Such an interesting week has been! Today’s events notwithstanding, I think I can speak for all of us teacher candidates when I say that I am very much ready for this all to be over.
This reflection will go over some of the technology in the classroom that I’d like to utilize in the coming years. I can remember back in the day, we would chuckle when the teacher could hardly use an overhead projector without burning a bulb out or flipping the wrong switch or never getting it quite in focus. These days, we’ve gone all digital. My own classroom (or at least, I should say, my mentor teacher’s classroom) has a digital overhead and a digital HD projector mounted on the ceiling. Some teachers in my building even have one of those fancy-shmancy Smart Boards I’ve been hearing so much about! So how do I get in on this action?
The easiest way, I believe, is to use the little thing in little ways everyday. Make the students comfortable with you using these new tech pieces. If I had a Smart Board, I’d use it to do interactive discussions (KWL anyone?) and give strong and flexible visual aids to the students. But it doesn’t stop there. I’d love to use video equipment too. Digital cameras and digital camcorders (such as the “Flip” model) can be easy to use and super mobile in the classroom. Recording a student’s speech and giving them audio voiceover feedback would be so cool! Technology should never be a barrier teachers need to tackle, it should be just another tool in the toolbox.
Now, I don’t recommend going the full nine on this one either. Notice I said “just another tool in the toolbox.” I think that making a separate Facebook page or a Twitter homework account might be going a little overboard. Make sure the students are focused on the content, not the medium. After all, who benefits? Making a lesson or unit more accessible to students in the information age might be a great idea, but not at the cost of the quality of what they’re learning.
I’d love to get a Smart Board. I’d love to have an iPad for every student in art classrooms. But if using technology in the classroom means OVER-using technology in the classroom, I’ll pull out a tattered copy of Eliot’s “Waste Land” and we’ll sit outside, thank you very much.
