Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Field Experiance
I was placed in a 6th grade classroom at Trenton St. Mary's Middle School. This school houses 5th and 6th graders. It is a small two story building with very little technology available. There are two smart boards that can be checked out and brought to the room when needed. During my hours of observation i did not see any teachers using the boards. The teachers did have a crash cart filled with laptop computers that could be checked out and brought to the room for the students to use to search information. I taught a lesson on Japanese internment camps in the US during world war 2 using the laptops to search the web. I had the students find locations of camps, populations in the camps and pictures of people moved to the camps. This was a nice learning experience for me since i have used very little technology in the class room to this point. The students liked having the time on the laptops and worked very diligently to find information. I was also introduced to an ELMO which was very interesting. It reminded me of the overhead projector when i was in school. It is a great tool because the teacher can place any object under it and it will appear on the screen for observation. The FE said she used it mostly for science. This has been another great field experience to build my knowledge on different tools and techniques in teaching.
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It's so nice to hear that you were able to teach a lesson (and using technology!). I think it pairs nicely with all the introductions and discoveries you've made during this session.
ReplyDeleteIt's tricky with the "checkout" system at schools. It's nice to have the resources (and surely I'd use them everyday if no one else would), but many teachers see it as an inconvenience because it has to be moved, signed out, signed in, plugged in, setup.......... Obviously, that's not excuse for not using what's been given to you. I told another student the same thing: it's like the parable of the talents. If you are given a little and don't use that, what makes it acceptable to be given more? Sometimes we have to (gasp) work for our students!
As for the Elmo, I love those. That (with the required projector) are my favorite teaching technologies aside from the Internet itself. They are so versatile.