Reflection #13

Our last week of field was this week. We ended up finishing our two lessons. We used the smart board for our final lesson when we did a review about everything they had learned in the five previous lessons. We decided we wnated to do a virtual road trip. We found a video on youtube that was a video of someone driving through Utah, it also had music to it. IT was really fun to turn that on between pictures that we reviewed. The kids really enjoyed it. We also did a slideshow through google docs and put in pictures that we used in our digital story and reminded them of what we had learned and what landroms and resources are in Utah.

All in all, I learned that if teachers do not use technology, the kids are bored. They are a different generation and in order to reach them and teach them, we must use technology. they use it everyday in their lives and they respond to it. I will definitely use technology in everything possible. If I am lucky enough to have a smartboard, well that would be wonderful because they were so great to use.

Reflection #12

This week in field we taught everyday except Monday. WE were able to show our digital story which I was pretty nervous about and wondered how it would turn out. I went in the back while we were playing it and I definitely noticed that we had the classes attention. I also thought that it went really well with our lesson. We showed it just before we taught Utah's geography. I ended up starting out by just finding lotso f pictures of utah's geography. I did it through photostory and ended up just downloading it on my computer at home. I then used a website that has free musci on it and found a few different songs that I ended up using. I feel like the digital sotry really got the kids attention and it set them up so they were ready to learn. It also made them more interested once we started talking to them about it. Technology truly is something that is so important because kids love it!

Reflection #11

Field has been pretty interesting. We had a substitute teacher for the first 3 days and it was really interesting to see how they do things. They didn't really have control of the class at all and they also didn't get much done. Now that the teacher is back, it is really fun to see him and how he teaches. He is a great teacher. The whole school is lucky enough to have smartboards in every classroom. We have used the smartboard the 3 times we have taught so far. It also works as a projector and we have used that too. Technology definitely makes things easier. I also think the kids enjoy it too rather than writing on a regular white board. The teacher uses the smart board with almost every lesson. It would be really neat to have on in my future classroom.

Reflection #10

This week was our first week of field. Yay! It is really fun to be around all of the kids and just see what the future holds. I have been really impressed so far with using the technology available. Going up and down the hallways, I can see that every class has a smart board. It really makes the school not so boring. The teachers all have Macs to use. The teacher has also used quite a bit of music. In the afternoon half of the class goes home and the other half stays. At this point they have a schedule that they follow pretty closely. When they are done something on the schedule there is a ding and then probably 15 seconds of music that lets them know they are done and supposed to move on to the next thing. It makes it really fun and the kids absolutely love it. It is really fun to be with a teacher that it seems so far uses the technology a lot in his classroom.