Technology Inventory

As one of our assigments in Teaching with Technology, we took a school-wide inventory of the technology resources available for student, teacher, and administrative use. This was a helpful activity for me, because I now know everything that I can use and where each resource is located within the school. Additionally, I met people in various parts of the school that I had not met before! As I mentioned in my last blog, technology is about communication and collaberation, and this activity has futher proven this true to me.

Here are the results of my inventory, which I will be posting for my other pre-service friends and as a way to open up a forum for ideas based on the resources I have available to me.

Any computer in the school is available to teacher use. Computers are located in the classroom (my classroom has 2), the computer lab, the library, and on the laptop cart. Students can use one of the two classroom computers (both with teacher permission), the computers in the lab with permission from the lab teacher, library computers when available, and the laptops when they are reserved for the classroom. The wireless laptop cart must be reserved ahead of time through the classroom teacher. The internet can be accessed from all computers. Computer maintenence is done by Adam, "Mr. B." who is the county IT coordinator. He is available through email. There is also an IT support man in the school. Parents and students signed an AUP at the beginning of the school year. In my classroom, all students are allowed to use the Internet. Teachers also sign the AUP.

There is a printer in the classroom, computer lab, and library. Scanners are located in the lab and in the library. They are readily available for teachers and can be used by students with permission. Each grade level has one digital camera. The camera is reserved through the computer lab, where the cameras are kept. They can be used by the student with teacher reservation and teacher permission. There is no digital video camera, but the digital cameras have the video feature. There is an analog video camera which is kept in the central office because it is used to broadcast the morning news through the televisions in every classroom. The school does not have video conferencing, but phone conferencing is an alternative. The computers in the school all have Microsoft Word for word processing, Excel for spreadsheet design, Access for producing databases, and Powerpoint for multimedia presentations. There is also Quicktime for video broadcasting. The web broswer used is Microsoft Internet Explorer, which I found interesting since the general public movement has been towards Mozilla Firefox, etc. Teachers can use Outlook Express for email but also have an email service through the county. For web publishing, teachers can use a service called Teacherweb for a small fee. A few of the lab computers have Dreamweaver for student use. Finally, the computer lab has a Smartboard, and there is one other Smartboard available for classroom use.

In my second grade classroom, the majority of laptop use will be in the spring when my students will do laptop publishing of a story they write. However, they have one hour a week in the computer lab with technology exposure.

Tonight I finished my technology implementation project, which I will be teaching in November when my students will be learning about bar graphing. This will be their first exposure to the laptop cart, and I am excited to see how it goes! I am already anticipating lots of trouble shooting :)

A Humble (and Apologetic) Return to Blogging

I've been neglect in my duties as an edu-blogger. Guilty as charged! The worst part is that I know I have missed out on a lot of great ideas. Thank goodness for Bloglines.com. I can get alllll caught up over the next couple weeks! But here I am, back in the game, and really excited about the opportunities this semester has to offer. I am still in my second grade classroom with the same teacher-mentor I had the honor to work with last semester. I have already attended the first day of school and Back to School Night, along with spending a few mornings and afternoons in the classroom each week. This semester will be challenging. I am working on my senior thesis for my Hispanic Studies major, as well as dividing my time among my education courses, my classroom practicum experience, and a job. Luckily, I'm ready (I think!) to step up to the challenge. I hear time management is a crucial skill that teachers need, both in and out of the classroom. So, here we go!

Part of my technology requirement this semester is observing 10 hours of teaching in technology. The 10 hours can also include co-teaching a lesson and teaching my own lesson that incorporates technology. I did my first official observation of technology 2 days ago, and I was actually rather surprised at what I saw! Remembering back to my elementary school days, our computer time was generally game time. Oregon Trail was definitely my favorite. However, this game was one-on-one interaction with the computer. I suppose it could be considered social, because everyone would be bragging about the river they just crossed, or whining about the oxen that just died. However, no teacher instruction was required, and the objective was just to make it through the Oregon Trail!

