The Future Classroom

I guess my future classroom really depends on where I will be teaching. I know that I want to teach overseas and in more underdeveloped countries. I want to get out there and help those who are less fortunate and those who really desire to be educated. Therefore, I will be lucky if there is internet in my classroom, or even in my entire school. I hope to see each student able to have their own desk, their own backpack, their own textbooks, and their own materials. From what I've seen, schools desperately lack the materials necessary to instruct students and to give students the opportunity to practice and experience on their own. In five years I want to see each student have those chances. This scenario almost seems unreal. Here we are messing around with high-tech gadgets and things that only supplement the educational process, instead of things that are vital to it. So my future classroom is really primitive, to us, but seems impossible to those that deal with it today.

The Perfect Classroom

Unfortunately, I don't yet have a classroom to observe, so we worked it out that I should think about what the perfect classroom might look like.

In my classroom, each student has access to every aspect of technology that they might need. The class session are comprised of lectures, group discussions, technological research, etc. My goal is to make studying history come to life. It is an extremely dry subject and my goal is to change that. I want students to be interested in studying and researching how their country has developed into what it is now. The classroom then would be very different than how it was before. Now it will be podcasted, so students can replay the classroom discussions to help study for tests or in case they were sick. Those podcasts would be posted on the class website, where students would have access to discussion forums, podcast lectures and class sessions, links to informational and helpful resource sites, and pdf's of all handouts and worksheets. I love the idea of having a class blog as well. Here students can post assignments and have discussions about the topics discussed in class. Hopefully this way, students, who are immersed in technology already, will be more interested in learning about their past and how it affects their present. My perfect classroom doesn't necessarily have to be smothered in technology, but as long as the students are engaged and interested then my job is being done.

Panel Questions

I want to know how prepared you were to integrate technology into your lesson plans after you graduated college, or were you prepared at all?

Do you think that students appear to be technologically superior because they are or because teachers are lacking the knowledge to compete?

Have you heard of any new technological implements that are up and coming that you are interested in?

More on the Technological World

Again, today, I was astounded by how much of a necessity it is to be technologically competent. Our full-time receptionist is leaving in two weeks and we need people to fill her hours. An elderly gentleman, who has been getting shunted on hours recently, asked, in the middle of the meeting after much debate about holiday hours, if he could take the full time position. He has been wanting more hours since I and the other part-time receptionist started, but, unfortunately, since I am qualified to use the computer, he does not receive the hours he wants. Our supervisor replied that he was not qualified for the position on account of his lack of technological abilities and knowledge. I felt horrible, for everyone. Not only was it awkward for all the listeners to hear, but it was hard for my supervisor to say, and it must have been even more difficult to hear. I felt awful, but it just goes to show that the world today requires a knowledge and an understanding in technology.

Assignment #5 -- Part 1

So I originally wanted to use the SMARTboard software and combine them with the clickers and really see if these work well for teaching. However, I just can't get the SMARTboard software to act like I want it to. I am going to admit that I, a technological native, cannot figure this out. So instead I am going to use powerpoint, because I know how to mess around in there and make some really cools things happen. I am still looking for my second piece of technology though. I want to find something that I don't know anything about and that no one else really has used before either.

Yesterday's Presentations

Hey everyone, I thought we all did a pretty good job yesterday. I thought there was a pretty nice diversity between the target age level and subject matter. Also, we all had about a million technological problems, and yet we all (whether you realized it or not) were able to work through them and continue on with our lessons. I just thought that was pretty impressive, considering that none of us (I don't think) have used a SMART board incorporatively in a lesson before. Another thing that I thought we all did well was involving each person into the presentation (with the help of Professor Garret of course), but I thought that was a neat thing, because I don't think that any of the MIT students have used or ever, some, even seen a SMART board before. I definitely feel like I accomplished something and I hope you all do too.

SMART Board presentation

For my SMART board presentation I chose a secondary social studies lesson about the Hitler's rise to power.

The Social Studies/History EALR for 10th grade, in regards to technology, has two points. The first point wants students to be able to "investigate and research" using both technological and human resources. If I would have made the lesson I presented I would have added links to each page and for each statistic or piece of information. I loved the way the slides were presented and the interaction they required, but there was no citations anywhere, which bothered me a little bit. The second point of this EALR wants students to understand the "origin and impact of ideas" and to analyze the effect technology has on society and history. I'm sure how much this EALR was met with through the presentation, but I sure it could be tweaked to do so. However, the idea of this assignment was to show how information could be presented using new technological tools. If I were to meet this EALR, I would have used the tools in my presentation to talk about technological inventions and the history and impact of them.

I'm going to incorporate the SMART board and the clickers in my presentation. I'm going to run through my presentation and select students to participate via a random selection using the clicker system. In order to prepare for the activity, I will acquire a list of students and faculty that will be present for the presentation and add them into the clicker system. Then I will pass the correct clicker to the correct person, so the random selection will make sense. I have run through my presentation a few times just to become familiar with what the purpose of each slide is and how best to incorporate the class. Also I deleted two slides in the presentation because of their redundantness. Like I said, the students will be selected at random to participate in the lesson (I think this is best, because it takes the pressure off of students to volunteer and the teacher to select them), by either writing with the pens, using the eraser, dragging and dropping, and the whole class will answer a question collectively. There really wasn't an assessment portion of this lesson as it was. If I had created it I might have added a review slide of all the information, or maybe a review handout, or maybe this presentation was the review for an upcoming test on this information.

I think that students could benefit from technology in the classroom. The clickers I like because you can incorporate each student into the disscussion. I also think that the SMART board brings the teacher out from behind the desk or the podium and into the direct view of the students. The teacher can also bring the students up out their desks and use them to interact with the class and the lesson through the use of the SMART board. I know that all students learn differently and with the SMART board use can incorporate video, sound, touch, sight, and repitition. I think it is awesome!