I took a peek at several teacher/educator blogs before deciding to focus on ThinkThankThunk. The blog's subtitle hooked me right away: "Dealing with the fear of being a boring teacher." As a future teacher of a subject millions of students declare to be boring every day, I thought this blog might have something I could grab onto. The author has a series called "Calculus: A Comedy" that I was particularly interested in, as Calculus is the subject I am most interested in teaching.
Although he was trained as a science teacher, the author ended up teaching Calculus, which was a challenge from a pedagogical perspective. The series talks about his transition from what he admits is a very vanilla approach to the curriculum, to something much more engaging and challenging for both the students and the teacher. He goes into detail about the methods he finds to be the most effective (and why) and how teachers can be successful in using them. He also discusses certain challenges that are likely to come up.
Most valuable, in my opinion, are his posts on various course topics. He gives a synopsis of how he presented a variety of topics in his Calculus class. One of the best things about these posts are that most of them have some sort of connection to something in the real world that the students could relate to, and quite often there is humor involved. I'm not sure how helpful these would be to a brand new math teacher who's really just trying to find her footing, but they could certainly be beneficial when that same math teacher is looking for a way to take things to the next level after a couple of years.
The author also has a series called "Standards-Based Grading" that he describes as "a technique devoted to giving students formative control over their own progress (and grade)." The key is to have a grading system that provides a level of transparency for students and their parents that allows them to see where they are proficient and where they still need work. Getting a 71% on Quiz #4 hardly tells a student anything they need to know to succeed, and this series addresses that grading hurdle along with many others.
I'm certain that there are a lot of great teacher/educator blogs out there with a lot of useful information, but I'm equally certain that there are a lot of not-so-great blogs with a lot of not-so-useful information. I think it's up to the consumer to search for valuable information that is applicable to their own practice. I for one am planning to revisit ThinkThankThunk in the future.
Sunday, July 28
Thursday, July 25
Fourth Day Reactions
The theme of the week was gaming and education, and we talked a lot about the educational benefits of certain video and computer games. A few potential benefits that stood out to me were that they can provide students with a sense of identity and agency, as well as a safe place for students to take risks and challenge themselves. Toward the end of class, one of our instructors told us a story about some of his high school students and golfers who find school to be boring and tedious but love to play video games for hours on end. He asked us the following question: Can we incorporate the elements of gaming that students enjoy in a classroom setting? If so, how?
My immediate thought as a future math teacher was to build off of the "safe place to take risks and challenge themselves" aspect I mentioned above. Learning new math concepts is often challenging for students, but the cool part is that they typically build off of previous concepts. In most video games, there are multiple levels with a "boss" to defeat at the end of each one. After successfully completing one level, players move on to higher, more difficult levels where they will use the skills they mastered in the previous levels to succeed. What if a math teacher looked at each concept as a "level" and the quiz or test at the end of that section as the "boss" for that level? As students move along, they will continue to use what they learned in the lower levels to take on new risks and challenges in the new levels. If they fail a quiz, they can have the mind set that they have another chance to start from the last level they completed successfully, just like in a video game. The final exam could be considered the final "boss" at the end of a video game, where passing it means you have completed the entire game (or course). Perhaps there could even be a system of bonuses and aides along the way.
My second thought was about the school houses used at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Yes, I will take any opportunity to incorporate Harry Potter into anything! The entire student body is sorted into four houses: Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff. In these houses, students earn and lose points throughout the school year for things like good/bad behavior, providing correct answers in class, winning Quidditch matches, or winning a life-sized game of Wizard's Chess. At the end of the school year, the house with the most points wins the coveted House Cup. Within a classroom, students could be sorted into "houses" or "teams" at the beginning of the semester and earn and lose points for things like helping other students, following/breaking rules, performance on assignments and exams, winning exam review games, etc. Extending a challenge to the students at the beginning of the semester and asking them to work with a team could give them extra incentive and excitement around class activities and build a lot of skills and character traits along the way. There could be some sort of prize at the end of the semester for the team with the most points (e.g., pizza lunch, bonus points on the final, etc.)
I'll be interested to hear everyone's thoughts on these ideas! Who knows, maybe I will try one (or both) of these when I have my own classroom!