I observed a second grade keyboarding lesson 2 days ago. The children walked into the room and sat down on the red carpet in front of the Smart Board. The teacher quickly reviewed the "home keys" and "home position." Positioning of the wrist was reviewed, and the teacher touched on how the fingers should be placed. Then, the kids were let loose! They sat at their computers, put on their headphones, and spent the rest of the 45 minutes on a typing program called Type to Learn 3. Most of the kids seemed to enjoy the program, which has levels with typing activities that progressively get more complicated and add more keys. I was startled to find that the teacher was not really required to do anything but circulate around the room, troubleshoot and give a few pointers on finger positions to selected kids. The kids seemed to be in their own worlds, completely detached from eachother and the teacher.

Today in my teaching technology class at college, we reviewed the two most important parts of technology: the two C's, communication and collaberation. In my opinion, this use of technology really did...neither! The kids didn't talk to eachother, nor did they collaberate. It's true, children need to learn to type, especially in this technology focused world. I began to wonder, however, if typing could be more than just, well, typing!

I noticed that Ben, the Tech-Savvy Educator, was struggling with the same questions. How can educators teach keyboarding in a fun, interactive, motivating way? How can keyboarding incorporate communication and collaberation? He suggested chat rooms. I love the idea of online chatting and blogging, but as Ben said, there is always the question of keeping your students safe from the dangers of the internet and public chat rooms. Today, I learned about Imbee.com. I am very excited to get involved with this site. It basically provides a safe, policed environment where students can blog and communicate with parent and teacher involvement. While I myself have not used it yet, it comes highly recommended from my technology teacher, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach. I'm thrilled about this new resource. It is one way for the students to use technology for any subject area, and even more importantly, they get to practice their keyboarding skills and hand/wrist position.

I also decided to take a look around for activities that teachers could use to teach keyboarding skills. I found a lot of fun activities that incorporate technology and keyboarding skills. This isn't the normal "ffff-gggg-let's-learn-to-type" method! Kids communicate and collaborate with these activities, as well as have fun and see a tangible result to their typing!

* Students may plan, process, and produce a classroom newsletter. Once "reporters" have completed their interview and research, they may compose individual newsletter articles at the keyboard. After the finished articles are processed, students may compile their classroom newsletter. The newsletter could include artistic touches such as cartoons that have been designed on the computer. (How fun is this?? It is relevant to their lives, they can share the newsletter with friends and family, and it practices keyboarding skills!)

* Students could pinpoint a certain time period in history and create a newspaper that highlights the tribal or cultural history of that period. They could also "modernize" an older tribal newspaper recreating it with today's technology. (This is fun, too! They are placing themselves in another time period, which involves them examining other perspectives. Great for accomplishing technology objectives plus another subject objective, social studies!)

* Allow students to view a collage for two or three minutes, mentally identifying the objects it contains. Students may key a list of all the items that they can remember from the collage.

More activites from the site I used can be found here.

* Categories: The category title is called out and students have a predetermined amount of time to key in the title and as many items that fit into the category as possible. Another category is announced and steps are repeated. Remind students of posture and hand positions throughout the exercise. Possible categories include: the names of teachers, holidays, items of clothing, presidents, pets, words that rhyme with _____, etc.

* Type that Tune: Play a recording of a song and have the students type as many of the lyrics as possible. Remind students of body posture and hand positions prior to starting.

Want more? I found these ideas here.

For the younger ones, I found this little rhyme.

(Left Hand)
Little finger A,
reach for B,
Same finger C, D, E,
Side by side F and G

(Right Hand)
First finger H,
reach up for I,
J, K, L -three in a row,
M and N side by side,
Use ring finger, reach up for O.

(Both Hands)
Both little fingers P and Q,
R, S, T not hard for you.
Up for U, down for V.
Left ring finger up and down,
Press W and X without a frown.
Reach up for Y and down for Z.
Now you have them all you see!

Students say this while they are typing.

