EDU 590

Another thought about technology came to me today as I sat down with a group of teachers from our middle school. We met to discuss what they were seeing in the middle school regarding skill/content strengths and weaknesses. Our goal was to pinpoint some of the areas in the elementary curriculum that they are finding students still struggle with a year later. Things that maybe we need to spend more time on or use alternative methods of teaching for. I found this meeting (a sit down, face-to-face) so incredibly helpful and enlightening. This was the first time we had met like this and one of the reasons that we had never done it before was because we plug all of our data into a program called Pearson. Anyone else use it? This program compiles data regarding tests and other types of student achievement and offers a "big picture" view of all the data entered. And I will admit it does provide some good data. HOWEVER, I think using these types of technology programs has an extremely unfortunate side effect if it is the reasonong behind less face to face data gathering like the meeting I had today. Technology shouldn't replace teachers' professional opinion it should simply be another beneficial resource.

Today I heard an interesting technology story from my boyfriend who teaches alternative ed out in Jackson. It raises the question of what we are really trying to teach kids: skills or content? He was administering a test to students the other day. It wasn't a class that he taught but he was filling in for a coworker. As he was giving the test he saw a student hunched over his desk funny so he went to check it out. The student was using his phone to look up an answer (or at least get some information about it) online. My boyfriend asked him what he was doing and he explained (defended himself) that he had no idea what the question was asking and that he was trying to get some more information about it. Well they discussed how this was technically cheating and how there are other strategies, like asking for clarification etc, if you are unsure how to do something on a test. The student proceeded to show him the question and he didn't know it either. (Again not his test/class/content area) So he looked it up online!
Now it is up to the classroom teacher how to deal with this incident but the thought does cross my mind that one of the most important skills any person can have is knowing how, when, and where to access information. In the real world you dont need to know everything, it wouldn't be possible, but you do need to know how to get information. To me this is an important skill. It doesn't make the cheating ok, but it certainly makes sense. What do you think?

EDU590

Today I recieved an e-mail from our elementary school's technology coach. We are lucky that this position is one that has escaped all of the unfortunate cuts that our district has been forced to make. The e-mail was sent out to our entire staff and offered a professional developement opportunity for this fall. She had a short survey in her e-mail that asked what kinds of technology teaching we were interested in learning about and what dates we would be available for doing so. It was wonderful to first of all have this opportunity but even more so because she was working at making it relevent to our teaching and convenient. The response was great! When I filled out the survey I was able to view who had already shown interest and at the time 13 out of our 15 classroom teachers had shown interest! It made me feel good that in my building there are teachers who see the value of incorporating technology in the classroom, are willing to take time out of their busy days to do so, and who are excited to learn new things. It also made me see how this type of important learning can take place if it is presented in the right way! Kudos to our tech coach and the fabulous teachers that I work with. I hope that these types of opportunities are made available again in this same manner. The winning formula seems to be relevance + convenience = interest!

EDU 590

Hi Everyone,

This week I was teaching a lesson that was designed to help prepare the students for next month's MEAP test. It wasn't the most interesting lesson but it is a district requirement and I will admit that this type of reading comprehension practice serves a purpose. My students were reading an expository text article about the one-handed pitcher Jim Abbott. We read the article and as we were discussing I found my students asking a lot of questions about how he was able to pitch, field, and throw. They were fascinated by his ability to overcome this challenge but they couldn't quite wrap their minds around how he did it. So we decided to investigate a little further and we went online to find out more about him, view pictures, and hopefully watch a video that would clearly answer all our questions. This was all easily done and viewed because I am lucky enough to have a smartboard in my room. Much of what we were wondering was answered in our online quest. We read a little more about him and we looked at some pictures. The only problem was that the websites we were looking at had video footage of Jim Abbott in action available...only not to us because our access to these videos was blocked by the district. Everything I looked up came back to You Tube or some other site that we are not given access to. While I understand that some sites need to be blocked for content I was very frustrated that we could not access what we needed for this spontaneous teachable moment. Obviously I could have thought ahead and downloaded some video at my house to bring in but it would seem that the beauty of having the interenet and all of its information at our fingertips is that it is a resource for spontaneous moments. It would be nice if there was some way for districts to grant teachers access to some of these banned sites that actually offer great learning tools!

Hello All!
My name is Gina Rios and I am a fifth grade teacher at Murphy Elementary in Haslett. I teach in a self-contained classroom which means I teach every subject area. Let me tell you there is not enough time in the day to do this, but I'm sure many of you feel the same way! I'm excited about beginning this program. Largely because my district makes providing technology a priority and I have many resources at my disposal as well as grant money available to try out new things. My only problem is that I find it very hard to incorporate technology based projects without the lesson taking forever and being a ton of extra work. Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to hard work. I wouldn't be a teacher if I was, but I feel like there has to be a way to seamlessly to do it and I think that becoming more tech savvy myself is a great way to start. Therefore, I'm looking forward to learning from all of you and from the class!