My immediate thought as a future math teacher was to build off of the "safe place to take risks and challenge themselves" aspect I mentioned above. Learning new math concepts is often challenging for students, but the cool part is that they typically build off of previous concepts. In most video games, there are multiple levels with a "boss" to defeat at the end of each one. After successfully completing one level, players move on to higher, more difficult levels where they will use the skills they mastered in the previous levels to succeed. What if a math teacher looked at each concept as a "level" and the quiz or test at the end of that section as the "boss" for that level? As students move along, they will continue to use what they learned in the lower levels to take on new risks and challenges in the new levels. If they fail a quiz, they can have the mind set that they have another chance to start from the last level they completed successfully, just like in a video game. The final exam could be considered the final "boss" at the end of a video game, where passing it means you have completed the entire game (or course). Perhaps there could even be a system of bonuses and aides along the way.
My second thought was about the school houses used at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Yes, I will take any opportunity to incorporate Harry Potter into anything! The entire student body is sorted into four houses: Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff. In these houses, students earn and lose points throughout the school year for things like good/bad behavior, providing correct answers in class, winning Quidditch matches, or winning a life-sized game of Wizard's Chess. At the end of the school year, the house with the most points wins the coveted House Cup. Within a classroom, students could be sorted into "houses" or "teams" at the beginning of the semester and earn and lose points for things like helping other students, following/breaking rules, performance on assignments and exams, winning exam review games, etc. Extending a challenge to the students at the beginning of the semester and asking them to work with a team could give them extra incentive and excitement around class activities and build a lot of skills and character traits along the way. There could be some sort of prize at the end of the semester for the team with the most points (e.g., pizza lunch, bonus points on the final, etc.)
I'll be interested to hear everyone's thoughts on these ideas! Who knows, maybe I will try one (or both) of these when I have my own classroom!
Sunday, July 21
Video Games & Education: Dr. Mario Revisted
When tasked with investigating the use of video games for educational purposes, I decided to revisit an old favorite of mine, Dr. Mario. I may be dating myself here, but my family loved this game when it first came out on the original Nintendo back in 1990. My older brother and I would play against each other as long as our parents would let us, and I swear they would send us to bed early just so they could have a turn. It was addictive. Since I no longer have the original Nintendo, I had to download Dr. Mario for the Wii, which was conveniently quite cheap. My boyfriend and I started playing against each other, and the soundtrack was all too familiar. We were able to find a groove pretty quickly! After playing for an hour or so, I started to reflect on what my future math students could potentially get out of it. I landed on three main things: quick thinking, spatial awareness, and strategic planning.
Quick Thinking: Dr. Mario demands that you make very quick decisions about where to direct each pill that gets tossed into your prescription bottle. Depending on what speed you're playing at, the amount of time you have until the pill reaches the bottom of the bottle on its own can be very limited. This requires you to stay sharp, pay close attention, and think on your feet.
Spatial Awareness: Each pill has two ends, which can be two different colors or the same color, and viruses of the various colors are spread throughout the bottle. You have to be able to tell where the viruses are in relation to the pill once it's thrown into your bottle. If you misread where a virus is and slam your pill down one spot to the left or right of where you meant to, you have to make up for that setback. You also have to figure out how you want your pill oriented (up, down, left, or right).
Strategic Planning: There are a few types of strategies that you can use in Dr. Mario, two of which I'll discuss here. The first one is planning ahead. Whenever a pill is tossed into your bottle, you can see the next couple of pills that are coming. If you're going to fully take advantage of this, you should make decisions on where to place the current pill given what's coming up. This can help you be more efficient and get the most out of every pill. The second strategy is to kill multiple viruses at once for more points and more punishment on your opponent. You can set up your bottle so that, with one additional pill, you can kill two, three, or four viruses. This sends broken pill pieces to your opponent that they have no control over. Both of these strategies require a lot of continuous thought and planning.
Overall, I wouldn't use Dr. Mario directly with my students, but I think the skills it helps develop can be valuable in math and other areas. As long as they don't spend too much time staring at the computer or television screen, kids can get a lot of valuable skills out of playing computer and video games. I guess it's up to parents to monitor their kids' playing time and decide how much is too much.
Quick Thinking: Dr. Mario demands that you make very quick decisions about where to direct each pill that gets tossed into your prescription bottle. Depending on what speed you're playing at, the amount of time you have until the pill reaches the bottom of the bottle on its own can be very limited. This requires you to stay sharp, pay close attention, and think on your feet.
Spatial Awareness: Each pill has two ends, which can be two different colors or the same color, and viruses of the various colors are spread throughout the bottle. You have to be able to tell where the viruses are in relation to the pill once it's thrown into your bottle. If you misread where a virus is and slam your pill down one spot to the left or right of where you meant to, you have to make up for that setback. You also have to figure out how you want your pill oriented (up, down, left, or right).
