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.