Week 11, Technology Experience

Today I had a great opportunity to use technology in the classroom and the students absolutely loved it. We had an engineering day at our elementary school and the students went through different rotations. In my rotation, we started out with a clip from a crew that did some experiments with different toys in space. The clip asked the students to follow along and do some experiments of their own and see how the results differed in space from on earth. I then had the students do an experiment and led a discussion asking them to predict what would happen in space.

After the discussion, we watched another clip of the experiment in space and then discussed the differences. I then asked the students what made the difference. They were able to identify the force of gravity as the main difference and we were then able to talk more about microgravity and other forces that affect objects on earth and in space. We repeated this process for two more experiments. The students loved the hands-on experiment and the clips that allowed them to see how the experiment would work in space.

One way to use technology...

As I have observed in the classroom, I have noticed that technology is not used very often in my classroom. One idea that I really like though is using CD's on tape of different books. I think that this can be a very effective tool. Students have the opportunity to listen to a book, but at the same time they can work on different projects. This allows students to be introduced to more literature.

I also think that a lot of books on tape have a great amount of expression, especially with the different characters. They are really fun to listen to. This is a good way to get kids excited about books and literature. This is one of the many kinds of technology I would like to incorporate into the classroom.

Practicum Week 1: Technology in the Classroom

Today I had the unique opportunity to take the class to their prep hour at computers. While we were waiting in the hall for the last class to finish up, I started talking to the kids about what they did during this hour and how they liked it. A lot of the students talked about how they would use the computer to do a variety of reading and writing activities and then they would play games for a while. Most of them said that they really liked it. I also talked to the teacher about a program that they are using that prepares students for the end of year tests. It asks different questions about the subjects they are learning about and prepares them for the format of the test. The only other time that the students use technology is when they are listening to books on tape, or when they are typing up writing assignments that they have completed.

I think that the technology that they do use makes the students excited about things that they might not normally be excited about. It also helps relieve some of the pressure from the teacher when the students can be directed by different programs. I think that in these cases, technology is very beneficial to the classroom and to the students.