Oct 28 2007
Obstacles To Opportunities – The Why’s And The Wherefores
Brian Crosby is a 5th grade teacher who talks about the hurdles and obstacles he faces everyday in his classroom. He says times have changed in education and everyone is expected to use the modern technology tools to enhance teaching. Then he talks about the realities in life. Not many students have access to technology in their homes.
Available technology including laptops (at school) need to be used in new engaging ways rather than using for math reinforcement, for internet browsing and online typing programs. The speaker talks about the issues he faces often in his classroom and the technology he uses to overcome these obstacles.
Online Journal Postings on blogs: Motivating our students to write is one of the biggest challenges we face as teachers all the time. Using blogs can help solve this problem. The subject of authentic audience motivates most of the students.
Reading and writing comments back and forth will help improve their writing skills. The comments help them question their thinking, and help them sharpen their thought process.
Digital Videos: After teaching the required content we should encourage our students’ higher level thinking (blooms taxonomy levels) through digital photo stories. Creating digital videos involves creativity. We as teachers need to help them think about sets, dialogues, and how to explore new techniques to make appropriate props. We also should guide them in deciding how to put their ideas together and convey them clearly to everyone. Publishing their work online will help them improve their work by getting more ideas, suggestions and criticisms from others. He gives a couple of examples of his foreign language student and about a student with attention deficit who got motivated by digital photo story project.At the end the speakers asks whether we have crossed any obstacles in our schools by using web 2.0 tools.
My Observations: I liked the way Brian Crosby has analyzed different scenarios’ and tried to find different tools to motivate his students to get them to do what he wanted them to. One of my third grade students last year was diagnosed with leukemia and was asked to stay at home for the whole school year. We used Skype to connect his classroom to his home computer. This helped him to listen to his teacher and participate remotely along with his classmates. Yes, web 2.0 tools are great but the teacher has to spend a lot of time learning and exploring these tools before using them in the class. How many teachers have that kind time and interest?
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I’m curious where Brian teaches (I’ll have to check the his presentation) since he said not many students have access to technology in their homes. Even though we have about 25% of our students on free and reduced fees, a recent survey showed that over 94% of our students had access to computer and the internet at home.
One way to get students who don’t have access to computers at home to participate in Web2.0 tools is to use some of these tools with their cell or home telephones. The conference presentation on Cell Phones as Classroom Learning Tools demonstrates many tools for creating audio recordings using a telepone. Using this technology allows students to particpate and familiarize themselves with the tools.