Week Three: Topic (Educational Technology), Module (Microsoft’s Backyard) – Clip: Classroom Management Software

Class server assists teachers, students, and parents with teaching and learning in numerous ways. For teachers, they are able to use resources in innovative ways to create assignments and activities. Afterwards, teachers can add these assignments and other resources to a server via his or her website. Teachers are still instructing students but through a different mode of delivery. In fact, the teacher in the video believes that this was an effective means of taking the “teacher out of the loop.” Her statement was based on how she no longer has to grade certain assessments and assignments that were more objective because the program was capable of giving students immediate feedback.

For students, the class server enables them to perform their assignments on the computer. According to a student in the video, he enjoyed doing reports on the computer opposed to having to handwrite his report. Since students were able to do their assignments on the computer, they were able to be more creative, innovative, incorporate animation, special effects, and many more details. It is also useful for students to be able to receive immediate feedback from doing certain assignments on the server.

For parents, they are able to keep up with their child’s classroom performance because these students were receiving immediate feedback. This is advantageous for both students and parents because they no longer have to wait until parent-teacher conference to learn about the child’s progress.

The advantages that this type of classroom management tool could offer a school district are meeting students with differentiated learning styles, creating tailor-made assignments for each student, and reducing the number of photocopying that each teacher makes. First of all, this classroom management tool could help students that have various learning styles to excel in the classroom. This tool incorporates interactive learning that would maintain students’ attention. Additionally, the authentic assessments could help all students to become successful in the classroom. Secondly, teachers are able to create assignments based on individual student’s needs. Therefore, a teacher could assign certain assignments to some students and more advanced assignments to other students based on their classroom progress. Lastly, this type of classroom management tool could offer a school district a reduction in budget. When teachers store assignments and other resources on the server, then it means that teachers no longer have to run to the photocopier machine to waste precious resources.

My overall feeling about using such type of tool to manage instruction is pretty optimistic. I believe that this could be a great resource for many school districts that have a desire of becoming more technologically savvy. I also believe that this could help to improve parental involvement because parents would be able to access their child’s electronic portfolio at their leisure. Additionally, I believe that students would be able to learn more because technology is both an invaluable resource and quite entertaining to many students.

I only foresee one obstacle in using such classroom management tool which is the lack of financial resources for all school districts to use this tool. Even if school districts are able to use this particular classroom management tool, it may be a problem for students to do their assignments outside of the classroom if they do not have a home computer.

Week Three: Topic (Educational Technology), Module (Integrating Palm Pilots) – Clip: Using Handhelds in the Classroom

Based on the video, there were many innovative ways that graduate students (teachers) plan to use handheld computers to teach. One strategy is for teachers to use them to integrate handheld computers into their lesson plans. For instance, one teacher stated that certain chemistry problems, such as stoichiometry, were quite difficult for students to perform in class. To solve this dilemma, this teacher had students solve problems on their individual handheld computers. Students are then able to share and verify the correctness of their responses with classmates by “beaming” their answers to one another. Another teacher emphasized that this learning style promoted cooperative and collaborative learning among students. The second strategy of using handheld computers is for organizational purposes. One teacher stated that some students, especially special education students, tend to forget their agenda at home. One way to rectify this dilemma was to require for these students to have handheld computers as stated in their IEPs.

An important advantage of handhelds that the professor identified over laptops is the fact that these gadgets were not connected to the Internet. I believe that this is an important advantage because it helps to keep students focus on classroom instruction. Additionally, it helps to eliminate the temptation for students to surf the web if he or she has access to the Internet.

There are some general advantages of using wireless technologies in the classroom. Among those advantages are opportunities for all students to participate and to store classroom materials electronically. Often times, every student does not participate in classroom discussion for various reasons. At the same time, there may be two or three active students answering all of the questions. One way to overcome this issue is allowing students to type in their responses on their handheld computers. This would definitely give all students an opportunity to become active learners. Secondly, both teachers and students are able to store their classroom materials electronically. This is a great advantage, especially for teachers, because they would no longer have to carry home tons of notebook and papers to grade. This is also advantageous for students because they would be able to maintain an electronic portfolio.

Wireless technologies can change the “traditional” classroom environment in both the present and future. Currently, there are pockets of school districts around the United States using handheld computers. In fact, it is mandatory in some school districts. Teachers and principals are using it to stay organized, maintain students’ grades, maintain students’ personal information, etc. In the future, I can see a time in which every student would be required to bring a handheld computer to class. The times in which students must bring their textbook to class will soon be history. This could also be cost effective if school districts can find a way to replace textbooks with electronic copies.