Using New Technologies in the Classroom

Chapter 4

            Chapter four of the textbook “Transforming Learning with New Technologies” is entitled “Designing Lessons and Developing Curriculum with Technology” and focuses on how teachers propose, provide, and assess lessons that involve students and teach academic matter while incorporating technology into all features of lesson design and development. One thing that really stood out to me in this chapter was the example lesson in science that focused on Rainscapes Show the Water Cycle. This lesson would be an elementary school science lesson and the central focus of it would be “By studying the water cycle, children understand how water is naturally recycled from the earth’s surfaces to the atmosphere and back again, changing from liquid to gas and back to liquid.” I think this lesson is great because is allows students to conduct and engage in an active activity. Students would learn what happens to water in different settings by their own experiment, which is great since the students are discovering this by themselves. 

            Another idea that stood out to me in this chapter was assessing and evaluating students. The chapter stated that one of the most popular ways teachers think about assessment is through personal experience, which I never noticed before but I definitely agree with. As students, we had assessments that we either enjoyed or disliked, so as teachers, the ones we liked would be the ones we would want to use in our future classroom since it worked well for us as students. However, the problem with this is that teachers do not automatically envision using portfolios, creative writing, group work, and more, if they never were assessed in those ways. A teacher must be open to all kinds of assessments because different assessments may work better for different students. Instead of using boring and annoying performance assessments to check student progress, a teacher should be open in using assessments that SHOW what a student has learned, which includes a product, performance, and presentation.

Questions I Have

1)Can I evaluate my student progress by both performance assessment as well as standard based assessments?

2)How can I create a rubric that will accurately include how to assess student performance, what student needs to do to meet certain criteria, while being fair to all students? Can I use differentiation in assessments too?

3)If a state makes standard assessments mandatory to measure the knowledge of students before, during, and after teaching lessons, can I include a performance assessment with it that students may enjoy more?

Chapter 8

            Chapter 8 of the textbook “Communicating and Collaborating with Social Media” is entitled “Communicating and Collaborating with Social Media” and focuses on how teachers can use different technology tools as teaching and learning tools. Even though technology tools for communication as been around for many years, it has not been used previously to the extent that it could be used. Some communication electronic tools include email, classroom websites, blogs, and more. Email is a great way for teachers to reach out to parents and vice versa especially since now, most people have phones that allow automatic emails to be received and will notify the person when they get a new email. Also, not only is it quick and convenient, I believe emails are better because they make both the teacher and parent more comfortable as meeting in face may be intimidating to both. Also, emails are organized by date, so if a parent is trying to find an email where the teacher mentioned something, they will be more successful than trying to remember what the teacher told them months ago about their child. Even though the textbook did not explicitly mention this, another tool I think would be helpful would be a class or school Facebook page, or something along those lines. Parents always wonder what is going on in school, and it may be time consuming to keep each parent up to date with the lessons, activities, trips, assemblies and more. However if the class or school had a Facebook, parents would wonder less about what is going on at school. When everyone is in the loop, at-home conversations about schoolwork are more productive. Parents also become more invested to work with teachers together to help their kids succeed.  A school or classroom Facebook would allow teachers to have more time and energy to focus on in-class learning as they only have to update Facebook once whenever something needs to be added as a reminder or overall message. Even though these ways of communication may seem weird to try because they are different, I believe both parents and teachers should try them out because in the long run, it will be beneficial towards the student.

Questions I Have

1)What do I do if a parent does not have the technology to use an app or website that I have set up with the classroom?

2)Should I include students in online discussions with teachers and parents, or should I just keep it between teachers and parents?

3)How can I stay safe and private on the online classroom while still allowing each parent to understand where their child is, and what progress their child has made?