Smartboards

Electronic white boards, also known as Smartboards, are an amazing tool for teachers to have in the classroom. The boards look very similar to normal white boards, but come packed with accessories to make teaching interactive and interesting. Smartboards can display information and they also allow teachers to save what they have written or drawn and send it to students' computers. They allow you to navigate computer files and Web sites and to interact with online information with a touch of the finger. Users can use a finger or a special electronic "marker" to interact with the information displayed on the screen.
Smartboards assist in lesson planning, support diverse learning styles, and provide a needed tool for graphic representation in math, science, and art classes. Most importantly, they engage students, particularly when the learning is student-driven.

Presentation Hype

HyperStudio 5.0, is a great program to use in the classroom that allows students to present stories and ideas in a creative and interactive way. The new edition of HyperStudio includes the features of the original design, and also incorporates some new technologies.
Old tools include: the card browser, to help easily navigate between cards from the main screen, text options, including kerning, outlines, and shadows, advanced graphic effects, such as zoom blur, crystallize, bloom, glass, etc., a tool settings drawer which contains appropriate settings for each tool, a customizable toolbar, to display the most frequently used tools and brush styles, including 3D paint styles.
New features include: Podcasting support, so students can export presentations to an iPod through video format, Webcam Workshop, which includes 2,000 teacher-approved safe webcam locations, "Live" object mode, allowing individual brush strokes to be edited and iTunes importing, where students can bring in music from their iTunes play-lists.
HyperStudio provides students with a media-rich, interactive way to publish and present presentations of any kind.

New-Age Current Events

With the creation of the Internet the idea of news being brought to us at a certain time of day on the television or through the newspaper, changed forever. At the click of button, up-to-date news streams in front of us. Teaching students to know what is going on around them is extremely important and giving them the opportunity to use the computer, makes it fun and interesting.
Podcasting, which are a series of digital-media files that can be distributed over the Internet using feeds to be played either directly through the computer or downloaded onto portable media players, is a great way to get students excited about learning about their world. Instead of reading tons of news articles in an actual newspaper or an online version, students are able to listen to the broadcast.

Creative Concept Mapping

Concept mapping is a technique widely used in classrooms, which helps students visualize the connections and relationship between concepts. The concepts are connected with labeled arrows, usually in a downward-branching hierarchical structure. The labeled arrows show, with short phrases, the connection between each concept. Although concept mapping originated during the time of the constructivist movement, when educators realized that students actually construct their own knowledge, the traditional form of concept mapping is phasing out. The traditional form of concept maps are written down on paper and in most cases they must be written many times because as new concepts are formed they must be integrated in. Thanks to a new technology, however, concept maps are easier than ever to create, which means more students are inclined to do so. The software, Inspiration, which is geared towards students in grade 6 and above, and Kidspiration, the K-5 version, make organized visual-learning webs that can then be used as the basis for projects and writing activities. Inspiration users can create diagrams and outlines and move between the two views as they work, making new connections between topics, rearranging ideas, and virtually planning any assignment. The Kidspiration version offers the same features in a much easier to navigate form. The software can be integrated into all areas of the curriculum. The software also offers educators templates which can be used in all subject areas and for creating assignments, setting goals, planning lessons,and more.

Digital Cameras in the Classroom

Digital cameras within the curriculum provide younger students, who may not be able to express themselves effectively with words, the ability to share their unique outlook of the world. Digital cameras are a great way to provide all students a visual medium for self-expression, observational skills, practicing computer skills and developing an understanding of perspective. One innovative idea for the use of digital cameras in the classroom is making alphabet photo album books by assigning each student a letter of the alphabet and sending them on a scavenger hunt to take pictures of items that begin with that letter. Student portraits can be taken and pictures of their favorite things can be added in computer programs, the pictures can then be saved together to create a slide show for back to school night, etc. Digital photos can be supplemented to the list of do's and dont's to be hung in a classroom. Digital cameras can be used successfully in all subjects and for any lesson. We live in an extremely visual society, and children are no exception. Visuals add meaning to concepts that sometimes can be very abstract.

iPods in the classroom

The iPod's portability and digital content storage capability make it a great innovative educational tool. The iPod allows for anytime, anywhere access to speeches, audiobooks and lectures. The iPod and iTunes delivers lessons that connect music, art and literature, as well as math modeling virtually into students hands. It's portability also means that students can bring work home to share with their families. iPods and iTunes deliver differentiated curriculum to students at teachable moments at different times and locations. It allows enhanced audio communication, increased learning control over content and the ability for the learner to multi-task. Many teachers use the iPod to teach students learn foreign languages, become better readers, provide visual reinforcement of mathematics and science concepts and support the diverse needs of today's learners.

