Carpe Diem

For this activity I watched a webinar on technology and education: Webinar.  The webinar didn't have many steps. Go to the web page and listen! Well, by now you know this is an issue near and dear to my heart. I was expecting the conversations that are now occurring in education to happen 9 years ago when I entered into the field. It shocks me how many people in education want to avoid the integration of technology into the classroom even now. Also, even a wealthy school district like mine can have poor planning for the technology to be easily used in classrooms. For example, I am in a new (3 year old) building where most of the building does not have phone service until you exit the building.

As far as what I use, I only teach a small class of students and we use the PCs and Promethium board. I am sure you are not surprised to hear I have collected lessons that make use of phones.  However, there is no reception. I did agree with the Webinar in that the Carpe Diem school was an awful sight. Sitting in a carol and using computers to drill students is no better than sitting in a carol and using flash cards. I am sure that the students excel on the standardized tests, but the real world is not about taking standardized tests. It is all about collaboration and problem solving. It has always been that way and always will. I did like the look of both St. Mary’s and Nan Chow. Integrating technology into learning is the key to success.

My students are older, so they use email to let me know what they are doing as far as out of school jobs (no phone service in the building), in class we use Windows software, the Promethium board, Google. All projects in my class are done in an electronic version, including resumes and I often have students display their work on the Promethium board and present it.  Interest surveys are done on free websites, such as VA Education Wizard.  Pretests and Post-tests for my class are done with our online curriculum. Daily class work, however, still requires pencil and paper as the classroom only has 2 computers and one is used for the Promethium board. A number of teachers that have tried to implement more use of technology in their lessons have found it difficult to do so because of the computer allocation. If there is SOL testing, which there always seems to be in a high school, then computer labs are now allocated for testing and not available for instruction.

I do attend seminars on technology in the classroom whenever I can, and have included a link to two power points created by others that list a bunch of sites they found helpful. So, thought I would share.

Power Point 1 with links and Power Point 2 with links

As far as a school wide initiative, I am sure we have one. Don’t know if it trickles down to the individual teacher. One of the oddities of public education seems to be this desire to allow everyone to go their own creative way with everything, including technology. This drives me crazy. So, one Biology teacher at one high school will do a great job of updating his class material and integrating technology for his classes, but it won’t be implemented by all Biology teachers in that school yet alone other schools in the district. When I did instruction in the corporate environment, the training that I gave in New York, was the same training given in Chicago and Kansas. So, I would like to see a smooth consistent roll out of technology integration into the school system. But, we will see.