Looking Back....

I enjoyed the Elementary School to the Middle School because it was more hands on.

I feel like the Middle School has a lot of potential with the technology they have, but the teachers are not using it in the classroom.

At the Elementary School, I feel like the iPad classrooms could be doing a lot more with the iPads. The fifth grade class that I observed barely used the iPads.

What is the point in having the technology if you are not going to use it?

Observation Day 3

Today is my last observation day at the Elementary School. Today I went to Ms. G, my assigned 3rd Grade teacher.

Ms. G - 3rd Grade
Technology:
Once again the students did a math rotation using the smartboard, computers, iPods, and me. After the math rotation the students watched a read-aloud book video from the internet. After the read-aloud book, Ms. G showed the students a streamline video as a review for their math quiz.

General Observations:
It must have been the student teacher that made the students more well behaved. Once again the class was chaotic. Students were unable to stay in their seats, often getting laps to walk at recess. Today was also Friday, which meant that it was assessment day. The students were so unaware of what was going on, one student even completely forgot that they had already taken their math quiz. I am amazed that the students in this class learn anything. Ms. G seems like a nice person, but I am unsure if she should be teaching children at this level. I think that the students would benefit from more structure.

Observation Day 2

Today was my second observation day at the Elementary School. Today I visited two iPad classrooms (4th and 5th grade) along with Ms. G (my assigned teacher).

Ms. G - 3rd Grade
Technology:
The students used the smartboard, computers, iPods, and me for their math rotations. After math rotations the students watched a read-aloud story from the internet. Next, Ms. G used a microphone device to read a chapter aloud from the book that the kids are reading as a class. During the classes media center time, they took an accelerated reader quiz on the book they listened to on the internet.

General Observations:
The class was much less chaotic today. The students were able to transition from one activity to another more quickly. There was a student teacher in the class today, so that might have had something to do with it.

Ms. J - 5th Grade iPad classroom
Technology:
The students used their iPads to watch political speeches. The speeches are from United Streaming. Ms. J downloaded the speeches, converted them to iTunes format, and synced all of the iPads.

General Observations:
I learned that all of the iPads are synced to one iTunes account. However, each iPad has a profile number taped to the cover, which allows each iPad to have its own profile in iTunes. This makes it so that a students work is not lost every time the iPad is synced to iTunes.

Ms. T - 4th Grade iPad Classroom
Technology:
Since the class was helping set up the auditorium for an assembly, a group of students showed me what they liked about the iPads. I liked this format because I could "interview" the students about the iPads.

Observation Day 1

Today is my first observation day at the Elementary School. The teacher that I have been assigned is Ms. G and she is a 3rd Grade teacher.

Ms. G - 3rd Grade
Technology:
The students used the smartboard, classic iPods, computers, and an iTouch during their Math Rotations. The classic iPod has flash card videos that Ms. G created to go along with what they are learning in math. The kids played an online math game at the smartboard. The students logged into their IXL.com accounts at the computer station. And the last station was math bingo with me.

Activities:
Friday is assessment day for Ms. G's class.

General Observations:
The classroom is a little chaotic. Ms. G seems to know where everything is located, but the room screams dirty to me. There was also a huge transition time from one activity to another. It is obvious that Ms. G is not very strict with the students which makes the students less likely to do what she tells them to do. While I played math bingo with the students during math rotation, I had to frequently call my groups attention back to the bingo game. They were more worried about what was going on at different stations. The class was also not very structured. Ms. G still had one student doing his social studies test a full hour after everyone else had finished. Ms. G just continued on with her lessons while that student was moved to the back of the classroom. I asked if the student was a resource student (and therefore would warrant the extra time), but she told me that he was not.

Getting Oriented....

Today was the orientation at the Elementary School.

This school actually looks like a school. When I entered the school I saw that the hallway walls had very kid-friendly murals painted on them. The corners of the walls (where two halls crossed) had painted on street signs. This made me wonder if this school does what I did in elementary school, which was write letters to other students in the school using street names for the hallways. Well, even if they don't it was very cute.

