Tech Classrooms

In my classroom the students use a lot of technology. The weekly homework contract is sent through Google Classroom. All homework and activities are done through Google Classroom. The students also have a online portfolio, Seesaw that they use to display their “Wow Work.” This portfolio stays with the student from year to year and parents have access to view their child’s work. In Google Classroom, parents can view what their students are working on as well. The assignments are designed so that students can work on them at home, at after school homework help areas, on a smartphone, really anywhere as long as they can log on. Some assignments will require students to create a poster or a written document. For the documents students work in Google Docs and can send in their assignments to the Google Classroom. Posters are still in hard copy and presented, but many students use Google Slides PowerPoint presentations to organize their ideas for their posters. Then the students can just print their slides and paste them to the poster. Some students print pictures and others prefer to hand draw their illustrations. My students can use specific games from coolmath15.com to practice skills in Math by Myself. All of the sixth graders use CPM which is math curriculum that is online as well as in print. The students can create graphs and diagrams in the online math curriculum program.

Outside of the classroom I hear a lot from my students about different video games they like to play and the Youtube channels they like to watch. A large majority of my students enjoy playing and watching Minecraft. The game is creative and allows students to build and add on to their buildings later. The player can also destroy things to gain materials to build. I have been instructed to watch PewDiePie’s YouTube channel; which I gather is a famous gaming video channel. I have also damaged my “coolness” level for not being a Mirfanda (a fan of Miranda Sings, another YouTuber). My students also like to play PokemonGo and talk about what teams they are on. This I sort of understand because my boyfriend and friends play the game.

My CT quite clearly has laid out a tech-friendly atmosphere in her classroom. She does a lot of instruction using her phone mirrored to the Apple TV, like a doc cam. She also projects her computer screen on the Apple TV when she is giving instructions on how to do something on the computers. The class has 1:1 Chromebooks, six mac desktops, and a class iPad. Brain breaks are sometimes old fashioned cue cards she draws and sometimes they are GoNoodle dancing activities. As soon as I can borrow an apple device to use in this classroom I want to use the bouncyballs.org sound meter. I am a windows/Android person so becoming a teacher will make me have to become familiar with apple devices. My CT uses the technology to aide her lessons and even improve some lessons. One day students self assessed their fluency by audio recording themselves read aloud for two minutes straight. Then the students did a free write on what they observed when they played back the audio. Audio recording twenty six students and then having them listen back to the recording would be a feat to undertake back in the days of cassettes and CD recording. This activity was an option for students to do after they had finished the first, main activity of the computer.

I have not had the opportunity to observe other teachers but I have spoken to quite a few and have found that my CT is really not quite the norm. A lot of teachers have difficulty integrating technology into their curriculum in a beneficial way. A lot of teachers find it to be another skill set they need to teach and do not see the possibilities of overlap with their existing curriculum. Some of the teachers at the elementary school that shares a campus with my school, were just learning to connect to the Apple TV. This is not an activity that really augments their teaching. Projectors have been around for a very long time and a doc cam, or mirrored device, is just a more clear picture of the same old concept. I feel really fortunate to be in a class where technology is used appropriately and in ways that enhance student’s learning.