Exit Slip 12.2.10

Today Professor Boyer started class with sharing a video with us about how one teacher integrates technology into her classroom. These are the notes I took during the video:

     + technology has revolutionized how she teaches and how she teaches students based on their learning
     + students are active in their learning
     + old lessons went along with unengaged learners and a stressed teacher
     + her lessons now engage students
     + her smart board allows active participation and engages them in cooperative learning opportunities
     + uses online collaborative projects which allows for her students to connect with one another and the rest of the world
     + open classroom approach online that allows parents to see what is going on and celebrate their child's learning knowing current events. This allows students to always be updated if they miss a day on assignments
     + uses blogs in classroom
     + students get to share what they learn with the world and become involved in our community
     + many laptops shown throughout video

Next we discussed our findings as a whole class. As a group we sorted our finding into 3 categories: could do before, couldn't do before, could do before but better now.

   COULD DO BEFORE: collaborative projects (example: collaborate with different grade levels)lab, engage, participation present, still inform parents (classroom newsletter), journaling (besides blogging), share perspectives

  COULDN'T DO BEFORE: world wide collaboration, blogging, online concept, recognition (besides teacher)

  COULD DO BEFORE BUT BETTER NOW: collaboration, engagement level, participation, connect with parents, create well designed lessons, connecting with more diverse people around the world, open classroom

He shared these three categories with us to make us think about when it is appropriate to integrate technology. If technology will make something better than use it!
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*JIGSAW Activity*

My assigned reading talked about how as a teacher you need to feel comfortable with not knowing everything.  Also you need to accept the fact that your students may know more than you and may teach you a thing or two at times.  We need to remember this especially when dealing with technology in our classrooms! We should look at this as an advantage because we have the oppourtunity to learn too! In conclusion we need to remember that the world is always changing and we are "stupid" if we do not realize this. Embrace technology with a positive attitude and learn all you can!

The point of this activity was to collaborate our findings with each other so we could find out what each reading was about.  There was a good and a negative for each reading. I really like this jigsaw method because it creates smooth transitions and you get to collaborate with many different people.

I didn't write down what each reading was about because I was too interested in listening to what our volunteer speakers shared. I bookmarked these articles into delicious so I can reference them at a later time.
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