So the semester is about over and it’s time to reflect on this past semester and my semester project. I enjoyed working on my project with the Middle School. Although I did not come into the project until after it had already started I still felt that I could easily gain a handle on what was going on. The project was very ambitious and tried to get the students at the school to actually analyze, pattern seek, and understand the information that they were trying to learn. I think that the students did get a slightly better understanding of the basic skills we were trying to teach them however, I do not think that the students really understood the larger topics and skills we were trying to get them to understand. I think since the project is going to be on going and used two more times this school year I think that the kinks and minor issues we ran into during the implementation will slowly be ironed out and the project will accomplish what it set out to do, which is to help the students understand patterns and looking at data systems.

After the project presentations of my classmates I feel that the project that Stacy did with the seasons and keynote was a very good project. She knew what she needed in her classroom and did a project that would help her students get the technology useage skills and the content knowledge skills. Both of those parts need to be in the project or it would not work. Technology on its own does not teach as many skills as when it is paired with content knowledge. Just as content knowledge can be greatly enhanced by technology. Her students will get a good amount of knowledge out of their projects because they used both content knowledge and technology knowledge to accomplish their task.

So it is about halfway through the semester and so I thought I would do a little reflection. Since being in this technology class I have really begun to look at technology and the internet in different ways. Before while I was an undergrad the internet was a place to fool around find stupid things and go on facebook. Now I feel like the internet can be more than that. While in school I did not have any classrooms that used technology in a way to enhance the classroom knowledge. So I was not aware of the many things that can now be used in the classroom to increase the use of technology.

Many of the different “tools” we are going over in class I did not have any previous experience with. But I have enjoyed getting to see different ways to use the technology that is out there. I have begun to use different tools we talked about such as del.icio.us and skype. I decided after hearing about del.icio.us in class I would give it a try and i am very glad I did. I put all of my book marks on my page and many other things I had been meaning to bookmark. And then about a week later I opened up firefox and somehow everything had been deleted all bookmarks, all passwords everything. I was very glad that I had started that del.icio.us page because while my firefox bookmarks were lost I still had the bookmarks saved somewhere else. I have also been using skype recently. I have many friends back in Virginia from my undergrad institution and many of us want to be able to talk to each other but don’t want to run up phone bills. Skype is an easy fun way to actually talk to each other as if we were on the phone and not just over AIM which can be tedious. I have also begun to just search the internet more often to just look at what is out there for others to find and see.

Of my friends I have always been the one that was a little more “up” so to speak on technology. I have always been good with computers and such and many friends would come to me not that what they needed was very difficult they just didn’t understand much more than pressing the power button and where can I sign on to the internet? But since everyone was required to have a laptop at my undergrad institute many people had laptop issues. I have found myself to talk about technology in ways that would make it easier for them to understand. But when talking to people who actually know the technical terms I often find myself out of the loop or out of sync. I can understand what they are doing and explain to non tech people but I have problems explaining my non tech to tech people.

I really don’t have any access to a classroom. I will need some help getting matched up with a classroom. I am not sure what I want to do technology wise with a classroom. I do not have much experience with technology in classrooms unless it is powerpoint. I would like to look into some kind of history interactive timeline.

So I’m looking for a teacher to work with for my project anyone have any ideas?

Welcome! This will be my blog for my class Technology in School Settings this semester. Hopefully it will be an interesting blog.