We arrived at 10 at the middle school and headed to the media center. The media center is rather small, but so is the school.

We met with the VP and she told us an overview of the school. The VP did tell us that they school has iTouch carts that teachers can check out, two iPad classrooms, and an iPad cart that teachers can check out. perked up when I heard about the iPads because I am doing my research paper on iPads.

Observation Day 4

Today is my 4th and final day of observation at the Middle School. The following is what I observed:

Ms. L - Social Studies 7th Grade
Technology:
After the students took a quiz, Ms. L went over the answers using the document camera. The document camera is not the best in the world, but it did what she needed it to do. Ms. L projected the image of her worksheet/quiz and wrote in the correct answers. The last 10 minutes of class the students watch a video on the Korean War that is streaming from Netflix.

Activities:
The class took a quiz. After the quiz Ms. L went over the quiz using the document camera. After the quiz, students work on packets from the book. While the students are doing their packets. Ms. L is handing back classroom work from the day before. The students are allowed to work in groups on the packets. The last 10 minutes of class are for a documentary video on the Korean War.

General Observations:
Every student in the school gets breakfast provided to them by the school for free because of a grant. So, the first ten minutes of each day is devoted to eating breakfast.

Ms. M (Student Teacher) - Advanced Science 7th Grade
Technology:
The students come in and do "bellwork" from the smartboard. The lecture is on the smartboard as well. Ms. M uses the document camera to show questions that the students turned in from the class before. These questions are just slips of paper where the groups wrote down a question that they were confused or needed more clarification on.

Activities:
Today was just a typical lecture day.

General Observations:
The students are grouped into tables. Tables earn points, and the table with the most points from the day before gets to sit on a couch that is positioned in front of the smartboard. If the table decides to sit in front of the smartboard it costs them points from their total.

Mr. S - Science 8th Grade
Technology:
Mr. S uses different types of technology very seamlessly. He flows from the document camera, back to the smartboard, to videos very naturally. Mr. S uses real-life examples during his lecture, which is why he switches back and forth from his PowerPoint to his document camera. Mr. S also used a streaming YouTube video that went along with his lecture. The video was a precursor for the lab that they were going to do the next day.

Activities:
The students did "bellwork" and a lecture on the human eye.

General Observations:
Mr. S made the lesson fun. He entertained the students with personal anecdotes which made the students more interested in what he was discussing.

Observation Day 3

Today was my third visit to the Middle School. My observations are as follows:

Ms. L - Social Studies 7th Grade
Technology:
Today was a perfect day to visit this class to see how students are using technology. Today students are presenting their World War II projects that they created in PowerPoint. The projects are projected onto the smartboard, and the students use the touch features of the smartboard to navigate their presentations. I also learned that each student has a personal folder on the school's server. The student can only access their folder; however, the teachers can access any students folder. This was useful because the students worked on the PowerPoint presentations in the computer lab. The students did not need a flash drive to carry their work (and potentially forget to bring back to school on presentation day).

Activities:
The students presented their World War II projects.

General Observations:
Some of the resource students were allowed to do their projects by hand. They used the computer for the research, but created a poster for their presentation. The second class that came in had more resource students. This class was allowed to do group projects where one of the students in the group was a resource student. Because this class had more resource students, it was a little louder.

Ms. F-M - Algebra I
Technology:
Ms. F-M uses the smartboard for the lecture. She uses the pen to draw/write on the PowerPoint to help the students through the lecture. The students use classroom calculators that are wired into a "pod/navigator". By being wired into this "pod/navigator" the teacher is able to do screen captures of each students calculator from the smartboard. Each student logs into the pod, this allows the teacher to see the students name next to their graph. This allows the teacher to determine if certain students are not following along in class. Ms. F-M can also see if a student is having any difficulties with the equation, etc.

Activities:
The class did a regular days lecture.

General Observations:
I thought the calculator capture was very interesting. It cut down on the teacher having to walk around the room to see if everyone was following along.