Math Blaster

This fast-action, futuristic game builds confidence, accuracy and speed in basic math skills. When the CD-ROM is inserted, children are sent on a mission to save the universe from robots that are controlling the galaxy. Practicing skills from addition and subtraction to multiplication and division children work on fact families, problem solving, equivalents and mental math. The game is so intertwined with math, that the flow of the game essentially helps children inprove mental math skills. Playing the game makes math cool for children because it helps them win the game. The skills that are fostered in the game are based on real-life skills that children will need, which gives them the opportunity to, in a little-to-no-risk situation practice and perfect the skills. The combination of visual, auditory and kinesthetic feedback during the learning experience allows children to grasp the concepts in ways that match their own learning preferences.

Techie Phonics Program

The Learning Resources' Reading Rods are small cubes with letters displayed on them. When the cubes are placed in the Reading Mentor console the sound of the letter or blend is spoken from the console. This new and improved form of Phonics offers students a hands-on, active alternative to the structured, often boring Phonics program. Students are encouraged to explore with the cubes to create words and sentences by mixing and matching the different phoneme cubes. While the Learning Resources' Reading Rods Kit is simple enough for Kindergartners to use, it is sophisticated enough to work at many different grade levels. Students can begin by creating simple words using consonants and vowels and proceed into advanced vowel combinations, digraphs and blends. The Mentor console is equipped with a 23,000-word dictionary. A kit contains 109 rods with a storage container, activity cards, activity trays and activity and instruction guides. Four headphone jacks are also included in the kit for small group activity use. Some skills that can be taught using the Learning Resources' Reading Rod Kit are: recognizing spelling patterns, comprehending vowel digraphs, learning consonant blend and digraph usage and sounds, r-controlled vowels and diphthongs.

As I am finishing my education and will be entering the teaching profession, I have been doing a lot of thinking about the typical, traditional setting of school classrooms and ways to change to the atypical, reform or constructivist model of teaching. Traditional classrooms, as we all know and were subjected to, are teacher-centered and focus on the teacher’s active role as a dispenser of knowledge. Teachers provide direct instruction and use tests to measure learning, while children are passive learners, working independently, usually practicing skills by completing fill-in-the-blank worksheets.
In a constructivist classroom the teacher’s role is to engage students with experiences so that they construct their own knowledge and modify their schemata. The classroom is student-centered and children are active learners, connecting what they learn to their own lives, literature they have read and what is going on in the world.
The tech-savy generation of students that I will be teaching do not know life without wireless Internet, DVD’s, gaming devices and cell phones. Yet, when they enter the typical classroom it is as if they have walked back in time. Although many schools are now equipped with computers at least somewhere on their campus, students are faced with an incredible inconsistency, daily, between their home-life and their school-life.
Repairing the mismatch of technology use in students lives between home and school-life makes sense, is beneficial for the students and is helpful for teachers.

Question+Answer

A Techies View of Technology Use in School

I recently sat down with, Nick Migliaccio, a twelfth grader, to ask him about the way technology is used in his life both in and out of school.


Q: Do you consider yourself "tech savvy"?

A: Yes, I enjoy learning about and using the newest and latest technologies that come out.

Q: What is your favorite technology that is out right now?

A: Well, I just really like anything that Mac makes. I have a Mac desktop, laptop and basically everything that goes with them.

Q: What is it that you find so appealing about them?

A: I am really into making short movies, so they are a must and I download music onto my iPod basically everyday.

Q: Do you feel that there is a discrepancy between the technologies that you use in your daily out-of-school-life compared to your school-life?

A: Yes, without a doubt! As soon as I get home after school I log on to my computer, even though I have probably not missed anything because everyone I know was just at school with me. I guess it just makes me feel more connected.

Q: Are there any technologies that you use out of school that you feel could be incorporated into the school curriculum?

A: Of course. We do use the Internet for researching at school, but with all of the different capabilities that are possible it could be used a lot more. Macs are a great tool for audio and visual classes. There are all sorts of games to help kids learn math and reading that would make learning a lot more fun.

Q: Do you feel that you have seen any improvements in the use of technology in your school career?

A: As I went up in grades we definitely used them more, but I think that it is important for younger grades to use them just as much. Technology surrounds us and it only makes sense that it should be used in schools.