It is really amazing to think how much has really changed in my short 30 years of life. Teaching and learning has changed drastically.
When I was in elementary school............... I remember in computer class in elementary school, there were very old Apple computers that would only had a couple of programs and only one game that I remember. Oregon Trail!!!!!!!! What a wonderful game :) There was not even one computer in the classroom.
Another thing that sticks out in my mind is that everything was taught on a green chalk board. Everything was teacher directed where the students had very little say. Finally, the only way to learn and assess was through print. Knowing what I know now teacher must have made a large amount of copies due to the fact of there not being many computer programs and much more print.
In the elementary schools now.............. When performing my student teaching, I got experience a SMART board and everything it is capable of. It is amazing to think that you can teach so many different thing with so many different resources. You can almost teach everything that you need to teach without even opening a textbook. As far as learning and assessing, the SMART board is a wonderful way for learning as well as preparing children for test. There are many game options to be able to review for test in a fun and engaging way. Another way of assessing children in a fun way is to use the clickers. I have not yet experienced these but seem very fascinating. The Accelerated Reading program is also a good way to assess reading comprehension skills through technology. It is nice to be able to have the students get on the computer at there convenience and take a test on a book the read. One thing that I would love to eventually have in my classroom is a class blog for parents to be able to see what is going on in the class. I will make it so that every child will be able to go on and post something on our blog. WOW !!!! The amount of games on the computer for children now is endless.
I am very excited to see what the future brings to the classroom with technology.
You talked about having an old Apple computer in your room in elementary school. In the olden days when I was but a child, computers weren't even talked about. When I was in college, having a Hewlett-Packard scientific calculator was a huge deal, especially since they cost $400 plus. Computer classes involved programming punch cards and submitting them to the computer lab to "run". In return, you got enormous spread sheets on striped computer paper, and needed an interpreter to figure out what the results were. Computers were enormous main frames in that occupied whole climate-controlled rooms. When my kids were younger, I thought Carmen SanDiego was the neatest thing ever. And now, having to wait more than a few seconds for pages or sites to load is cause for impatience. What a life.
ReplyDeleteI recently saw someone call the SMART Board a "window" into the world. Not only because of the "things" you can see on it, but also the PEOPLE you can come in contact with through free programs like Skype, or through blogging or collaborating on a project in Google Docs.
ReplyDeleteThe clickers can be a great tool, and fun for students, if they are used correctly. But like any technology, they take time to learn, and even more time to prepare lessons.
That is very true. It is amazing how impatient we can get when computers don't run as fast as we want them to. When it is put into perspective, either people are more impatient or we have just been spoiled with technology. I'm thinking a little bit of both.
ReplyDeleteWhen I grew up computers where something owned by big companies and they filled a room. The vocabulary that goes with it was completely unknown.
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