- I enjoyed that the introduction to chapter 3 really delved into the changes over the last century. Today, classrooms are focusing on being student centered and teachers are setting goals for students to be life-long learners.
- I did not know that by the 1800's children were only expected to complete the 8th grade. It is amazing how much education has changed. I teach kindergarten and even in my 5 years of teaching it has become even more academic.
- I did not know that orthography was a content area in the 1800's. Now as educators, our goal is to teach students to be critical thinkers, problem solvers, and decision makers.
- One idea this chapter helped me think of involve our fourth grade buddies. Fourth grade buddies can aide in research for theme units utilizing the internet.
1 Concern
- My main concern is utilizing technology enough to optimize learning, but not creating a lazy thinker.
The man that my grandma ended up marrying after my grandpa passed away, made it through 8th grade when he had to quite and provide for his siblings. Times were tough then.
ReplyDeleteAs far as bringing in 4th graders, I really like that idea. At our school there was a Big Brothers and Sisters mentoring program. This program was great for many reasons but one of them was that older students would often use my computer lab and for a free time activity with the men-tees they would use my structure design software. The younger ones really enjoyed this. This was complex software but they had great one on one instruction to help them. I have always thought that a mentor in technology was a great idea.
Jennifer,
ReplyDeleteI was excited to hear that you had reading buddies as well. As you probably know from other classes and this class, we both teach kindergarten. Many ideas presented in chapter there and four, inspired me to have my third and fourth grade reading buddies teach my kindergarten students about using the Internet to research topics of interest. Please keep me posted if, and when, you have your fourth grade reading buddies help your students learn about the Internet as we could exchange ideas about our experiences. With full-day kindergarten I am able to inegrate technology more in to my curriculum than if I would only have a half-day to teach students their core subjects. I plan to use the resources we have at our school, such as the computer lab, to teach students about the many uses of a computer. I would really like to create a technology curriculum for kindergarten so that my lessons are scaffolded appropriatly.
Kate Wampler
Jennifer,
ReplyDeleteYou might even try Photo Story on the web, a free PC program for making digital stories. Students add pictures (from the web or camera) then narrate it. The older buddies could help. THese digital stories can be inserted into a PowerPoint presentation and shared with the whole class. If you have iMovie or Garageband at your school a similar project could be done and it is easy to do.Perhaps, as one of your weekly projects, you would like to check it out as an Exploration!
Joan