#SSChat

This week I watched a combines social studies and English chat.  The theme of the chat was project based learning.  There were many interesting links posted.  One I found of particular interest was how to use the presidential election in the classroom.  The link is posted below.  The link is from TeachHub.  The chat focused on how to use projects in the classroom and how it helps students understand material better.  The pursuit of one's own interests lead to deeper understanding.  Also discussed was the use of projects to better the community.

I am now following Kenna Wilson, a middle school principal.  Molly Smith is another new person I am following; she is a history teacher.  Finally, I am following is Justin Staub, a Pennsylvanian teacher.

bit.ly/SgRN2T

#Edchat

I participated in Edchat on Tuesday night.  The topic of the chat was: if the poverty gap is a major force stalling the improvement in the American education system, how do we address it?  The chat had a lot of ideas, though some seemed rather off topic.  Some suggested training teachers to be better at intervention.  Others cited that students in poverty were the ones more often put in special education and were more likely to fall behind over the summer.  These students are given lower expectations so they only rise to far.  Others were critical of standardized testing because it did not show a student's true ability (though how this relates to poverty is unclear).  Teachers wanted the government to take more action and provide more funding, though they never actually discussed the government using poverty as a stalling tactic.  Many stated that schools simply are not able to handle the problem of poverty.  Many said student in poverty need help before they even get into the public school system.  More programs like Head Start are needed.

There were many links posted, though most of them were unrelated to the topic of the chat.  One interesting article actually was about further ways to use Twitter as an educator.  This site shows the top 50 education chats and how to use them: http://bit.ly/UHl76A

I am following several people that I discovered within #Edchat.  Nikkol Bauer is the CIO of Henry County schools in Kentucky.  Emil Ahangarzadeh tweets mostly about technology and is a self-proclaimed ninja.  Steven Anderson is one of the creators of Edchat .  Mel Ridder is a high school principal.  Ron Peck is an AP history teacher and one of the creators of SSChat.
 

Classrooms are Getting iSmart

The classrooms in the videos from the One-to-One program and the Transformed Classroom video physically looked like any other classroom, with the addition of iPads and laptop computers.  There were still desks and chairs for all of the students as well as boards to write on.  Some classes continued to use a textbook while others found them needless with the new technology.  In the classroom with the iPads, two students shared one tablet do they were seated in pairs.

The technology increased communication between the students and the teachers.  They could e-mail one another at any time so a student could have work looked over, returned, and corrected before class even began.  Discipline with using the computers was a bit of a problem with they first received them but the student quickly got into a pattern of appropriate use.

Differentiation of instruction was achieved with the new technology.  In the 5th grade classroom full of tablets, students played many educational games.  Skill level in those games acts as a form of differentiation because every student can go at his or her own rate.  Technologies like these make it easier than printing out several different worksheets and giving only certain students certain worksheets.

In my classroom, I would love every student to have access to computers whenever they were needed instead of signing up for library or computer lab time.  I would use them to share videos I thought to be of value.  There is a great youtube channel called Crash Course.  Crash Course teaches both biology and world history.  I would use the world history videos to introduce a new unit of study.  Viewing sources such as political cartoons or old pictures is much more easily done on a computer.  The image would not be degraded or get blurred in the printing process, and if everyone has the image in front of them then there is no eye strain.  I would use the computers like the other teachers to distribute homework and collect papers so less trees are cut down.

The sheer amount of technology in the classrooms surprised me.  I went to school with no smart boards and very few computers.  We used overhead projectors a lot.  The fact that a school can get a bunch of 5th graders iPads astounds me.  The use of the technology was very interesting.  The teachers used the technology in unexpected ways, ways that I could not even imagine because I lack the experience.