Strategic Planning: There are a few types of strategies that you can use in Dr. Mario, two of which I'll discuss here. The first one is planning ahead. Whenever a pill is tossed into your bottle, you can see the next couple of pills that are coming. If you're going to fully take advantage of this, you should make decisions on where to place the current pill given what's coming up. This can help you be more efficient and get the most out of every pill. The second strategy is to kill multiple viruses at once for more points and more punishment on your opponent. You can set up your bottle so that, with one additional pill, you can kill two, three, or four viruses. This sends broken pill pieces to your opponent that they have no control over. Both of these strategies require a lot of continuous thought and planning.
Overall, I wouldn't use Dr. Mario directly with my students, but I think the skills it helps develop can be valuable in math and other areas. As long as they don't spend too much time staring at the computer or television screen, kids can get a lot of valuable skills out of playing computer and video games. I guess it's up to parents to monitor their kids' playing time and decide how much is too much.
Thursday, July 18
Third Day Reactions
For the "Organizing Your Online Life" project, I presented information on Evernote, which I really enjoyed learning about and will probably continue to use. The other members of my group presented Diigo and Pinterest. I was most interested in how these tools can be used in the classroom by both students and teachers.
With Diigo, I was underwhelmed. At this point, I think that most browsers have an adequate bookmarking system of their own, especially to meet my needs. One cool feature, though, is the ability to highlight text on webpages, provided the webpages won't change or go away. That is a unique feature that I've never come across before. As a student, that could be beneficial when doing research for a project. I didn't really see any value for teachers, though. I suppose the ability for students to share bookmarks and comments with each other if they're working on a project together could be helpful.
Pinterest is something I was already quite familiar with but have not used myself. I'm not a big fan of it, as it doesn't really appeal to any of my tastes or interests. I would never use it directly or indirectly with students, as I don't think there are any appropriate features to be applied to them. I would, however, take advantage of the boards about teaching. It's really neat that there are boards out there with specific ideas on how to present different lessons in math, science, language arts, etc. When working with kids, I think it's important to mix things up and find new ways to keep them engaged in the learning process, and Pinterest could be a really good resource for ideas on how to do that.
Of the three tools I learned about, Evernote is the one that I felt had the most to offer in the classroom. I think it would be really cool for a teacher to set up an account that all of the students have access to in the classroom and at home. They could submit assignments on it for quicker turnaround, and teachers could post resources for further review. One idea that I thought was great was for a teacher to take pictures of the white board when a particularly important concept has been laid out and post it on Evernote for students to reference indefinitely. Teachers can also use Evernote personally to build and organize lesson plans, assignments, and projects.
All in all, learning about the different tools was pretty fun. Hearing some of the suggestions on how best to use them in the classroom got me thinking about the types of things I want to do and how I can leverage technology to enhance them.
With Diigo, I was underwhelmed. At this point, I think that most browsers have an adequate bookmarking system of their own, especially to meet my needs. One cool feature, though, is the ability to highlight text on webpages, provided the webpages won't change or go away. That is a unique feature that I've never come across before. As a student, that could be beneficial when doing research for a project. I didn't really see any value for teachers, though. I suppose the ability for students to share bookmarks and comments with each other if they're working on a project together could be helpful.
Pinterest is something I was already quite familiar with but have not used myself. I'm not a big fan of it, as it doesn't really appeal to any of my tastes or interests. I would never use it directly or indirectly with students, as I don't think there are any appropriate features to be applied to them. I would, however, take advantage of the boards about teaching. It's really neat that there are boards out there with specific ideas on how to present different lessons in math, science, language arts, etc. When working with kids, I think it's important to mix things up and find new ways to keep them engaged in the learning process, and Pinterest could be a really good resource for ideas on how to do that.
Of the three tools I learned about, Evernote is the one that I felt had the most to offer in the classroom. I think it would be really cool for a teacher to set up an account that all of the students have access to in the classroom and at home. They could submit assignments on it for quicker turnaround, and teachers could post resources for further review. One idea that I thought was great was for a teacher to take pictures of the white board when a particularly important concept has been laid out and post it on Evernote for students to reference indefinitely. Teachers can also use Evernote personally to build and organize lesson plans, assignments, and projects.
All in all, learning about the different tools was pretty fun. Hearing some of the suggestions on how best to use them in the classroom got me thinking about the types of things I want to do and how I can leverage technology to enhance them.