Finally, I found a couple classroom environment things that teachers can do to change things up a little bit and make the classroom more interesting:
* Turn off the lights in the classroom; students get a kick out of the glow from the computers.
* Turn off monitors and have students type for three minutes; have students compare their results, just for fun.

As if that weren't enough, here is one more pdf page with a few activities.

This blog turned out extremely long. I guess that's what I get for not blogging in so long and being excited to start again! But now I have a couple questions for myself. When is it appropriate to begin typing? I've heard it's great to start early, because the children are exposed to technology constantly. I've also heard that students should be more intent on their handwriting in the first few elementary grades. Is there a consensus on this question??

Thanks for reading, it's good to be back :)

What does it mean to remember??

I can't even count the number of times I've been told to "remember" something in school. I've had teachers tell me, "Remember this, it is on the SOL!" Or, "Remember that, because it's on the final exam!" Suddenly, the word "remember" has seemingly become a synonym for "memorize-and-spit-back-out-when-commanded." As a future educator, having this realization was frustrating to me!

Last night I had a 20 page research paper due in my Hispanic Studies senior seminar. It was a synthesis paper on any aspect of the course, which was entitled Local and Global Issues. The course related poetry with resistance, activism, voice, and identity. We read poems by Martín Espada, Pablo Neruda, Julia Alvarez, Marcus Villatoro, and many more. We read essays by John Berger, Ariel Dorfman, and Octavio Paz. The course culminated with a study of the XVI Festival Internacional de Poesía de Medellín. I decided to focus my essay on memory, and how people "remember." Don't worry...I'm getting to my point :)

In Spanish, the word for remember is recordar. It comes from the Latin word, re-cordis, which means "to pass back through one's heart." I learned this from Eduard Galeano's The Book of Embraces, something I read in my History of Human Rights and Repression class. This was the basis for my research paper. It also got me thinking about my role as a teacher, as well...

In addition to the goals I listed in my previous blog, I think this one may take first place. I want to go beyond memorizing in my classroom, beyond simply information, facts, data, and names. I want these things to be remembered, in the true sense of the word. I never want to be that teacher that tells my students to remember something for the SOLs or the upcoming test. I want children to remember what I teach because not only will I make it memorable, but I will teach it in a way that is meaningful to my students. Knowledge should be useful to them and applicable to their life experiences. I want them to be able to apply things from the classroom to situations outside of school. I want the knowledge they gain in my class to be more than numbers and letters to regurgitate. I want these things to pass back through their hearts...

Challenge: As a teacher, return the significance of remember back to its true definition.

I hate the sound of a vacuum.

First of all, I would like to start my post by saying how thrilled I am to be included in a network of brilliant educators and technology enthusiasts. I have been receiving emails from Terry Freedman, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, and Shawn Wheeler. Through these people, I have been introduced to many more edubloggers. In an exchange with Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, I mentioned one of the most comforting days in my student-teaching classroom. My peers and I had just been through a week of very disconcerting material. We were being presented with the realities of standardized testing and NCLB, creating IEPs for students, and attending child abuse and neglect seminars. It was slightly disheartening, even a bit discouraging! As a preservice teacher, I entered the program with a bit of naivete. It was easy to me to decide to be a teacher. I love kids, I love interaction, and I love creativity. I couldn't picture myself in a more suitable professional environment than in an elementary school classroom! I wanted to mold and shape students and be the teacher that inspired them in their lives. I wanted to be the role model for them when they continued their education. I wanted to be the teacher that had high school students returning to their elementary classroom to thank me for what I had done for them.

It would not have been fair for the School of Education here at William and Mary to let me enter the classroom with that kind of naivete and completely blind optimism. And don't get me wrong...my goals haven't changed one bit! I still want to be that teacher. But I now am able to enter my school with a greater understanding and appreciation for all the things that will be required of me. My responsibility to the student extends beyond just my personality attributes...my responsibility is to give all children the most opportunities available to them. One of my professors, Professor Popp, said it best. Most people believe "fair" means giving everyone the same opportunity. In reality, it means giving everyone as many opportunities available so they can reach their maximum potential. This seems a little intimidating...like my role as a teacher is to be everything to everyone!! That was exactly how I felt when I was talking to my mentor.

