PowerPoint

As I was babysitting last week, and interviewing the 7th grade girl about reading and her English class for a project of mind I found out something that simply amazed me. I asked her if her teachers used PowerPoints often. She looked at me like I had three heads. She asked me what a PopwerPoint was and I responded with "You know, like slides, they put them up with notes on them for you to copy". She honestly had no idea what I was talking about and had never created a PowerPoint presentation for a class. This had me baffled so I had to find out more about the technology use in her classroom.
I continued to talk to her about her classroom and how the teacher implemented technology. She responded with, she really doesn't. Not to age discriminate, but I asked how old this teacher was and she told me that she was older, definitely one of the older teachers in the school. This made me think that there was a little bit of a technology disconnect between her and the students. Further more this made me wonder if the girl was at a disadvantage being in this school district. PowerPoints, to me at least, are a huge part of technology and presentation in college, next to papers of course. Not only do students have to create them but teachers use them to present information.
I then thought back to my classes when I was in middle school. I am absolutely positive that we worked with PowerPoints both in the aspects that teachers used them and we had to create them in order to present information. My cooperating teacher just had her students present a type of book report via a PowerPoint, so I know that it is being used in other 7th grade classrooms. To say the least, are some teachers holding students back from things that they will need to know technology wise? (not all of course) Also, is PowerPoint a lost art due to the new uses of the SmartBoard?

NETS for Teachers - Interactivity 5

• Net Standards Spreadsheet
  
  I was luck enough to Interview my cooperating teacher who is a 7th grade Language Arts Literacy teacher in the West Orange school district. She is a woman that has been teaching for about forty years and enjoy every second of it. She tries very hard to keep up with the new advances in teaching but as she had to admit, it doesn't always work.
  The teacher that I interviewed know about the standards but is not necessarily familiar with the standards themselves. She seemed to know what they were when I asked her but did not know much more. The have been brought up in conversation she told me but they where never something that was a requirement of the school itself.
  She informed me that there was talk about the standards but they are not obligated to include them on lesson plans etc as of yet. She said that she understand the need for technology and she is working her best to keep up with it but adding more standards just adds another aspect for teachers to include on their lesson plans and search the standards when they already accomplish them in their classroom one way or another. This particular school has recently put a brand new SmartBoard in each classroom therefore urging the teachers to integrate that technology into their classroom. The teacher I interviewed loves her SmartBoard and uses it now in all of her lessons. She did tell me that it was up to her how to learn to use it though. She had to teach herself and see if classes were offered in order to learn more than the basics of a SmartBoard.
  I was not really surprised by her responses because I have been in the school district and have heard very little about these standards. She keeps very up to date with the technology that she uses and keep me very in the loop when talking about anything lesson plan and standard related. I see her implementing most of theses standards without having to be told to do so.
  As a future teacher I believe it is important to know about technology and how to use it, but these standards are what new teachers are going to be implementing on a regular basis without actually looking at the standards. I think that these standards are good, but will become irrelevant because they will become common practice.

Communication and Technology

Technology allows for a lot of communication whether it be between teachers and parents, teachers and other faculty, or teachers and their higher ups, communication is key, but is email always the way to do it?  I have been able to watch a lot of technology based communication go on at my fieldwork site and sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. When my teacher has a concern with a child, she either emails the parent or will call them.  There are both good and bad things about both of these.
With email there is a record that the teacher did try. Unfortunately, not every parent checks their email as much as all teachers would life. Some messages are not read until days after the concern and then either the punishment has no effect, or the issue was already taken care of without the parent knowing. Emails show that the teacher has tried, but if they parents does not read that email and respond, the teacher is obligated to try harder and contact the parent in another way.
When talking to a parent on the phone is used, there is less of a documentation that is seen. Yes, a call log can be used as proof, but the conversation that happened between the parent and the teacher is not recorded and therefore can backfire. No one knows what is said during that conversation and if the parents was properly informed of what the issue was with the students.
Email allows for a quick conversation that can be done any time that the teacher has an extra minute. A phone call is usually only made when the teacher has a free period and in the same token the parent may not be able to be reached. I hope that we can all be great teachers and be able to communicate with our students parents as needed but must make sure that technology and communication is used properly and intelligently.

Novels and Technology - English Lesson Plan - Interactivity 4

Choosing a lesson plan was slightly difficult. When I saw this lesson plan, I chose it because I have taken a Holocaust class before and I have also read the novel Night, which the lesson incorporated. This made is easier for me to understand the lesson and what the teacher was looking for in the project. I think that the teacher was able to implement technology successfully and within the standards. I believe that she could have expanded the project a little more than she did and would have definitely gotten the students to understand more aspects of technology such as blogging. Symbols and finding images that represent the symbols is a good project for a 7th grade class which was the grade that I focused on. If this was an 8th grade class lesson, I would implement more technology and the idea of blogging and interacting with each other while using professional language in order to get students ready for high school. I believe that this teacher was trying to allow the students to have fun while exploring the internet and making it more student centered rather than her lecturing to them for the class period. I do believe that this project was important to the curriculum for the students to understand symbolism. This project and technology could have been done in many different ways. I believe that it was successfully executed but not necessarily life long impacting for the students to experience technology wise. Finding pictures online does not call for an extreme amount of authenticity of the website like a research project would, especially when using cartoon like images. I like this project for a way to show symbolism through pictures. The lesson would have been more student centered but the group discussions will definitely help the students analyze their symbols.



Lesson Plan Spreadsheet