Technology is essential to use with students in the
twenty-first century. Watching the Edutopia videos and reading chapter six of
our text gave me some insights on how to incorporate digital technology into
the classroom. In the "Secondary" video under module 5 the physics
teacher mentioned how time consuming it was to plan a lesson that integrated technology
into the unit. I think all purposeful teaching takes time to create. Purposeful
teaching also takes a lot of reflecting on one's teaching plans. Five digital
technologies I would use in my classroom are digital cameras, mini-laptops,
tablets, a data projector and a scantron.
I am leaning towards teaching sixth
grade and would like to help my students create a sixth grade newsletter. I
would have the students submit pictures and articles to go with the picture to
the newsletter for editing. I would have members of the newsletter team edit
the articles because good writers are made by good editing. If students learn
how the editing process works they learn to do that with their own writing. A
grade level newsletter builds a since of community. I would have a digital
camera available for students to check out throughout the school day. I would
also use the digital camera for taking pictures of the happenings in the
classroom so I could send home information about the students and their week to
their families. I believe it is important to have many options available for
parents to communicate with me. One way parents can see what is going on is
through a class website. On the website I would upload pictures from the camera
to the website for an insiders look into my classroom for the families of my
students.
Mini-laptops are a great resource for
students to use technology if it is available in the school I work for. If this
technology was not available I would work towards getting a grant to purchase
mini-laptops for my class. Mini-laptops would be great for workstations. There
are math, science, language arts programs available for computers. Students
would learn the basics of how to operate a computer through mini-laptops in my
classroom if they didn't already. I would also have projects for my students to
do on the laptops for instance, data entry of a science experiment, a book
review PowerPoint, and/ or a podcast of a research project.
I would like to have tablets in my
classroom so students could read on them during reading or free time. Many
schools are adopting e-books because they are cheaper. If a school district had
an e-book I think they should make tablets available to students so they can
access their e-book easily. Students who don't like to read may get excited
when they can use a tablet to read. The use of technology may be what the
student needed to get excited about a book.
For when I am introducing a new topic to my
students I would prefer to use a data projector rather than write on the board.
Having a data projector would allow me to show a colorful PowerPoint that keeps
students attention rather than have my back to them when I am writing on the
board. Students could also present their projects that they completed using
digital media to the class by projecting it in front of the class.
I would prefer to have my students take
tests via scantron because I could have it graded for them instantly and they
would know they results of their test quickly. I do not think sixth grade is
too young to have scantron tests when appropriate because they will need to
learn how to use it in when they are upperclassmen. Digital technologies are
essential when teaching today's student.
