Greater Tech Usage

Ever since my time as a pre-service teacher, I was dreaming of integrating a variety of technological pieces into my instruction. As I moved forward, I used a little bit in my student teaching and continued to dream of a technologically literate classroom. Last year, my first year of teaching, I used tech on a regular basis. From the class wiki, to having kids highlight passages on the Activeboard, to having students create presentations in powerpoint, we were all over technology.

Now was it what I had been dreaming about? I suppose I could answer in two different ways. Relative to where I was in teaching, I felt fairly good about how I was able to integrate technology into my daily instruction without making it feel forced. Relative to others I am inspired by, I was itching to add more and make them integrate with more fluidity than before.

This coming year I have a few new wrinkles planned...

• A class blog: with the 70-80 kids I'll see, the goal will be to divide them into 3 groups and have an A, B, and C. One week, A will be blogging in response to a question, quote, statement. That same week group B will be responsible for commenting on the work on 1-2 of their peers (I'll tweak it based on ease of use, efficiency), and group C will be off. We'll rotate each week. This will likely be connected with social studies and/or our novel study, giving everyone something to connect to.
• Wiki Group Work: my past class of kiddos was great at creating powerpoints. While I sometimes struggled with the content they created (writing style, conventions), their technology knowledge was fantastic. Instead of 20 powerpoints on the Boston Tea Party that just get sent to me (they presented too, but it was really an audience of 1... me) we will create using the wiki. We'll be using some rubrics to assess our cooperation, our contributions, and the content. Plus we'll take out some of the flash that became uber-distracting with the powerpoints.
• Podcasting: I had hoped for a podcast this past year, but it just didn't happen. What I am considering doing is having a monthly podcast from each rotation group, with 3 students per rotation working on it. Essentially it will be "Social Studies in October...etc" They can cover concepts/content they liked, books they read, or something I haven't envisioned. They'll need to create an outline/script, and then use Audacity to record it (3-10 minutes). We may also podcast some of the other audio projects we're working on.

There are probably 1,000 other things that I could do to integrate more technology into my classroom. But those are the big 3 I am going to be focused on. Secretly I am hoping that wikis become the technology focus this coming year for my district (we have a yearly district focus with training around it). But, I'm also hoping it is something entirely new that I can wrap my head around.