Technology by itself does not improve student learning. Students learn well in environments where teacher and students work together to support meaningful learning, using computers effectively as one of many instructional tools to construct knowledge Jonassen, et al, 1999).
Technology development was on my list of professional goals for the year. Last school year I piloted a wiki site with my British Literature class. It worked well as a multimedia report forum and for classroom critiques, reflections etc. This year, I launched the wiki with my other classes. Like all new additions, sometimes I love what the wiki can do, and other times I look for revisions. The site has been great for international school education because of how mobile our classroom needs to be. When we had the H1N1 scare, continuing school over the internet and phone was a very real possibility. Thankfully our school was never shut down. The wiki was helpful when one student took an extended vacation in her home country. She was gone for over a month and needed to keep up to date with coursework. Yes! Load and post methods saved me troublesome emailing. The wiki has also had its downfalls because it means less creative work up in the school. Instead of making a poster, I assigned my students a glogster online scrapbook page. They enjoyed it, but we had nothing for hallway display. Later a parent claimed our school looked like a dentist’s office. In this area, I need to look into ways to print student work so they can continue to do it online but so they can also display it around the school.
Overall, I am always looking for new innovations and better ideas. My challenge is to keep a life outside of school and to avoid running too many experiments simultaneously.
I think technology is fun. But it also scares me. I hate the feeling of students staring at me after the bell has sounded, and I’m still trying to figure out which cord should connect to which place in the computer. I’m not totally ignorant of how to use technology tools, but my brain is not apt to play and figure until the system works. I need someone to show me. Still I am motivated by all the exciting things we can learn and create in the classroom. I love learning, and try to embrace it along with my students.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
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