this university, and considering I only attended to grab a free cup of coffee (none was served), I’m happy I stuck around to listen. While the panelists were all interesting, one that stood out to me is a poli-sci prof who posted videos of himself instructing how to do math calculations. Students watched the 30-minute videos on their own time before class and then used their classroom time to put what they learned into practice. What makes this “flip” work is not the video, the prof said, but the one-on-one help he could give students as they worked through their math problems. (For more on flipped classrooms, visit http://www.uleth.ca/teachingcentre/flipping-classroom). It’s a great Lethbridge example of how technology can enhance lessons. I like to think I’m one of those “gung-ho” teachers who’d make technology integral to teaching and learning at all grades and in all subjects. Except… how do I do that when four classrooms share a single cart of laptops? What do I do when one or two of those laptops are inadvertently not plugged in, so they’re not operational when I need them? I’m a Mac girl living in a world of PC-filled laptop carts, so if there is a hardware or software problem what do I do? School divisions have had to cut costs in recent years and one of the things to go are full-time IT people. Some divisions centralized IT, which means one IT person looks after several schools and makes in-person visits on a rotational basis. A teacher in each school is designated the IT lead and he or she handles simple fixes, but what happens if they’re busy or the problem is beyond his or her abilities? Let’s say I follow the university prof’s lead and make my own instructional videos to free up time to work one-on-one with students performing complicated tasks. Every student in my class has to have Internet access at home or the exercise won’t work. In a perfect world, I could make technology an integral part of my classroom, but the world I live in is far from perfect. A pilot from 75 years ago would not feel at home in the cockpit of a modern jet. A surgeon from the 1890s would not be able to operate in a modern operating room. A soda jerk from the ’50s would not have any idea how to ring up a sale at a modern McDonald’s. Yes, those professionals have moved forward. Moved with technology and adapted their facilities and their methodologies to the times. (Moving Education Forward Through Technology Integration www.AtomicLearning.com/k12). Those professions also have the luxury of having the technology at their fingertips. A typical classroom does not have such luck. In closing, Anne, I'm sorry that if a time machine picked you up out of your schoolhouse, and dropped you magically into a class- room in almost any school today, that you wouldn’t feel that much out of place. Maybe, one day, our imaginations of fully equipped classrooms will become reality. When we think about children and the Internet, our first thoughts are often about protecting them from the dangers that lurk in cyberspace. However, positives exist, such as astronaut Chris Hadfield’s live chats from the International Space Station where he’d show school students a few tricks in microgravity and play guitar. Student bloggers can achieve the same reach. An article about British school student bloggers in The Guardian reports that “postgrads in Germany, travellers in South-East Asia and Occupy activists in the US liking,” commented on and followed their blogs. In a separate video, a class blog received a written response from the American author of “The Secret Life of Bees.” It may not be financially or geographically feasible to bring experts into a classroom (or back to Earth from outer space, for example) but blogs help remove those barriers by giving students a portal to the world outside their classroom walls to exchange ideas and information.
The benefits of blogging exist inside the classroom, too. When students write for a public audience instead of on a piece of paper that’ll be tucked into a notebook (or land on the bottom of their locker) after being graded, it creates a desire to put more effort into the content. Students consider the audience reading their posts, and pay special attention to spelling and grammar. Students learn to how to conduct effective peer review and create thoughtful comments about others’ work. They learn how to receive constructive criticism about their own work. They learn how to cite sources. These lessons go beyond blogs as they are vital in real-life situations, too. (A resume riddled with “lol” and spelling mistakes is likely to be overlooked, for example.) The popularity of Facebook and Twitter among students shows that the Internet is a part of students’ daily routine. Blogging in the classroom doesn’t have to be an onerous task. Teachers can make blogging part of a classroom’s daily routine in subjects and lessons that are already being taught to build on their students’ existing online skills in a positive and constructive way. |
About Me
My name is Alisha Sims and I'm about to be knee-deep in PSIII, the third professional semester, in the Faculty of Education at the University of Lethbridge. This blog is an expression of my thoughts and opinions. Any postings here are my sole responsibility, and do not represent the position of any school or division. Categories
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February 2016
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