Sunday, July 14
Organizing Your Online Life: A Look at Evernote
Full disclosure: I'm pretty much always intimidated by a new piece of technology and reluctant to embark on the adventure of using it. As you might infer from this information, I wasn't exactly thrilled with the Organizing Your Online Life project that was assigned last week. I think the first thought that went through my mind when it was introduced was, "Ugh, really?" Needless to say, I saved it for last in my extensive list of things to do this weekend. It's funny how this habit of mine never helps matters at all.
The assignment asked that I explore a piece of software called Evernote, develop a one- or two-page handout on how to use it, and put together a 25-minute presentation to go along with it. Yikes! Little did I know that I would find the process of completing this assignment positively delightful. I started off by going to the Evernote website and poking around for some basic information about it. As a compulsively organized person, I was intrigued by the promises on the homepage: Remember everything. Capture anything. Access anywhere. Find things fast. From there, I decided to check out the Wikipedia page to see if I could get a better idea of how Evernote works. My last step before taking the plunge and clicking on the "Get Evernote - It's Free" button was to check out some consumer reviews, which were very positive. Then off I went!
After installing the free version of Evernote and registering for a personal account, I started to play around with creating notes and such. I was surprised at how easy it was to use, and I appreciated the aesthetics. I love the pale green and gray color palette and the elephant logo, as well as the layout of the program. I"m sure I have a long way to go before I really take advantage of its full functionality, but I'm definitely on board to keep investigating.
All in all, I'm really happy with the experience. You'd think I might have been more optimistic going into the Organizing Your Online Life project, considering the first word in its name is ORGANIZING, and that's one of my favorite things to do. Lesson learned, I guess! Heck, I may even USE Evernote now. Who would have guessed?
The assignment asked that I explore a piece of software called Evernote, develop a one- or two-page handout on how to use it, and put together a 25-minute presentation to go along with it. Yikes! Little did I know that I would find the process of completing this assignment positively delightful. I started off by going to the Evernote website and poking around for some basic information about it. As a compulsively organized person, I was intrigued by the promises on the homepage: Remember everything. Capture anything. Access anywhere. Find things fast. From there, I decided to check out the Wikipedia page to see if I could get a better idea of how Evernote works. My last step before taking the plunge and clicking on the "Get Evernote - It's Free" button was to check out some consumer reviews, which were very positive. Then off I went!
After installing the free version of Evernote and registering for a personal account, I started to play around with creating notes and such. I was surprised at how easy it was to use, and I appreciated the aesthetics. I love the pale green and gray color palette and the elephant logo, as well as the layout of the program. I"m sure I have a long way to go before I really take advantage of its full functionality, but I'm definitely on board to keep investigating.
All in all, I'm really happy with the experience. You'd think I might have been more optimistic going into the Organizing Your Online Life project, considering the first word in its name is ORGANIZING, and that's one of my favorite things to do. Lesson learned, I guess! Heck, I may even USE Evernote now. Who would have guessed?
Wednesday, July 10
Second Day Reactions
The world we live in is one where people constantly lie in
wait for the “next big thing” in technology.
People will line up for hours – or even days – to get the latest product
from Apple, or even a newer version of a product they already have. With the release of new and improved
technology comes a unique excitement. It’s
as if people have a thirst for technology that simply cannot be quenched. Each new purchase is enough to soothe the
burn for a bit, but sooner or later, the people will be parched yet again.
The first question weighing on my mind is simple. Why?
Why are we such slaves to technology?
Why do we constantly feel the need to upgrade our gadgets? Why are we willing to buy used cars and secondhand
clothes but shudder at the thought of buying a used cell phone? I think it all comes down to one thing: What is it that technology promises us that
we just can’t seem to turn down? From
our discussion in class, the two promises of technology that I think have the
greatest influence on our obsession with it are efficiency and information.
Modern society is fast-paced, and for most people, time is
at a premium. Technology promises to help
us navigate through the daily labyrinth that is our modern existence. We can consolidate and organize information
in ways that appeal to the ears and the eyes.
We can reach colleagues, family members, and friends via multiple
avenues in an instant. We can find our
way to and from places we have never been without a hitch. Pretty much any question we could ever ask has
an answer, or at least a substantial amount of information to consider, that is
right at our fingertips and can be accessed anytime, anywhere.
This all sounds terrific to me, as I'm sure it does to most people. Many of these resources have become what I would call a necessity in my life, and I’m nowhere near "tech junkie" status. So, my next question is: What’s the problem, then?
