This week was Masters program coming to fruition. What I am getting at is that last semester I was to write a Grant for a Planning for Technology assignment. In doing so I was intrigued and decided then to write a proposal for a colleague and myself to have 1 to 1 laptops for all of the 8th Grade Language Arts classes. We went through how it was to funded, pedagogical reasoning, desired goals, and means of implementation. Furthermore, we submitted it to our building assistant principle then to our building principle until we were then across the table from our curriculum director. During this meeting we were told that we would be able to begin this program and that myself and my colleague would be piloting this for the first year. We were ecstatic about getting this tool for our students and could not wait to begin using them within the classroom.
Since we have started using the laptops we have not changed a single thing within my classroom. Shocked yet? One thing I wanted to make sure I avoided was becoming technocentric which could be extremely easy with 30 laptops and the world wide web in a cart in the corner. We still do our direct instruction via SmartBoard except now students have fillable worksheets while the presentation is going on, we still take out tests/quizzes on Edmodo except now we do not have to worry about computer lab openings; yet, what has changed is that when a student gets stuck on a lesson in class they can instantly go back to a lecture that we had in the past and/or get on the internet and search for ideas or extensions. It is an amazing feeling to see something that you envision come to past and watch it have a positive impact on the individuals it was intended for!
Journal 6
This week was Masters program coming to fruition. What I am getting at is that last semester I was to write a Grant for a Planning for Technology assignment. In doing so I was intrigued and decided then to write a proposal for a colleague and myself to have 1 to 1 laptops for all of the 8th Grade Language Arts classes. We went through how it was to funded, pedagogical reasoning, desired goals, and means of implementation. Furthermore, we submitted it to our building assistant principle then to our building principle until we were then across the table from our curriculum director. During this meeting we were told that we would be able to begin this program and that myself and my colleague would be piloting this for the first year. We were ecstatic about getting this tool for our students and could not wait to begin using them within the classroom.
Since we have started using the laptops we have not changed a single thing within my classroom. Shocked yet? One thing I wanted to make sure I avoided was becoming technocentric which could be extremely easy with 30 laptops and the world wide web in a cart in the corner. We still do our direct instruction via SmartBoard except now students have fillable worksheets while the presentation is going on, we still take out tests/quizzes on Edmodo except now we do not have to worry about computer lab openings; yet, what has changed is that when a student gets stuck on a lesson in class they can instantly go back to a lecture that we had in the past and/or get on the internet and search for ideas or extensions. It is an amazing feeling to see something that you envision come to past and watch it have a positive impact on the individuals it was intended for!