Yes, they can be useful, but do they really transform education? The greatest take-away from examining technology in my placement relates to the SAMR model...is it transforming education? Is it augmenting learning (which SmartBoards can definitely do)? Or are some of the sources of technology just a substitution for teaching? Like the video, once thought to be revolutionary for teacher practice, some technologies are best only for the teachers, allowing them to take a break, especially if they do nothing with the new material they are giving students to work with. Can videos and YouTube clips be beneficial to learning, and take it in new directions not necessarily possible before? Definitely! But not if teachers passively show a video and expect students to passively take in the information...more of an active process is necessary.That being said, my MT does do a swell job in using the SmartBoard as both a notetaking tool and as a way to show students newspaper articles and YouTube clips...what really surprised me about Northville was the lack of things like Google Chromebooks, laptop carts, easily accessible computer labs, and the like. If laptops are needed in class, it would most likely need to be a BYOD day, which, apart from bringing SmartPhones, I am reluctant to do, mainly because I do not know how many of my students have laptops...I could always ask, however. EdMoto is used as a convenient, well-organized way for students to both turn work in and receive feedback for that work...look forward to a Webinar I and some of my colleagues will be creating around the educational benefits and uses of Edmoto next week! In addition, grades and absences are reported using MyStar, a convenient way for students (and possibly their parents as well) can keep track of how they are doing in school. As a whole, Northville is a healthy, safe learning environment with a fair amount of technology...often, the value in technology is how one uses it, after all, not in the device itself.
What about you? I would love to hear about the technologies offered in your schools, and how you use them in order to teach in ways that may not have been possible without technology.
Dear Kelsey,
ReplyDeleteYour school sounds like it is full of technology which is obviously great! You bring up a great point about the usefulness of smart boards. I personally think smart boards could be very useful in a math classroom. I know in my high school, the only rooms that had smart boards were the math classrooms. You draw shapes and lines on a smart board and the board will create a perfect drawing. This can be really helpful in a geometry class because if you don't draw a shape close enough to what you need it to be, then it may make a mathematical answer seem wrong. So I definitely think that smart boards are useful to have in certain classrooms. Also, like your school, my high school does not have enough laptop carts. Teachers have to sign up at least a week or two in advance to get a laptop cart and since their are no restrictions some teachers sign up for a laptop cart multiple days in a row. It's a huge problem.
Katie
Unfortunately my class does not have a SmartBoard, but we were able to get creative with a whiteboard, Chromecast, and a projector to make a "dumb" SmartBoard (if that makes any sense). So far I've found it really useful for keeping students engaged. I find it useful for showing student how to take notes in "real time" and for modeling how a good reader quotes text. I'm also planning on using our projector to project writing onto the whiteboard and showing students how to properly edit/revise their writing. So far it seems really helpful to be modeling how to do the activity while the students work on it with you. I'm not sure how these activities might look in a world language classroom, but I hope this helps with your SmartBoard ideas!
ReplyDeleteKelsey,
ReplyDeleteI too am surprised by the lack of easily accessible technology. I grew up a town over from Northville High School so I know that it is relatively new and obviously the population is pretty affluent. I would think that they would have access to resources that many schools don't have. On a different note though, I wish that my mentor teacher utilized the SMART board in our classroom in different ways. It is used primarily as a projector for Powerpoint slides which is a waste of an interactive technology in my opinion. Since he doesn't use it I haven't really received any training on how I could effectively use it so when I tried to incorporate the interactive features of it during a lesson last week it ended up being a mess. I definitely see some of the benefits of a SMART board but I think I could accomplish more with an elmo, a digital projector and a white board. What are some of the ways that you utilize the SMART board in your German class?