Challenges to Myself

Our students of today are miles beyond us in technological knowledge.  I see this both as a drawback (on my part) and a challenge.  I think that the book's distinction between a "digital native" and a "digital immigrant"(originally coined by Marc Prensky) rings true. (p.200)  I know that I am an immigrant, a "stranger in a strange land".  Much of the learning of technology that comes naturally to my young daughters is difficult and painful to me, requiring hours of tedious practice on my part.

Some of the wonderful innovations mentioned in this chapter have begun to be used at my school.  We have interactive Smartboards in most of our classrooms and projectors in our ceilings.  Over the last few years, I have created hundreds of interactive documents, which are extremely useful in mathematics for students to be able to write on.  However, I have only recently started to embed short video clips into my instruction.  I would like to challenge myself to find one short relevant clip to start each class, showing how the math we are doing that day is used in the real world.

I would like to add a wireless mouse, so that I could roam through the room while students are working, and still control the computer.  Never worked with one of these.

I also like the idea of taking pictures or videos of my students during class that I show on the big screen at the end, showing some of their learning processes and collaborations.  I can see how encouraging them to self-critique themselves and their peers can lead to more in depth understanding.

I have used Google Docs this year for the first time, to post assignments and link videos for students to view, but this is the first time I have thought that I could use this as a method to receive student feedback on a particular assignment, much like we have done in our shared Google Document this week.  I don't know how this would work with teenagers, but I can see that the prompts I choose could form some good discussions, before students even enter the classroom.

And lastly, we were just informed that when we come back in the fall, our students will have one-to-one computing.  In the past, we have had cumbersome laptop carts that needed to be signed up for in advance, often two or more weeks before we needed them.  I know that one-to-one opens up many possibilities for the classroom, but I can't begin to see how I might incorporate them daily.  I look forward to investigating this further!