Technology and Teaching

There were two main impressions that were made during my journaling of technology use in the classroom.  First, the access to technology is very inequitable district to district, school to school, and even classroom to classroom.  My CT is something of an expert using Donorschoose.org to purchase technology for use in his classroom.  He has received funding for 8 iPads.  His students use iPads on a daily basis during literacy rotations.  I’m planning to use them to support my Science Unit Plan on Butterfly Lifecycles in the Spring.  Other teachers in our school come to him for support writing proposals for Donorschoose and to borrow his iPads to support the special needs of their students.  In the district that I visited for my dyad placement, there were enough Chromebooks for each student in the classroom to use them to support lessons for up to 2 hours each day, then the cart of Chromebooks would roll out to another classroom.  I had serious technology envy when I watched the teachers at Ben Franklin use their ActiveInspire Whiteboards to support the learning in their classrooms.  This envy was deepened when we went to the training and saw some of the additional capabilities.  It was painful for me to hear that some teachers just use them to as a convenient place to stick post-it notes.  [I'm not judging those teachers, I don't know them or know what kind of training or support they've received.]  I would be happy to trade them a large corkboard for their electronic whiteboard.   I am challenging myself to figure out how to support my lessons with technology the way that I want to no matter what technology is made available in my classroom.  

The second impression was that most of the time the technology is being used to present material in the same way that it was presented before, but with fancier tools.  I think that it is wonderful that there are several apps that making drilling on math facts much more interesting and fun for the students, but I want to go further.  I feel that we are now able to reach out and see the world from our classroom.  I want to share ideas with other teachers across the hall, across the district, across the state, and across the world.  I want my students to be able to do the same things.  We had a great time listening to a legend written by an Australian author, but how much more engaging and informative would that lesson have been if my students could actually talk to students in Australia, see what was outside their classroom door, find out how school and life is the same and different in different parts of the world.  I would like my students to feel that their work is important.  If they are publishing their writing in a BLOG and they know there is an audience, they will really think about what they are trying to communicate.  How amazing if someone was able to ask them questions about what they wrote.  Imagine their joy if they find out they liked the same book as children from Norway, South Africa, and Argentina.  Think about how exciting it would be for them to have a conversation about their favorite characters or about questions they had about why something had happened.  We have the technology to have International Book Clubs.  How awesome!

How do I get started?  I don’t even have a classroom yet and I am making plans for my kids.  I don’t know what kind of technology I will have.  I don’t know how much flexibility I will have with my curriculum.  I don’t know what kind of professional development will be available.  I need to build a solid network of support.  I feel that we have started that in our Cohort, but what happens after June 5^th?  I need to keep it going.  I work much better when I am able to bounce my ideas off someone else and I am constantly inspired by my cohort’s ideas.  I’ve been wanting all quarter to learn how use Twitter for more than just a one-sided conversation.  Where do I go for that?  I know that I will need to be my own Technology Advocate for a while.  But, I’m hoping at some point to have that network of professionals that can help me improve my teaching practice and just support me when things aren’t working.

I want to learn to expand my thinking and my teaching with technology.