Class projects

The Techs and TechNOTs

Are you of the Techs or the TechNOTs? As an educator, part of my educational purpose is to also expose my students to as much technology as I am able to. In my classroom we have an elmo, 3 student computers, 3 classroom ipads and 4 classroom itouches. For our entire campus there are two mobile smart boards that you can borrow for lessons in your classroom. I feel as an adult personally I am progressive with my technology experience but I of course I know there is a lot of technology out there that I have no idea how to use.

My strengths as a teacher are that I do facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity in our lessons. I try whenever possible to design and develop digital age learning experiences. This year in our first grade classroom we were able to 3 bigger projects using technology as medium for our work. The first was we recorded ourselves with the ipads and used movie maker to produce how to video. The example of one student was how to make chocolate milk. The students did the recording, the role of the anchor and with my assistance to creating and editing in movie maker. Another activity we were able to do is a research project using www.pebblego.com to collect out data and power point to present “ALL ABOUT” animal. Our third project was in social studies we created posters about a service member in the community and the goods they sold. Once the students collected the information we recorded with our ipads the info and made QR codes for other students to come and investigate our jobs.

Goods and Services (He is a Baker)

I felt the students were very successful with the projects and the technology. Some parts of the projects were very time consuming but the students were highly motivated to produce the end product. Throughout the learning there were small groups of students that became experts in the one or more processing points and took charge of tasks and helped other students.

A weakness I feel I have as a teacher is that I don’t use enough varied sources of technology to teach concepts in my classroom. One resource that I would like to use but it is not just as convenient for me to use on my campus is a smartboard. I use youtube, some websites like starfall and pebblego and district resources like Pearson or stemscopes.  I use some powerpoint.

Another weakness that I know I don’t directly teach is digital citizenship. I haven’t had a reason to teach rules about searching or internet safety. We don’t explore in unstructured searches where students would be independent. I see the importance of planting the seed  while students are being introduced to even though they may not be making a judgment decision if a website or picture is appropriate or not. I do teach rules or how to appropriately use the materials and equipment.

Going forward, thinking of my strengths and weaknesses as a teacher and using technology in my classroom. I have goals in mind of where I can integrate more resources and better teaching practices with technology.One step I can start right away with my students is discussing rules and practices of digital citizenship. What does it mean and what does it look like? What can I do if as a student I see or have a problem? Know my strengthens and reflecting on the projects that I have done with classes this past year and years past I also have a goal to do more technology. I can use more campus resources and collaborate with other teachers who are trying other approaches to a more technology rich classroom. I would like to proudly reflex and know that my teaching practices are those of the "techs" and not the "technots".