I expressed to her that I felt overwhelmed with the pressures that teaching seemed to have in store for me. I told her I thought teaching was making a warm classroom environment, being creative, being encouraging, and making everyone feel good about themselves. I had my eyes opened to REAL teaching, and that I preferred to just close them again. She said something that I will always remember when I'm teaching and starting to feel that panic again...

"Lauren, you are not in a vacuum! Everyone is feeling the same way you do. There are always resources available to you, and people that want to help. As a teacher, you are never alone."

I believed her, and I can't even express how much I needed to hear those words. Receiving emails and comments from people like Terry Freedman, Shawn Wheeler, and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach have driven the point home for me. I am not alone...I am already becoming a part of a huge network! I couldn't be more thankful!

Which brings me to my next point...So often we talk about how technology is important in our classrooms to really connect with students and get them involved and enthusiastic with their education. Blogging for students is wonderful, wikis to collaborate for students are invaluable. The internet is a great way to connect teachers with parents. However, made even more clear to me in the past few days through emails with other professional educators, it is important to remember that technology and the internet are wonderful ways to connect educators to other educators to collaborate on ideas, solve problems, and share solutions.

I am not in a vacuum.

An enthusiastic encounter with The Coming of Age

As I have mentioned before in my previous posts, I am not a technology genius. Not even close! Taking the Teaching with Technology class with my professor, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, has been a real eye-opener! When I am online now, I am always looking for new resources or things to help me become more technologically adept in my future classroom. Not only am I looking for new technology ideas to incorporate, but I am also looking for instructional materials for myself! I was browsing through a few of my feeds in bloglines.com, and I noticed a particularly helpful blog!

On David Warlick's blog, he attaches a printable book entitled Coming of Age: An Introduction to the New World Wide Web. It was put together by Terry Freedman and has 13 high-profile contributors from the field of technology and education. I downloaded the book to see what is was about, and I was blown away. It covers every topic from a glossary of technology terms, to blogging, podcasting and wikis. There are instructions, descriptions, how-to's, and case studies. The contributors and Terry Freedman encourage the distribution of the material, and I was so impressed that I printed out the 92 pages and brought them in to my student teaching classroom. My mentor was so thrilled, she printed it out, too! For people who want to incorporate technology into the classroom yet aren't really sure where to begin (like myself!!), this is an incredible fountain of useful information. Definitely check it out and get the file yourself! Don't forget to visit Terry Freedman's site, which is another way to download the book and leave comments!

I have not tried podcasting yet, because I'm not really sure what I am doing! On page 57 and 58 of the book, Chris Smith talks about his podcasting journey and gives a few links on how to make a podcast and examples of educational podcasts. The following pages contain even more information on podcasting. On page 64, Shawn Wheeler talks about his feelings about beginning to podcast (which I feel extremely familiar with!), links to his site about Adventures in Podcasting, and even what the students had to say about podcasting! After reading all these articles, I feel much more confident, and am willing to try my first podcast. The students in my second grade teaching classroom are in the middle of a publishing activity, where they write stories, revise them, and then have the opportunity to become their own "publishing company." Each student gets to type their stories on a laptop, add an "about the author" page, a dedication page, illustrations, and whatever else they want. I would love to discuss a way to possibly create a podcast about the activity. Since the students are so enthusiastic about it, I would love to share this activity with other teachers. It achieves both technology objectives and 2nd grade SOL English objectives. It's a great way to integrate technology into classroom curriculum. I really appreciated the advice I got from the booklet about podcasting that will make this podcast a reality for me.

Thanks again to Terry Freedman, David Warlick, Chris Smith, Shawn Wheeler, and all the contributors for putting this book together!!

Stop being anti-social!!

