Technology in the Classroom

I felt that my last placement had a lot of room to improve on integrating technology into the classroom. There were 3 computers in the classroom that the students would use periodically when working on projects or doing any sort of research. The school also had a computer lab that the teacher could request for half an hour intervals. There wasn't any sort of classroom website or ways for the teacher to communicate to the entire class online. The school, however, was in a lower-income community and from talking to some of the students, not everyone had internet access at home. There were probably still ways that the teacher could have creatively incorporated technology into the lessons.

Reasoning Errors

After reading Becky's post about what to do when a students is crying, I decided to check out the blog that she was following. I found another interesting article about different errors in reasoning that students can make. As a preservice teacher, I think it is important to be aware of these things because it may help you to get through those first years with a bit more ease.

This blogger, Mathew Needleman, mentioned some problems arising because of pronoun confusion, like reading "they" instead of "he". He also noted that contractions and abbreviations can cause problems. I know I have made the mistake of thinking a text said Mr. when it really meant Mrs. Those little errors can really effect a student's reading and comprehension of a text. Another point that was made was that teachers should give students lots of vocabulary strategies that they can use to identify unknown words. With his class, Mathew goes through his tests with his students and identifies words that could cause trouble and helps his students find the meaning using different vocabulary strategies. I think it is very important to teach students those strategies that can help them find their way through academic experiences.

Click here to get a link to his blog post.

Background and Expectations

Even though I have been around computers for practically my whole life, I don't feel very computer-literate. I can do all of the basic things that I've needed to get through my classes, like Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and basic internet functions, but other than that I feel like I am a little clueless. I wasn't really asked to use too much technology in my education (at least up to this point), and my teachers didn't use it much either.

For my own personal use, I like to use my computer to listen to music, keep in touch with friends on facebook and also for email. Oh yeah, I also use it to catch up on some of my favorite television shows if I wasn't able to watch them when they aired. I don't tend to venture away from those purposes.

I'm really excited to expand my knowledge about different technologies. As a future teacher, it will be very important for me to able to communicate with my students through different types of media. Also, I hope this class will give me some ideas of ways that I can improve my teaching by taking advantage of all the creative ways technology can be used in a classroom.

Hi all! My name is Alice. This is my first time ever creating my own blog, so please bear with me. I'll be writing about my experiences with technology both in the past and the future while I'm taking a class about learning to teach with technology at MSU.