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Field was so crazy! So much has been going on between field and Thanksgiving. One thing I am thankful for is Technology! I didn't realize how much teachers use technology until I was finished with my three and a half weeks of field experience! One thing I thought was so awesome during field and was brand new to me, was a promethean board. I had the opportunity to use it a few times during field. The teacher uses the promethean board as her main teaching tool. The class does their daily grammar on the board which is known as their DLR's. The kids can come up and correct the sentances on the promethean board, it was like drawing on a computer screen. My cooperating teacher also taught her class math on the promethean board each day. She would have a problem on the board and then after the students attempted solving it, she would click and drag away a shape that was covering the answer and then the answer would appear allowing students to check their own work. I thought the promethean board was one of the coolest pieces of technology i have ever saw. Mrs. Rigby my cooperating teacher also gave me a chance to work with their grading books that were also online. They used a program by the name of powerschool. I realized how much of a time, space and writing saver this program was. It made entering grades alot faster not only did it keep it very organized it also figured out all the percents automatically. Another cool feature powerschool had was it color coded the students who were struggling in red then yellow then Green for good. It made it easy to see what you were working with. I really liked entering the grades on powerschool and hope that the school I work for one day with have the same feature!One thing field really made me open my eyes to, is the importance of technology in the classroom. The class I was in had technology integrated in almost 100% off the time. I think that technology is the effective way to teach this generation of students. Technology is what they know and have been immune to their whole lives. I enjoyed the time I had in field and now have a better idea of how to prepare myself for being a teacher one day!
Field has been a very interesting experience! I have been observing and teaching sixth grade students! It has been very eye opening and a great time. I was so set on teaching kindergarten or just younger kids than sixth graders but I am opening my eyes to maybe giving the higher grades a thought! I have become to realize that sixth graders LOVE to learn and for the most part are very into their work and want to be at school! They also are a lot smart then a thought and have a lot of good thinking ability and fun communication skills.We have been teaching the students about world economics. We were very nervous because it is such a open topic, however I think for the most part we have been pretty successful. The kids are really excited during our lessons and participate to the best of their ability. We have also had the chance to incorporate technology into our lesson plans and it has been a success. We had the opportunity to use a promethean board and i really enjoyed it, I hope that I will have the opportunity to have on eof those in my classroom as a future teacher. We also have had the chance to incorporate computers into our lessons and the kids enjoyed doing the homework they had on them. We also are looking forward to teaching a lesson where we have added a video clip. I think it will be a great hook for our students to get interested into he lesson.Another thing we have been able to do is to use a few different lesson plan types. I have the opportunity to teach a cause and effect lesson on Tues. We have also had fun incorporating arts into our lessons. Our kids have learned a song on economics, they also have made posters of the different trades countries have made. I have been enjoying field experience however, it has been an extreme amount of stress.
My beliefs about technology in the classroom has two sides. I believe technology can be a great thing in a classroom. One reason I think it can be a great thing is because I think it keeps students paying attention and helps get them engaged in a lesson. For example in one of the video clips we watched where the kids were playing a triva game on the TV fora history lesson. I think technolgy makes lessons more fun and helps kids learn because they are more interested. I also think technology helps teachers keep track of students progress and work they do while in calss.However there also is a negitive side to technolgy in my opinion. We rely too much on technology. We are slowly moving away from books and relying completly on the internet. We are also forgetting the main components of school like reading and writing. Sometimes we are more worried about the technical things instead. I think that technology can also be a struggle for some. Maybe some students feel left out when they do now have the tools at home in order to do an assignment. I think we need to incorporate technology into the classroom, but only to a certain extent. Incorporate it but not let it take over.
I learned so much from these video's and articles. My favorite one was the Why Integrate? Article because it pointed out so many different ways to incorporate technologies and into so many different subjects using so many different techniques. One lesson I learned from this video is it opened my eyes to how many different types of technology there are out there and available to use in a classroom. My thoughts on these articles was how important technology is in this world. I do like the idea of integrating technology into the classroom and I believe it makes the lesson plans and class time more fun and engages the students better than a regular lesson with out technology.However, I think that technology is also going to cause us problems in the future. I believe that we are going to keep relying more and more on technology and we are drifting away from the basics of reading and writing. I think the more we focus on technology we are somewhat fading away for the most important aspects in school. Not only do we rely on technology alot in school but so much in everyday life. For instance when you go to apply for a job these days, they say go online to our website and you'll see our application, what happened to the filling out of a paper application and turning it into a manager? I think in some ways technology is a hastle, however I do think that the good out wieghs the bad.I really like the whatever, whenever, wherever article to. It really pointed out alot of good points and made me think about where we are now but where we are going to end up in the future. I also thought the video about the kids talking about how their parents struggle just putting their phones on vibrate and how many of us have to walk our parents through the most simple tasks in technology. I saw so much truth in that video it made me laugh about the truth behind it but also think about how much technology will change by the time I have kids and what my kids are going to be walking me through?
According to the UNI surveys we took, it showed that operating basic and discipline-specific equipment LCD display projectors; scan converters; laserdisc players; VCRs; graphing calculators in math; MIDI keyboards in music; and scanners and still, digital, or video cameras in the visual arts and use it to support instruction and inquiry specific to the content area is one of my main weaknesses however, I realized I am more weak in technolgy then I have ever realized. Another one of my major weakneses was using audio/visual resources (audiotapes, videos or slides) to access information and analyze the authority, accuracy, currency, and relevance. Although I discovered many weaknesses I have in technology, I also have many strengths. One thing I am really good with is communicating through email and using the internet. One goal I would like to reach is learning how to properly use and incorporate projectors into my classroomm for the future when I am a teacher, but even now for my student teaching and field work. I also want to make it a goal to plan lessons using digital cameras if possible and also learn how to properly use a scanner because there is many things I could use it for in order to have a more successful classroom. One goal I would like to make out of my strengths, is to teach and encourage my students to use email and show them the advantages with email I also want to communicate with my students parents and other teachers through email because I think it is such a great tool for communication. I also want to teach my students how to surf the web properly and safely because the internet is such a helpful tool. The first tool I would use to help me learn about these technologies would be a tutorial on technology http://eduscapes.com/tap/topic76.htm this tutorial would help me strengthen in this area because it shows and tells about many different technologies including projectors. Another tool i would use would be the podcast http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=4819382 it tells about incorporating technology into the classroom and how to operate some of the different tools in technology. I also found some fun surveys that wold be fun to have your students take to see their opinion on using the tools in technology!
