The first thing to know about my placement school is the cell phone policy. Students may not use cell phones at all from the time they enter the school building in the morning to the time they leave the school building in the afternoon. Even after the final bell, if a student needs to call their parents for something, they need to go outside by the buses before making the call. The only time they can use their phones during the school day is in the cafeteria during lunch, but even then, they may not be used to make phone calls or to text with other people (although I am not entirely sure how we are supposed to monitor this because texting and playing games look pretty similar). While this seems like a good rule to have, there have been a couple times in my classroom that it would have been nice for students to be able to use their phones. During a lab, they had to check a thermometer every minute, and it would have been a lot easier to do this if they could use their phones as a stopwatch. Also, they could have taken pictures of the lab setup. However, this is the rule of the school, and we have to abide by it.
Also, I have noticed that my mentor teacher does not use much in the way of technology in his classroom at all. He uses an overhead projector to give the students notes, and he has never used a PowerPoint presentation for anything. We have watch a few VHS tapes, and we also watch a laser disc one day, too. When I take over in the spring, I may talk to him about whether or not he thinks I could try to administer notes in a different way, like maybe using a PowerPoint presentation or something similar.
As far as technology available for the students, we do have a computer lab in the media center, and we also have several laptop carts available for teachers to sign out and use in their classrooms. I have noticed that there are no blocks on websites the students can access, which seems strange to me considering the strict policy on cell phones. We have only used the laptops in my classroom once, but I see other teachers wheeling the carts up and down the hallways fairly frequently.
Given the lack of technology both in my placement school and in my classroom, I am pretty interested to hear about how other interns have been able to use technology in their placements. I'm pretty sure we never really had a discussion about tech in our placements in class at all, so if you want to leave a comment about something related to this, that would be great. Since we didn't get to do it in class, it would be cool to have a bit of a discussion here instead.
Hi Mike!
ReplyDeleteMy classroom doesn't sound that different from yours. My teacher doesn't use a lot of technology besides the projector. She actually has a document camera, which allows her to project any piece of text that she has printed out or to project a piece of paper as she's writing on it. This is very similar to projecting a computer screen, except it's nice to be able to make notes quickly on a sheet of paper that students can see or to model annotation.
One week, when students were writing essays, my mentor teacher checked out a laptop cart and had students use the computers to write their papers. She had very clear, scaffolded instructions for students and she and I moved around to monitor students to make sure they were not getting distracted on the internet.
I've found the amount of technology sufficient, although like you, there's been a couple of times where I thought cell phones might be helpful: When students were looking up definitions and there weren't enough dictionaries to go around; when students were making posters and they couldn't imagine some of the images they were supposed to draw. In these moments, I thought that responsible cell phone use could have been productive.
Which technology do you most wish your teacher used in the classroom? Is there one or two that you think your class could most benefit from?
Thanks for sharing this post!
-Rachel
Mike,
ReplyDeleteIt’s really interesting to hear about the technology that is available at your school, and about the cell phone policy as well. I wonder if the no cell phones rule is because there is a worry that students will be distracted by texting and games during class? But I agree, that you would have to deal with many of the same issues when your students are working with laptops.
At my placement there isn’t media center staff that are currently supervising the computer labs, so I am unsure of when we will be able to sign out space there. It is something that might be interesting to do, especially if we wanted to use a tool similar to geogebra to illustrate geometric concepts and for students to have opportunities to use digital tools that could engage students. We have a few computers in our classroom, so using them for group projects is definitely a possibility. We haven’t used them very extensively yet, but there could be some interesting opportunities to use them.
I haven’t finished my post about the tech in my placement yet, but something I haven’t done yet is taken a survey of what our students have access to in terms of cell phones. I think it could be interesting to do quick formative assessments using cell phones, but I am not really sure what students have access to.
It’s really interesting to hear about what technology policies and resources look like in different schools! Thanks for sharing.
Hi Mike,
ReplyDeleteMy school is a little different, we have technology coming out the yin yang. Although my mentor teacher tells me he is not tech savvy, he uses power point and the smart board frequently, he is also becoming a huge fan of Haiku,which we use as an equivalent of a class wiki. On top of that, all of the students have an iPad that they will have throughout their 4 years in high school. This has been an interesting addition this year that is still in trial and error. My students read their little novellas on their iPads, but I don't love it. Writing on them is clunky and interacting with a text in a second language for the first time through a screen seems like it may be a little bit of an impediment. I also see the distractions, the games, snapchat etc that the students are sneaking when they get the chance. I personally am hoping to use these to my advantage. I think that it's nice that I don't have to worry about equity of opportunity to use technology at school and I will encourage my students to use sites like Duolingo and StudySpanish.com in their free time.
Claire
@Rachel:
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments, Rachel. One thing that I was thinking while I was reading about how your teacher uses document camera was about a professor I had in my department last year. I was one of the GSIs for the intro geology class, and he was the professor teaching the course. He would use a PowerPoint slideshow for every lecture, but he had one of those nifty laptops where you can flip the screen around and close it so it's like a tablet. He would use one of those pens things to write directly on the slides, so if there was something he wanted to do to supplement the content on the slides, he could write that on the screen as well.
Thinking about which technology I would most like my mentor teacher to use, I think I would go with having a PowerPoint slideshow from time to time. Like I said, he does write notes down on transparencies for the students to copy, but I think that using a PowerPoint slideshow every once in a while wouldn't be bad. Plus, for me right now, it would be a lot less intimidating to use a PowerPoint for my lessons rather than using a transparency, although I don't think that's a good enough reason for him to change what he does.
@Claire
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your thoughts. It's interesting to hear about a school where technology is not only used but also encouraged. Your comment near the end of your reply kind of struck me, though:
"I think that it's nice that I don't have to worry about equity of opportunity to use technology at school..."
This is something that I wanted to mention in my original post, but I guess I forgot to talk about it. My school is Forsythe Middle School (AAPS), and we certainly aren't hurting financially or anything. If you looked at the students that attend the school, you would think that most of them are from families that are doing fairly well. What's really interesting about the school, though, is there really is quite a large gap between the students from wealthier families and those who are not. We have students form the Barton Hills area of Ann Arbor, which I believe is maybe the second wealthiest neighborhood in Michigan, but at the same time, we also have students from Scio Farms, which is a trailer park way down Jackson Road, and this area is one of the least wealthy neighborhoods in Ann Arbor. I would imagine that this is why my school has such strict rules on technology. Some of the students could afford to have a laptop the leave at home and a laptop they leave at school while some of the students can barely afford a binder for their notes. Given the rules on technology, I would have to agree with your statement that I do not have to worry about inequity of technology in my placement, but that may only be because I don't have to worry about technology in my placement at all.