Blog Reflection – Week of September 3rd

After my first full week of observing as a student teacher at a local high school, I am already beginning to think about how to incorporate technology into my lesson plans. Although my student placement is not on the cutting edge of technology and many of the rooms are limited to a television, a computer, and an overhead, I am confident that I can utilize the technological equipment in my classroom to its fullest potential. Part of being a good teacher is maximizing output with limited resources.

My teacher, who is also the yearbook advisor, has more Internet access than most teachers. Because of her advisory position, the school gives her a laptop cart. The laptop cart has 10 laptop computers within it, and students are free to use them at the teacher’s discretion. Each laptop has an internal wireless card, and the laptop cart emits a strong wireless signal from its own router. Most of my English classes have about 30 students, so if, and when, I include a computer component, I need to make sure that three students sharing the same computer can complete an assignment or a project. Currently, I am thinking about three-person group PowerPoint mini-presentations. This type of project would enable collaborative learning at its core, but it could also serve as an introduction to educational technology for many students.

On a slightly different note, I would like to touch upon an educational technology issue that arose today. Last night, my teacher assigned her students an assignment that asked students to go home and find a 30-second audio clip of a song from Yahoo Music. For the next couple of weeks, we are studying poetry, and the students were specifically asked to identify a poetic device in the song of their choice. When my teacher assigned the project, her computer had access to the web page, but this morning we found the web page blocked by the high school server. When I went to ask the tech support supervisor in the library to unblock the web page, no one was there.

My concern is whether students should be aloud to have full access of the Internet. Certainly, complete freedom over the World Wide Web is dangerous, but is there a better method of monitoring student access and educating students on healthy Internet use than simply blocking any website that could be “potentially” harmful. For example, Yahoo Music, in my opinion, does not seem to introduce any threats to the staff or students. At the minimum, I believe the technology department should notify staff and students when the server blocks particular websites.

Blog Reflection – Week of August 3rd

For my final blog of the summer term, I would like to tackle the following question: What seem to be important questions to be asking yourself as you consider the place of technology in your teaching?

Foremost, I believe the student-factor to be the most significant concern when thinking about the place of technology in the classroom. Students bring with them to the classroom a technological base that will mostly likely surpass that of the prior year’s students. With an ever-growing number of students embracing the Internet, surfing through cyberspace, and virtually chatting with people from around the world at earlier ages, the classroom that considers the occasional PowerPoint presentations the best implementation of technology will quickly send students into boredom. Teachers should constantly look for ways to incorporate technology into the classroom. Many of the technological teaching practices, today, include blogs and wikis, which both foster excellent collaborative learning. With a heightened perception of the capabilities of students in the classroom, teachers can encourage students to use technology as a tool to supplement their learning.

Second, I believe teachers should ask themselves how willing they are to become learners, sometimes alongside their students. When teachers begin integrating technology into the classroom, they will most likely experience unforeseen troubles, but if these teachers can comfortably approach the education-technology veterans in the field (through their blogs or wikis), stress can be avoided. Teachers can, and should, help other teachers. We are all in the same battle, the battle against ignorance. As teachers begin to use technology in their classroom on a regular basis, problems will become less frequent, but the first steps are going to be difficult – learn along the way. Be open to the possibility that you might have a student who knows more about virtual social network than yourself, it is okay.

Fellow teachers, we should look to technology as a friend. The friendship between teacher and technology will be representative of most other friendships. There will be smiles; there will be hardships; there will be laughter. Technology can become a great friend, but first, we must believe its potential.

Blog Reflection – Week of July 27th

For weeks, I have been thinking about how to incorporate podcasting effectively into my classroom. I love turning to NPR’s website and having the opportunity to replay some of my favorite podcasts, including New Horizons in Education and Car Talk, at any time of the day or night, and I often wonder whether my students of the future could ever be as interested in my own future podcasts.

From this week’s reading, I found Shawn Wheeler’s “Giving Students a Second Listen” quite encouraging. He made many interesting remarks regarding podcasting, which I think could convince many of you SMACers to give it a chance. He claimed that podcasting “would extend the learning day, change the way students review for tests and allow those students who were absent to hear the lesson” (p. 64). I believe podcasting provides many teachers to both record lectures and transfer them to accessible formats quickly and effortlessly. Once the audio clips reach the information superhighway, students could listen to them for a multitude of purposes. A student who Wheeler asked to interview other peers about the benefits of podcasting found that students utilized podcasts to “allow better understanding than reading the PowerPoint slides or worksheets” from class, provide a “second chance to hear the information due to the speed the teacher speaks or students inability to keep up while taking notes,” and to review for upcoming examinations (p. 66). The positive effects of podcasting seem endless for students, and I truly believe that podcasting will change education. Students will not be the only beneficiaries from this technological tool – oh no, teachers can also review these audio recordings to improve their teaching practices. In contrast to video records of practice, podcasting could capture audio with a fraction of the necessary space to retain the record on a personal hard drive.

Podcasting has a bright future, and I think many students could also take advantage of the hardware and software to expand their learning space. Students could work together to create an informational radio station, completely run by podcasts, or they could use it to record personal readings of their poetry or short stories. Podcasting ultimately opens the door for students to explore a new presentation format. Students in science classes could record observations in lab experiments, and world language students could utilize podcasts to practice their pronunciation.

While I a little bummed out that our new technology package is not going to include an iPod, I am optimistic about podcasting in my short future. I will find a way!

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P.s.: In recent weeks, I’ve been addressing the pitfalls of virtual social networks, and while I think youths that create alternative personas in cyberspace are in need of help and protection from their parents, this video brought a smile to my face. You country music and Seinfeld fans out there, take a couple of minutes out of your busy lives.