Technology In The Classroom

“Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is most important.” - Bill Gates

How in the world can I encompass everything I think about using technology in the classroom in one blog post?!  But I will try!  To start off, I am very passionate about the benefits of technology when it comes to education and my own life!  I think that there is no question that using technology in any lesson greatly increases students' motivation and engagement.  Any time that I have involved a youtube video, a website, or even an online article into any of my small group lessons I have noticed that I am able to grabs students right away.  Even in my own learning, I am so much more personally involved in a lesson when any of my teachers include technology.  However, I am also kind of overwhelmed with the immense amount of the technology available to us in terms of academics, management, and organization.  Every time that I learn about a new app or website that can benefit student learning I always think that I would love to use that in a lesson, but then I leave that seminar or class and I completely forget about it.

Challenge for myself: For the rest of my practicum experience and in my student teaching in the fall, I want to incorporate a new kind of technology that I haven't used in a lesson at least once a week.

I know that applying technology to teaching takes practice and I really need to learn the ins and outs of whatever piece of technology I'm using.  On the other hand, I know that if I don't try them with students, I won't know the best way to use them to promote learning.  As my own professional development, I would really like to make it a goal to go out of my way to learn new technology and new ways to make learning as engaging and interesting as possible.  But I also want to make sure that the technology that I use in the classroom is supplemental and benefits student learning.  If using technology keeps the learning at the surface level, I don't think that it should be used.  Using technology can take time, I want to make sure that the time I spend developing my use of technology in the classroom is worthwhile and challenges students to grow and push their learning further.

I think that when students are presenting information that they have learned or been working on for a while, I think that providing them with choices of the platform from which they present is really important.  Technology provides students with so much more freedom to express their learning.  Apps and website such as Google presentations, Prezi presentations, videos from Animoto, and so many resources I have yet to uncover.

A resource that I am going to start looking into regularly is Free Technology for Teachers.

http://www.freetech4teachers.com

This blog will help me learn ways to apply technology to different academic subjects and will help me learn what technology is out there for teachers.  Although I'm feeling a little small in this world of the internet and apps, I'm excited that everything is available for me to continue learning and grow as a teacher and learner.
   
Thanks!
Kate

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/pennwic/6039096127/">Weigle Information Commons</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">cc</a>

Instructional Conversations

   

Whenever I sit down with a group of students to discuss a story or a reading strategy, I am always hopeful for a thoughtful conversation where I go, "Wow! That was awesome!"  I want to leave feeling like we are all better readers and thinkers after the discussion than we were before.  However, I have realized that this feeling is rare and only come about with intensive planning and the right group of students.

     Although I have always thought about this when leading literacy discussions, we have recently been talking about and reading research on Instructional Conversations, and I realized that this strategy is something that I tend to work towards.  I've learned a lot about creating the right support for instructional conversations to succeed.  In Claude Goldenberg's article "Instructional Conversations: Promoting Comprehension Through Discussion" he discusses the importance of learning from conversations.  He writes, "But true education -real teaching- involves helping students think, reason, comprehend, and understand important ideas" (316).  And this doesn't come just because you sit down with a group of students and decide that you're going to have an instructional conversation.  It takes work and focus, flexibility and structure.

As I embarked on planning and implementing instructional conversations within my small groups, I realized that the thematic focus that you pick for the discussion is crucial to its success.  The focus can't be too vague, but it needs to be broad enough to allow for multiple perspectives and possible directions of conversation.  This is difficult to do because although you can try to pick topics or themes that you think your students will pounce on, it is hard to predict if they will actually absorb your theme into their discussion.  I noticed that when I incorporated literature or topics into the instructional conversation the students made thoughtful connections between past texts, past events, and from their personal lives.

From an unsuccessful attempt at an instructional conversation I learned that you truly need to plan and think through the lesson mentally before it happens.  If the students don't take to a subject or focus of the conversation, as the facilitator, you need to have a back up plan and be able to go with the natural direction of the conversation from the students.  The second time I implemented an instructional conversation into our small group the students fed off of the topic, fed off of each other and we had a really intellectual conversation that caught me be surprise.  I realized that I shouldn't have been surprised because the reason that the conversation evolved as it did was because of my planning and loose direction throughout.

I think that having an instructional conversation can make a lesson so much more meaningful for the students.  When they can share their personal ideas and work off of each other, the students are so much more engaged in intertwining the lesson into their schema.  It is a great strategy to find out students' background knowledge on issues in our world, their ideas on certain topics, and what they have learned in previous lessons.  It can be implemented into literacy lessons, science lesson, social studies lessons, and math lessons depending on your planning and focus that you develop ahead of time.  I think that instructional conversations are great to use in the classroom because they promote individual input from students, exposure to different perspectives, and can be a great platform for building a positive community of learners.

What do you think?

Thanks!
Kate

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcwathieu/2945514734/">Marc Wathieu</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/">cc</a>

Writing Analysis Strengths

     This week I gave my sixth graders a writing lesson on structuring dialogue in writing.  They were expected to correctly include quotations, line separations, indentations, and a variety of verbs to indicate that something was being said.  The group of students that I did this writing assessment with showed me a lot about who they are as writers specifically related to structure, conventions, and voice.  The students' writing taught me things I expected to see, but I was also surprised by how much I learned about them and their identities as writers.

            One of the student’s strengths was that they clearly understood the purpose of using dialogue in writing.  All of the students wrote the dialogue in a meaningful manner, whether it was realistically driven or fantasy.  With their pieces of writing, all of the students used dialogue in a variety of ways to indicate conversation.  The lines that the students chose to use in their quotations and the verbs they followed those lines with were all indicators of this understanding.  For example, one student wrote [“I’m just fixing it sides!” Kaylee argued.]  Many students wrote sentences similar to this in their writing.  Because students wrote using this variety of verbs correctly, it shows me as the instructor that they understand the connection between dialogue in writing and conversation in real life.  Their writing taught me that this group of writers clearly understands the purpose of dialogue in writing and why it is used.  However, I think that it would really benefit them to work on learning the importance of dialogue in writing.

            One thing that I didn’t expect to learn about the group of students as writers is related to their voice as writers.  The writing task that I gave them was very specific towards working on the structure of using dialogue in writing, so I didn’t think that there would be a lot of unique voice that came out in it.  However, with the students’ pieces of writing I felt I learned something about them because their writing showed part of who they were.  For example, a student wrote about an argument that he had with his group during the science experiment they had done that morning.  Many students wrote about conversations they had with friends or imaginary conversations they would have with their friends.  Although the assessment task didn’t direct them to create a really meaningful piece of writing, I was able to learn about them whether they wrote about an argument, a sleepover, a fantasy story, or a realistic experience they have had in school.  Because of this strength I’ve found in my students as writers, I would love to give them the opportunity to write in a more purposeful manner that allows them to share their beliefs or unique ideas on topics that are important to them.

            Something that I realized about the students as writers is how much their identity as readers also impacts their identity as writers.  The students who are consistently engaged as readers demonstrated a very substantial understanding of how dialogue is structured in writing.  I’m assuming that this is because the more they read and because of the higher ability novels they are reading, the more they are exposed to the correct usage of dialogue.  This connection related to my students is very important because I think that students can learn better if we directly tie the concepts together between both writing and reading.

My students' writing really surprised me and I truly learned firsthand the importance of looking at students' writing as evidence of who they are as writers.  Although I agreed with this before, now I truly see it!

Thanks!

Kate