The public and media seem quick to blame societal problems on technology, especially on the internet, television, and video games. Technology seems all too often the undeserved scapegoat for things like violence and obesity. However, even with this pervasive mind-set, it is impossible to ignore the huge role technology should have in the class room. Saying that kids use technology "too much" should not be seen as a problem, but as a pathway to channel the enthusiasm and interest that this generation of students has. What a great opportunity to connect with students on not only an intellectual level, but also on the level of appreciation for their passion for technology.

Additionally, the public generally sees technology as either a communication inhibitor or a something that completely prohibits interaction. It is only natural to view a child on a computer as someone who is "ignoring" the environment around them. I know (all too well) about that belief. There have been many times where I've been at my computer when my mom or dad walks into the room. The popular phrase for them in that situation is: "Stop being anti-social and get off the computer!!" Or even better, "What do you mean you're talking to your friends...You're not on the phone!"

From my own observations, it seems like society need a little technological enlightenment! As teachers, we have the opportunity and even responsibility to tap into the passion that our students have for technology. Obviously, technology doesn't have to be a communication inhibitor, as I've learned in my life and in my classes. One of the best ways for incorporating technology into the classroom while encouraging interaction seems to be a wiki. I love how something can be posted, then others can contribute to the original post. Ben in his blog talks about using a wiki to help with collaborative note taking. I formally learned about note taking back in middle school. Our teacher stood in front of the class and outlined some ideas about how to effectively take notes. We read a couple articles on the subject. And then we were let loose to try to apply what we had heard!

Ben takes effective note taking to an interactive level. I am a very visual learner, so his ideas impressed me. By using a wiki, students in his classroom "share, compare, and edit notes electronically." Students can comment on each others notes, add to their own notes for study purposes, and see examples of good note taking and poor note taking. All of this allows them to learn about note taking, without knowing that they are learning about it! Check out Ben's blog, there are a few examples of Wikis and Seedwikis, along with a link to an actual classroom application of a Seedwiki. In that same classroom site, there is also a great webquest activity!

Here's the link to Ben's blog: http://www.techsavvyed.net/?p=142

Whoever said that technology isn't interactive obviously hasn't heard about wikis!

My Technology Autobiography

As you may or may not have noticed, blogging is a new skill for me! I just realized I haven't given any of my technology background, so I think I'll take this opportunity to explain myself.... :)

I am not technologically advanced, but I like to say I'm average or have a basic proficiency when it comes to technology. Growing up, I didn't even have a game system, like Nintendo. My parents are not very into technology, so even when the internet was introduced, we didn't jump on that bandwagon for a long while. I started using AIM in seventh grade, and convinced my parents I needed the internet for classroom projects. At the time, my mother thought the internet was a scary thing. Obviously, if you don't understand technology, it can be scary! To her, the internet was a way for "bad people" to do "bad things" like steal identities, break into your bank account, or stalk you! Because of my parents' concerns, my technology skills developed later than most.

My first actual experience with technology classes was in high school. I took a few computer classes that introduced me to Powerpoint and Excel. I had used Word before. These classes were beneficial to me, especially before college where these technologies are used on a daily basis! In my junior and senior year of high school, I did accounting. This required me to learn a processing system called ROS. It was a great experience.

Now, I am proficient in Powerpoint, Excel, and Word. I have an mp3 player, although it is not an iPod! I have a new digital camera that I got for Christmas, and I know how to load pictures onto my computer and use Adobe Photoshop. I use AIM and MSN Messenger, and I can use search engines to effectively find information I need for school projects. I do online banking and can use programs like TurboTax. My brother loves technology and computers, and my uncle is a programmer. I have learned a lot from both of them.

In terms of technology I can use in the classroom, I only knew about the Microsoft Office programs. Through this technology class I am taking in the School of Education, I have learned so many useful ways to incorporate technology into the classroom, and I've learned the importance of using it! I feel much more comfortable with my role as an educator, since now I feel like I can connect with my technologically advanced students!