Although the benefits of technology are innumerable, what
are the costs? My answer is the widespread
loss of the skills that technology performs for us. How many children will grow up not knowing
how to read a map because their GPS just takes them where they need to go? Will people forget (or never learn) how to
write a letter to their grandmother and send it in the mail? Will we stop using our minds to solve
problems and instead just look up the answers?
Will there be a day when children no longer create imagined worlds in
their backyards because everything they could possibly think up is already in
front of them in the form of a movie, TV show, video game, or computer app?
We can neither ignore nor deny the positive impacts of technological advances in an ever-changing world. To do so would be utterly obtuse. What I think we need to acknowledge, however, is that there are some negatives that come along with the positives. We have to ask ourselves whether we're willing to hand certain tasks over to our gadgets for good and create a dependence on technology. If we do that, are we losing something that we can't get back?
Monday, July 8
The Wisdom of John Dewey
I found John Dewey's "My Pedagogic Creed" fascinating, especially for having been written in 1897. I think his beliefs are quite progressive to this day, and many of the things he criticized are still in wide use in the American education system. This calls into question how much (or little) progress has been made over the past 100+ years. For the most part, I found myself nodding my head in agreement as I read his beliefs one by one.
Something that really stood out to me was Dewey's emphasis that the student should not be a passive learner. This is an issue that I have considered a lot since deciding to become a teacher. My brother and I have had more than one conversation about what makes a person go from taking everything they're taught as fact to being an active consumer of knowledge who raises questions and thinks critically. When I reflect on my own high school experience, I don't recall engaging in such behavior very often. Whatever my teachers said at the front of the class was inherently true. It wasn't until I went to college that I really began to apply my own thoughts, experiences, and beliefs to what I was being taught in the classroom. My college professors were a big influence on this change, as they encouraged this type of learning (unlike the teachers I had up until that point).
Something that I had never really considered, but that made a lot of sense as I was reading it, was Dewey's belief that children are born with an innate power to construct knowledge and that the best way for them to learn is to relate to their social life. If we are to prepare children to be responsible, contributing members of a community of learners, they need to construct new knowledge around what they already know. Traditional teaching styles often stifle this power, as they don't allow children to draw from their own past, present, and future experiences. When children enter a classroom and are expected to believe or hold as fact whatever their teachers present to them, they are moving backward in their own development as active, critical thinkers. Moreover, they are lacking the opportunity to find and build connections to their own world.
One of Dewey's beliefs that I couldn't fully get on board with was his insistence that subject matter is only valuable as it contributes to the nature and growth of social life. Although I agree that this is part of the value in education, I can't get passed the idea that, as Dewey put it, "the study of science is educational in so far as it brings out the materials and processes which make social life what it is." As a future math teacher, I can't imagine how a sufficient education in basic, foundational math curriculum could possibly be focused solely in its contribution to social life. As I read this section of the creed, I was imagining a limit being put on the amount and complexity of math material that would be taught in the classroom, and I found this to be as damaging as everything else that Dewey was arguing against. Perhaps I need to dig deeper into what the quote above really means and how it would impact my job as a math teacher.
All in all, I found Dewey's beliefs exciting to ponder as a brand new future teacher. Here's hoping that I will have the tools to enact some of his beliefs in the classroom one day!
Something that really stood out to me was Dewey's emphasis that the student should not be a passive learner. This is an issue that I have considered a lot since deciding to become a teacher. My brother and I have had more than one conversation about what makes a person go from taking everything they're taught as fact to being an active consumer of knowledge who raises questions and thinks critically. When I reflect on my own high school experience, I don't recall engaging in such behavior very often. Whatever my teachers said at the front of the class was inherently true. It wasn't until I went to college that I really began to apply my own thoughts, experiences, and beliefs to what I was being taught in the classroom. My college professors were a big influence on this change, as they encouraged this type of learning (unlike the teachers I had up until that point).
Something that I had never really considered, but that made a lot of sense as I was reading it, was Dewey's belief that children are born with an innate power to construct knowledge and that the best way for them to learn is to relate to their social life. If we are to prepare children to be responsible, contributing members of a community of learners, they need to construct new knowledge around what they already know. Traditional teaching styles often stifle this power, as they don't allow children to draw from their own past, present, and future experiences. When children enter a classroom and are expected to believe or hold as fact whatever their teachers present to them, they are moving backward in their own development as active, critical thinkers. Moreover, they are lacking the opportunity to find and build connections to their own world.
