Tech in My Placement

  In all honesty, I am often a bit depressed in class when we go into great depth about how to use all of these really wonderful tools like Socrative, Padlet, Blendspace and Voicethread in our classrooms. The reality, much of the time, is that the technology most simply does not exist to interact with these tools inside the classroom. Additionally, I am placed at a Title I school, so to assume that most students have technology or internet access in their homes, would not be wise. Many students note that they do not have internet at home and therefore need paper copies of documents that their parents need to sign, or of their grades from Power School.
  The technology that teachers have access to on a daily basis is rather limited at Scarlett Middle School, although altogether, I think that the technology programs offered to students in the media center is extensive. On a daily basis, teachers have access to an LCD projector in their classrooms, which we make use of every day, and may have access to laptop carts or two computer labs. These labs are often taken up for standardized tests, and it is amazing to me how often our students take standardized tests. I felt as if the first two months of school were mostly dedicated to testing. However, when testing is not going on, it is fairly easy to reserve these rooms. For both laptop carts and the computer labs, there is a google document that all faculty share, and teachers may enter dates and times they will be using laptops or occupying labs. I could see interacting with either laptops or a lab once a week, but so far this year, the only time that my students have spent in the computer lab was for testing. My mentor teacher does not make use of these resources very often.
  In the media center, there are about 20 computers, and on these computers there are many software programs to support students like reading and math games, concept map software, Power School to check grades, and software for creative projects like iMovie and Garage Band. Students do not have access to social media or email other than their google accounts on school computers. Additionally, I was interested to find out that each student has a google account, and the majority of them seem to be experts at navigating the basic functions of Google Drive. Over the summer, students were able to share documents with my mentor and myself without much guidance, and seemed familiar with how to find credible information and site sources. It does surprise me, however, that we do not make use of these skills as much in class. Perhaps when we get around to their final assessments for the unit, where students are expected to write a paper or newspaper article, these skills will be called upon. I am also interested to see how my mentor organizes and manages student work on drive.
   Generally though, technology cannot be relied upon at Scarlett. Resources are limited and it is sort of lucky to beat all the other teachers to labs or laptop carts, so when I think about using a site like Socrative for quiz-taking, it makes me leery to plan a lesson around that tool when I cannot be sure that technology will be available. Recently I have seen my mentor become more lenient about the use of cellphones and tablets in class because we have had a shortage of books, and as Liz Kolb mentioned in her presentation, cellphones can most certainly be a resource rather than a hindrance in the classroom. I will be interested to see if my mentor and I can think through some useful ways to include cellphone technology in the classroom. We cannot expect that all students will have cellphones, but we can safely expect that one out of three students will.

The Classroom as a Stage

  David Theune's presentation reminded me that a world exists outside of the classroom. I know it sounds obvious, but I think that the purpose we often give for assignments, is that we are providing students with information that will be beneficial to them in completing classroom formative and summative assessments. Often the purpose for these assessments is that, "this is they type of thinking that your teachers will expect in high school or college." In both of these cases, the purpose for the assignment is related to the classroom, the reward comes far later, and students do not see immediate results for the hard work that they do. In the eyes of a student, what is the incentive to work hard? When students are not motivated by college, how do we get them to participate in a meaningful way? How do we make the results of their work immediate and purposeful to their lives?
David Theune looks at these questions in consideration to both creative and analytical writing assignments.
  Theune made an interesting point in his presentation, and one that I had not considered previously. Parents are involved in their students' lives in so many ways. They go to theater productions, sporting events or orchestra concerts, but they are hardly ever asked to come into the classroom and view how their children interact with the learning process. I think that this might be why, often, there is a disconnect between what teachers understand as the capabilities and dispositions of some students and how their parents understand their capabilities and dispositions. For the most part, unless invited by the student, parents do not often get a real insight into how their children perform as learners. Theune invites parents into the classroom for culminating events where students read essays to their parents, and more generally, parents may stop by whenever they would like or have time. In this way, the purpose for working hard on the essay is that the audience will not only be the teacher, but someone who is close to the student and who they care to impress.
   Audience is the focus of many of the writing activities that Theune performs with his students. He has them participate in community projects, and he has them interact with students in other schools on the internet. According to Theune, audience matters! Students are much more likely to produce a project that they are proud of and put their best work into, if they are deeply concerned with appealing to their audience, or in the case of community work, if they know that their work affects people other than themselves. I found this presentation to be so useful, especially considering that my content area is English, and I often see my students struggling with the question of why the writing they do is purposeful. My mentor teacher often does a project where students each come up with a short story on a topic, and those short stories are compiled into a classroom novel. The novel is published and they may get a copy and copies for others. We are starting this project next week, and I am interested to see whether the work that students produce is of higher quality simply because the audience has changed. I imagine that they will be excited about this work.