Part Three: Applying

Technology is an interesting piece to add to any classroom. A teacher must be prepared to handle any type of miscommunication to the students along with technical malfunctions. I believe it is a teacher’s job to ensure that every student becomes exposed to technology. A student may not receive proper training at home due to their family’s specific situation, so a teacher needs to reinforce the technology aspect of education. A teacher could hold monthly classes where the library or media center is opened for student and parent involvement. The student could become the teacher and the parent could become the student. This would also be a great way for parents to monitor student’s progress while in school. Regardless, as our global economy is trickling through many more businesses, it is important that teachers begin to incorporate these same ideas into the classroom to ultimately prepare students for life after elementary, middle, and high school. Within my project, I included story pyramids, wordle, and blogging.
I found a story pyramid application on the internet and thought it would be a useful way to show comprehension of a passage of entire book while keeping the information neat and organized using a computer instead of paper and pencil. The application was user friendly and did indeed produce a pyramid. I feel as though students could read a book and show that they understand the material based on their answers in the pyramid. The pyramid is easy to use; it explains what to put in each line on the site. A student could complete this task with minimal teacher interaction.
I also used a wordle which is a great tool to use in discussing adjective. A teacher could introduce adjectives with this application and make a display in the wall. A student would be able be able to see their work and always remember what an adjective it. I do not like how you can not put phrases into the picture. If a sentence is entered, all that is able to be seen are words. I did not care too much for that limitation, nor did my student. She wanted to put her entire idea in the wordle as a phrase and it would not let her. She also had trouble figuring out how to make certain words larger than others. It took her a couple of times, but she was finally able to enter the word multiple times to make it larger.
Blogging would be a neat dynamic to add to a classroom. It is important to communicate to students that this is a great way to speak to a large amount of people at one time that are not necessarily present. This is a small introduction into the corporate world. It could also be a baby step into the introduction of emailing. Overall, I feel as though this could make a large impact into a classroom, especially if a teacher’s students have access tom computers at home. A teacher could design an interactive website for students and parents where their homework was posted. Either students or teacher could pose questions that all could see and the teacher could respond.
Finding a way to incorporate technology is a critical component for students from this day in age and on. Teachers should find a way to not only incorporate technology through media or computer time, but through instruction time. Not only will students have a better understanding of the advanced digital world, but will also be successful within the classroom with a realistic portrayal of our working society and ultimately our global society that is vastly changing and developing everyday.