Field 3

What: This week we saw our cooperating teacher use technology in a couple of different ways and we taught two technology enriched lessons.

So What: Our cooperating teacher again used her document camera to show the timer as she gave a timed multiplication test. The second time we watched a live program that was being broadcast from Plimoth Plantation. The students and I really enjoyed the broadcast but we could have done more with it. Class from all over the country that had document cameras were able to video chat in questions. I think that this helped the students to stay more focused.

On Thursday we taught a lesson were we took the students to the computer lab and had them go to http://plimoth.org . We had them play the beginning game together then we numbered them off by twos. The ones were the historians for the Indians and the twos were the historians for the pilgrims. They navigated around the web site learning about the first Thanksgiving then wrote a small essay on what they learned, then printed it. The next tecnlogy enriched lesson we did was on Tuesday. I created a computerized Jeopardy game using http://www.jeopardylabs.com . The game was a review of the entire unit on Colonization, to help prepare the students for a test we gave latter. To play the game we got to use the smart board. It was awesome. I have never used one before. It was fun to be able to touch a large screen instead of moving around a mouse on a little computer screen. The last question on the test we gave had a list of all the activities we did for each lesson. We had the students number them in order of their favorite lessons. Both the Jeopardy game and the plimoth.org lessons were the students favorite activities.

Now What: So what does this mean for me as a future teacher? I hope I find a job at a school that has the latest technology but chances are I won’t. What I have found out during this experience and during my field work for Intro. To Education is that most of the technology that the teachers have in their class rooms they have either gotten through grant money or bought on their own. I need to learn how to write up grant proposals and were to find grant money at.