Being in a classroom today, a teacher must be receptive to
new technologies and strive to make use of them in order to have an effective
learning environment for his/her students.
Our students are so technologically savvy and accustomed to using
technology outside of the classroom, it makes no sense to try and keep an
antiquated version of learning with little or no use of what is available to
enrich classrooms.
When reading of distributed or e-learning environments, what
came to mind immediately was the use of teacher web pages. I update my page on our school website
regularly in order to keep students and parents informed as well as to
distribute assignments, notes, webquests, and calendars. Now that I am used to blogging as a result of
this class, it makes sense to use blogs for discussion forums as well. I teach English currently and literature
discussions could be built in to enable further discussions of material. Our librarian has also started using blogs
for book discussions and the students are now beginning to use this feature of the
library website. Blogging would allow
those students who are timid in a classroom environment to share their thoughts
without fear of embarrassment. Students
can also plan what they have to say instead of having to come up with the right
words “on the spot” in a classroom setting.
It would also help with writing skills of which my students are in desperate
need! Texting has taken its toll on how
my students write in the classroom! YIKES!
J
There are also many reusable aspects of the curriculum we
are using in our district. C-Scope is
what our district has determined to be an acceptable tool to use for curriculum
design. There are many lessons that may
be adapted and used again to fit current classes. I also like to use websites such as
ReadWriteThink™ for lesson plan templates and ideas. These lessons can be altered to suit any
teacher and provide GREAT sources for instructional methods, plans, diagrams,
etc. A site we have just begun to use is
Photo Peach (www.photopeach.com). It is a template for making book
trailers. My students just learned how
to use this site and LOVED the results.
I am having my students do a promotion of an AP novel. This is an excellent source for easily
putting together a promotional presentation where the end result looks like a
movie trailer. A website also helpful in
showing what a book trailer can be is www.slimekids.com.
It has many trailers for the students to view to get an idea of what they can
produce themselves.
This site also falls into the category of rich media. The resulting book trailers have text, sound,
and visuals to not only catch a potential reader’s attention but the student
creator has learned much more about the book because of the symbolic
representations they choose as well as music and text choices they include. Along with this type of rich media, games in
the Jeopardy format have engaged our students as we review material. It keeps them entertained but learning at the
same time and that is priceless.
The InterWrite™ board in my classroom is a new technology
that I have learned to use. This also
falls into the rich media category in addition to an emerging technology. It keeps the students engaged because of the multimedia
capabilities and there are so many uses for it!
I was slow to use this technology because we were not really provided
with adequate training. I taught myself
over the summer when I had to present an emerging technology in another ETEC
course I was taking.
One thing I did happen to think of as I was reading about
emerging technologies was STAAR tutoring.
We have had to do an enormous amount of tutoring to get students ready
for STAAR retests this year, and reading about ITS (Intelligent Tutoring System)
gave me some hope! If students had a
tutoring system as these are described in the textbook, it might make it much
easier for them to achieve the success they need to pass their end of course
exams. Personalizing instruction for a
room full of individuals is nearly impossible.
If the computer programs could focus on target areas they need as
individuals, this could potentially have far reaching successes for these
students and the daunting tests they have to face each year! Just a thought! And if I could design a tutoring program like
this, I could retire early! J
Photo sources: www.tradebooster.com
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