I like the idea of using I-pods in the classroom. I feel that they would be useful to help students who have issues concentrating. It can also be used to help students who have issues taking tests. Instead of reading out loud, each student can listen to the test at their own pace. The teacher can then go around and help each student individually instead of worrying about having to help everyone at once. The I-pod can be used for students who are more visual learners. The lessons can be transferred to a movie or something that students can watch so that they can learn the lesson easier for them. Then if they have are having problems grasping the lesson they can re-watch the lesson. This can be very beneficial so that the teacher can spend time helping more than just one student. There is lots of new research that shows that is a good thing in the classroom. Here is a link that shows the benefits of using the I-pods in the classroom.
The idea of 1:1 learning and having to teach 1:1 learning scares me. I know it is the future and it is an inevitable change, but having to teach every lesson on a computer is going to be interesting. It would nice to work into it by using the Promethean Board first for every lesson then giving student the opportunity to use computers. I feel that using computers for every lesson is going to make us even more reliable on computers than we already are. What happens if something goes wrong with a computer? Will there be replacement computers on hand? I feel that there is a certain group that is could be used with but, I feel that younger students will have difficulty using the computers and the older the child gets the more tempting that being on the internet becomes when they are suppose to be working on an assignment. I know that I am tempted by the internet (especially facebook) when I am suppose to be working on an assignment. I feel that to be helpful to every student the internet needs to be turned off unless it is needed for an assignment and even if they are using the internet there should be blocks and restrictions so that they aren't on facebook or other websites during the school day. I feel that 1:1 will be useful though and that the students will have more opportunity than they might at home. I feel that I have a lot more to research about the 1:1 learning before I will be really comfortable in implementing it into my classroom. There is a website called one laptop per child and their vision is to give every laptop to the worlds poorest children so they can participate in the collaborative learning like the children in the United States. By doing this they become more engaged in their learning after reading this 1:1 learning will be very beneficial.
When we did the lecture about collaboration and organization, I did not know that Google offered the Google Docs application to help support collaboration. I found it very interesting that you could use that to work on projects outside of class with other people without ever having to leave the home. This would have been so useful in high school if I had known about this. This collaboration tool will be great because it will help students work together even if they all can't meet at the same time. I find that this is going to be very useful because each time I've done a group assignment it has always been very difficult to work around everyone's schedule so that we could meet and work on an assignment. Then after working on it we'd have to plan the next time a lot of the work would have to be done outside of group meetings and it was always a pain to email the project to everyone in the group. I cannot wait to explore Google docs more as a collaborative tool.
Before this year I have never had any sort of interaction with a Promethean Board in classroom setting. I have vaguely heard about them through other people and even on a Hyvee commercial where they advertise that you can win a smart board for you child's school. This year in my field experience I am lucky enough to be placed in a school where every classroom has a promethean board to use. When I first came into contact with the smart board I thought it just looked like a giant screen that powerpoints could be played on. It wasn't until I saw them being used in a math lesson that I truly understood how amazing these are to have in a classroom. The children in my first grade field experience classroom have been learning about partitioning, and addition I didn't really understand how she could use the Promethean Board to help teach these concepts but as I sat through the lesson the children were called up to the board one by one to drag and drop pictures of aliens or monsters to one side of the board or the other to show partitioning. Then when they started addition the idea seemed to click instantly as they were asked to show a number of one item and then add so many of the other item to show addition. It was very exciting to see their enthusiasm for the subject as they interacted with the board. I've learned that it can be helpful for more than just math. There is a website that my mentor teacher uses called tumblebooks. This website has a collection of books and shows the pages of the book and the words on the screen and the kids can read along with the book as it is being read to them. I feel like this helps the students literacy skills and they can learn to recognize words in their own books from the tumblebooks that are played. I cannot wait to see what else the Promethean Board is used for and how this helps the children learn the next new concept!
