Exit Slip, Week 13, 11-30-10

Today we began by watching a video about a teacher who integrates technology into her classroom.  I thought this was extremely beneficial it showed us a real life example of a teacher using technology in the classroom. It also showed me that even though she changed just a few things within her classroom, which were actually very simple, she made a world of a difference in the lives of her students. Her students were more motivated and excited to learn. We have been learning about a wide variety of technology and sometimes I find it quite overwhelming, I am always asking myself “How am I going to use all of this?” It was helpful to see that I don’t have to use every technological tool, but using just a few can make quite a difference. Some of the different things she used within her classroom were as follows:

·         Interactive whiteboard (SMARTBoard) to encourage student participation

·         Students use laptops (whole cart of laptops---mobile lab) and desktop computers (mostly Macs)

·         Her students participate in online collaboration projects with other students around the world

·         Cooperative learning- small groups of students working together

·         Daily Blog (teacher blogged about assignments, updating parents with news about the classroom, etc.)—Created an open classroom

·         Each student has a blog to write about current events around the world.

·         Youtube videos (she actually created the one we watched)

·         Online books or text? She said she doesn’t make photocopies anymore

We then classified these different things/tools into three categories. These three categories were: Things we could do before, Things we couldn’t do before & Things we could do before, but can do better now. This was helpful because it truly hit home how impactful technology is in our daily life & within the classroom. It also goes to show that we could do many of the things before, BUT we can enhance those topics through the use of technology and make them better. It also shows us that technology is not needed in EVERY situation. If we technology allows us to do something we couldn’t do before, or it allows us to enhance something we could do before than we SHOULD be using technology. On the other hand, if it was something we could do before &technology isn’t enhancing the lesson than we don’t need to be using it.

The next thing we looked at were articles about the “7 stupid mistakes teachers make with technology” and the “7 brilliant things teachers do with technology.” I thought this was simply a very interesting article. It showed WHAT NOT to do within the classroom, but also WHAT TO DO with technology. It simply did not bash teachers for trying to use technology within the classroom, but it gave things that teachers did well.