Wow! What a fun class today. It's amazing how much technology can change a simple lesson. I really liked the activity with the 'Spilt Milk' book. I just recently read that book to a class of preschoolers and they loved it! We kept rechecking the book out of the library since the children wanted to read it just about every day. I liked bringing in the component of Kid's Pix since this would give students a fun way to incorporate their own creativity into a class book. While we did it I was thinking about those students who would enjoy the drawing portion but might struggle with the writing part. Having a program like Kid's Pix is awesome because you can provide as much or little scaffolding to meet the student's need by giving them a template to work on or just a blank page. It's great how technology allows differentiation within lessons to occur so easily!
I also really enjoyed the preposition activity where we got into groups and took pictures of ourselves and others doing those actions. Student teaching with 3rd graders, I sometimes struggled in thinking of new and exciting ways to teach grammar. Many times at the elementary level you have a certain amount of time to teach a subject. In my case it was 20 minutes and it was hard to think outside of the box with lessons since these tend to be more time consuming.
Thinking about this today however, I thought about all the different things you are actually teaching the students. With lessons such as this, it provides deeper thinking and allows more opportunity to combine learning about other subjects. Our activity today for example; Why does it have to only be a grammar lesson? It could also be a geography lesson as the students navigate their way around the school, or in our case the campus. A science lesson as they learn how to use the camera and computer and learn more about digital film and its uses. A social studies lesson as the students notice the relationships and actions of people around their school/community. The possibilities seem endless and opening our minds to technology will broaden the choices of activities we can include in our lessons! The more I learn about technology, the more I despise worksheets (even though I know they do have their place). As a teacher, I want my students to be excited and enthused for learning and I know that the inclusion of technology in the classroom will promote that.
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I found this fascinating also! Sometimes it is hard to figure out how to incorporate technology into lessons in a way that goes with the TPACK model. I feel like teachers often use technology just to say they use technology, but there are so many ways it can be incorporated to improve the pedagogy and content of everyday lessons. When it is used effectively, as it was in the lessons we did in class, it can be such an awesome resource for both the students and the teacher!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed each of these lessons as well. I think this is when it really clicked that like Sara said, some teachers use technology just to say they use it. There are so many great activities you can do with all these resources. I am just a little sad that in most classrooms we probably won't have a computer for each student to use, or a camera for each group to use. Then what do you do? I think it's going to take time but we will get there someday in schools.
ReplyDeleteThe time constraint of a classroom is a good point --- need to think about managing time and how to we make more time for things we want to do (like technology projects). Like how you have thought about scaffolding the experiences. Just like our Spilt Milk activity - I could design a template like you suggest. Good!
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