Technology is not a huge part of my placement classroom. However I feel like my experience so far in the field has helped me to form a more concrete vision of the kind of classroom that I would love to have, at least in terms of the available technology. This was the topic of our first Educ 504 class, and I feel more able to discuss it now.
My ideal classroom would not be extraordinarily fancy by any means, there are just a few gadgets I think could really benefit my students. Fun gadget number one that I would want in my ideal classroom is a document camera. (Side note: I am super pumped because my placement classroom is about to get one!) A document camera can be useful in a science classroom for a variety of reasons, the first of which is demonstrations. It would be SO much easy to demonstrate smaller phenomenon for my class if I knew that they would be able to see it! This could also be useful for diagrams, because I like to do some of my notes on the board instead of in power point it would be nice to use the document camera to show students diagrams and not put them through my not so artistic rendition.
Another helpful piece of technology that my students could benefit from would be a laptop cart. I don't think my students will need to have computers everyday, but access to a laptop cart would make activities such as making graphs for a lab report, or doing online lab simulations so much easier. This technology would only be ideal however IF it worked at a reasonable speed. I hate how some school laptops are so slow that they are hardly worth using.
Finally I would like to have the basics in my classroom, a white board (preferably more than one) and a projector. While I'm sure that there are things that I am forgetting, I think that I could really extend my students learning just by using those simple tools.
I really like that you chose to revisit this activity from the beginning of the summer semester! You have inspired me to take another look at my sketch when I have a free moment. In regards to the three pieces of technology that you mentioned as your "top gadgets," I am particularly interested in the document camera. I have never heard of this before, or maybe I have seen one and just didn't know the proper name for it. What exactly does it do? Does it just provide a medium for projecting any physical document onto the white board? I would be interested to learn more about it.
ReplyDeleteAs for the laptop cart, I can really see the benefit of students in a science class being able to make graphs and lab reports on the computer without having to leave the classroom. I think this could be similarly beneficial in the math classroom, especially if there is a larger unit project that requires the students to synthesize information in multiple formats. You are very right about the (common) issues of slow functioning computers, and I remember that a number of the laptops at the summer school were completely non-functional. I think that, with all technological resources in a school, there are issues of how up to date and how well cared for the resources are.
Great idea to go back to that assignment, Lauren. An inspired idea and a great practice to try to bring into your own practice, too.
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