One of Dewey's beliefs that I couldn't fully get on board with was his insistence that subject matter is only valuable as it contributes to the nature and growth of social life. Although I agree that this is part of the value in education, I can't get passed the idea that, as Dewey put it, "the study of science is educational in so far as it brings out the materials and processes which make social life what it is." As a future math teacher, I can't imagine how a sufficient education in basic, foundational math curriculum could possibly be focused solely in its contribution to social life. As I read this section of the creed, I was imagining a limit being put on the amount and complexity of math material that would be taught in the classroom, and I found this to be as damaging as everything else that Dewey was arguing against. Perhaps I need to dig deeper into what the quote above really means and how it would impact my job as a math teacher.
All in all, I found Dewey's beliefs exciting to ponder as a brand new future teacher. Here's hoping that I will have the tools to enact some of his beliefs in the classroom one day!
Thursday, July 4
First Day Reactions
Throughout my K-12 education, which was from 1990 to 2003, the world of technology changed tremendously. In the classroom, I went from watching filmstrips, to video tapes, to DVDs. I was thrilled to have a Walkman when I was in elementary school, which was upgraded to a Discman in Jr. High, and was eventually replaced with an iPod in college. At home, my family went from not having a computer at all, to sharing one bulky PC with limited functionality, to having multiple computers in the house. Our first printer used continuous stationery, and from there we had several stops along the way to a laser printer with scanning, copying, and faxing capabilities. Widespread use of the internet and e-mail really happened while I was in high school. We went from no cell phones, to one clunky cell phone with prepaid minutes for emergencies, to individual cell phones. It wasn't until I had finished my undergraduate degree in 2007 that everyone seemed to be upgrading to smart phones. Social networking didn't really become mainstream until I was in college, and it has rapidly grown from MySpace and Facebook to Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and who knows what else!
I don't consider myself to be on the cutting edge of technology by any stretch of the imagination. I'm one of the last people to finally get the "latest and greatest" piece of technology, and it's quite often after something even "later and greater" has already hit the market. In class the other day, I didn't even know that my Kindle Fire is considered to be a tablet, and I was told by a classmate that I was probably the only person who owns one and uses it exclusively for reading books. It took my boyfriend about two years to convince me to get a smart phone, which I have only had for about a year, and I probably only use it for about 10% of what it's capable of. When I began graduate school this summer, I was positively flabbergasted by the almost exclusive use of laptops by the other students during our classes. What happened to good old notebooks, folders, pens, and pencils? I'm currently struggling to make a rapid adjustment to paperless learning.
As a future high school teacher, I find technology use in the classroom intimidating and worrisome. The biggest reason for this is my lack of knowledge about what's available, how to use it myself, and how to manage my future students' use of it. How in the world can I keep control of a classroom of 30+ teenagers armed with smart phones, iPads, and whatever else is out there that I don't know about? What I'm really looking forward to in my Teaching with Technology course is to get a handle on what technology is available and how it can best be used. I don't deny the importance of using technology in the classroom for efficiency, innovation, and preparing students for a world that is filled with it, but in order to be effective at teaching with technology, I have a LOT to learn!
I don't consider myself to be on the cutting edge of technology by any stretch of the imagination. I'm one of the last people to finally get the "latest and greatest" piece of technology, and it's quite often after something even "later and greater" has already hit the market. In class the other day, I didn't even know that my Kindle Fire is considered to be a tablet, and I was told by a classmate that I was probably the only person who owns one and uses it exclusively for reading books. It took my boyfriend about two years to convince me to get a smart phone, which I have only had for about a year, and I probably only use it for about 10% of what it's capable of. When I began graduate school this summer, I was positively flabbergasted by the almost exclusive use of laptops by the other students during our classes. What happened to good old notebooks, folders, pens, and pencils? I'm currently struggling to make a rapid adjustment to paperless learning.
As a future high school teacher, I find technology use in the classroom intimidating and worrisome. The biggest reason for this is my lack of knowledge about what's available, how to use it myself, and how to manage my future students' use of it. How in the world can I keep control of a classroom of 30+ teenagers armed with smart phones, iPads, and whatever else is out there that I don't know about? What I'm really looking forward to in my Teaching with Technology course is to get a handle on what technology is available and how it can best be used. I don't deny the importance of using technology in the classroom for efficiency, innovation, and preparing students for a world that is filled with it, but in order to be effective at teaching with technology, I have a LOT to learn!
My Ideal Classroom
I was asked to draw a picture of my ideal classroom on the first day of my Teaching with Technology course. We'll see how I feel about it after a year of student teaching and studying education!
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