Reflection 11/22/08

What technology use and attitudes did I see modeled?
This whole week the computers at our school were down, so we were really struggling in using technology to teach or to do anything really. So I didn't see a lot of technology being used. Of course because the computers were down, everything seemed chaotic. SO that tells me that teachers now days depend so much on technology and I am very impressed as to how much we rely on technology to do just about everything.

What was my own experience trying to use technology in this setting?
This week I presented my technology lesson. I did a read aloud. I scanned the pages of the book "Thanksgiving at the Tappletons'" and then I made a power point slide with the images of every page. I was really excited to teach it. I was planning on projecting the slides on a big white screen with a projector. Unfortunately, all computers were down and I was not able to project the slide show on a big white screen. Instead I was able to get a hold of another teacher and use her computer. The computers at the school are conected to the TV, and so I was able to project the slides on the TV. I was planning on reading off the TV, but it turns out that it is really hard to read from it. SO I read from the computer (I had to talk really loud). I was able to get my lesson going, and it was going great. Then I realized that the slides skimped two of the pages from the book. When I went to see what had happened I noticed that the two missing pages were not on the slide show. I was really embarrassed but was able to come back and just tell the students what the two pages were about. I then went back to reading from the slide show and then two more slides were missing. I don't know what happened. It turned out to be ok, I read the missing pages from the book itself later on.
But, I thought that the idea of projecting the book on a bigger screen was an excellent idea and I am so glad that I did a read aloud using technology.

Share 1 idea that you have for using technology for a lesson or content area that you observed being taught this week.
I thought this week of using technology to teach math. Either by making a power point presentation to display all parts of a lesson, or to use computers and have students practice math with a math program. I know there are a lot of games on the web that can be used to practice math with children. I think that using computers can make math a lot more fun to learn for the kids and for me to teach.