Reflection #8- My Aha's

The biggest impact from this class was learning about how to incorporate a blog in my classroom.  Many times I think that because my students are so young they cannot understand many forms of technology.  However, after exploring blogs I realize that my students could easily learn how to navigate this technology with some assistance.

Due to this class, I have already started exploring ways to incorporate technology into my lessons.  I have been searching for online games and ideas to use in my classroom.  I have a projector in my classrooms, so I am hoping to utilize it along with the websites and information I find with my students.

Another aha moment for me was creating a concept map.  I could easily incorporate this idea with my students as a way to wrap us a unit of study.  I could also see creating it based on a KWL chart and then making changes to it at the end of unit of study.

I do not think I will continue to use the blog that I created in the class.  However, I would like to incorporate a blog into my future classroom.  So, I will use a blog, but I plan to make it more appropriate for kindergarten or young elementary students.

Revised Educational Philosophy

I closely identify with the Pragmatism school of thought because I try to make education a necessity to my students, incorporate real-life situations to them, use various forms of technology to instruct them and feel that education is life.  I feel this way because of the support I received as a student in school.  I was given the opportunity to extend my learning through sports, the arts and academic contests as well.  As a kindergarten teacher, I try to keep my students focused and introduce them to various types of technology that is appropriate for their age.  

I think that by reflecting on my Educational Technology Philosophy I have seen changes that I need to make in my teaching style.  I tend to be automate instead of an informate.  Sometimes I think it is the way I have been trained in workshops for technology, but other times I think it is the age I teach.  I teach kindergarten at a school that is largely low socio-economic, thus my students do not have much access to technology at home.  So, I tend to "show" them technology rather than have them "use" it.  I have started letting them use technology a lot more in my classroom.  Through this semester, I learned how to scan items to use for various lessons, access information on YouTube and video streaming.  I have also started incorporating a computer center during my small group reading time.

I am new to aspect of blogging.  However, I feel it will help me stay in touch with my classmates.  I may even start my own blog about my classroom when I feel more comfortable with it. I have started viewing blogs of other teachers to gain ideas about what to include in mine and how to get it started. 

According to the article, I do not feel we have completely met his potential for technology in the educational setting.  We are making improvements by offering more technology classes for students in upper grades, but what about our elementary students.  At my school, we have just started using interactive boards with our students and a computer program that will teach the students basic computer skills.  So, we are striving for improvement, but I do not feel we have met the potential that Mr. Downes mentioned in his article.  One reason for not meeting this potential, I feel, is simply money.  Many times in schools, technology gets overlooked because of budgets.  As budgets shrink for schools, so does the opportunity to add technology.  There should be a way for schools to add as much technology as they can without causing the district to go into debt.  

The one area that stood out to me the most was area four.  I never thought about viewing technology plans as "information communication planning".  This part of the article was interesting to me because I have been part of writing the campus improvement plans for my school and did not take as much thought about the technology plans.  Hopefully in the future I will be able to influence my school about this planning.

In this class, I have already learned quite a bit about how to implement technology rather than overlay it with what I am already doing.  So, I hope to learn ways to use technology as a learning tool rather than a supplemental tool with my students.  I also hope to become more comfortable with technology integration and implementation as well.

Blog Reflection #7- iGoogle-Do You?

For my technology plan I used google presentation.  I created a lesson for rhyming in kindergarten.  Through my experience in both my classes and teaching kindergarten, the kids love things shown on my projector.  So, there are links to some rhyming games and the book is read on YouTube as well.  I hope to use this lesson with my students in the future as we continue to work on rhyming.

As a teacher in an elementary school, one way that we can improve students learning is by decreasing the class sizes.  I have been teaching for 8 years and my class sizes have ranged from 15-22 in that time.  The years that my class sizes were between 15-18 I felt like I could target each students' needs more.  When my class size was 19-22, I felt very overwhelmed and did not feel I taught my students what they "needed" as well as I should.  So, decreasing the class size rather than increasing it would benefit our students learning.

A second thing I think would help our students learning is to not put so much stress on a standardized test.  I learned in many of my education classes and workshop I attend now that not all students learn the same. So, why are we expecting ALL students to pass the same type of test.  In kindergarten the students are being over tested, in my opinion, and it is keeping us from truly teaching them what they need in order to be successful in school.  As a teacher, I see how much stress we add to our kids with these tests as well.  I was a good student in school, took AP classes and graduated in the top 10% of my high school class.  However, I had friends who did just as well as I did, but because they could not pass a standardized test, they had to attend summer school and delay their graduation.  Is this really fair to our students?  Standardized tests are not a true picture of what the students know and it is causing teachers to "teach to the test" rather than give the students skills they need to be successful later in their education or lives.  So, putting less stress on standardized tests would help our students education as well.

Kristen Downs