As students walk into your classroom look at them as unreleased sparks of meaning, making energy on a voyage of discovery - Ayers
Monday, December 6, 2010
Teaching through Technology
I had to share this from the CoolCatTeacher blog that I follow. I like what Vicki has to say about getting teachers to begin teaching through technology. Take a look....
Just read your comment on Spencer's Scratch Pad about following kids interest and how they are encouraging it on your teacher training. I was quite interested to hear that and would love to know the reality of it. What proportion of people actually do it. I'm all for the run with the curiosity, kids will learn a lot more from it but in my experience, when it comes to the crunch and schools are under pressure from external pressure etc. the reality of being able to just run with something other than what was intended isn't always encouraged and it takes quite a bold teacher to step up and do it anyway. I don't know how far along you are in your teaching practice but I'd be very interested to know how this pans out. I hope it continues to be encouraged. Sarah
Sara, My Dyad teacher, who is AMAZING, does just this all the time! He stopped a lesson about correcting paragraphs to talk about the origin of Ms. The paragraph that the students were correcting had the word"miss" and it should have been capitalized. A student asked what the difference was between Miss and Mrs. The teacher stopped, sat and began a discussion about the origins of this. He then went into the history of Ms. and the history of women's rights. I loved this!! Now, since we are talking 4th grade here, the discussion maybe lasted 15-20 minutes. You keep it on their level and go with it! I truly believe that this is important in a classroom. A teacher should stop if there is a teachable moment, even if it is on something that is not going to be on a test.
How inspiring! I love studies that "prove" whether certain teahing methods are effective and which are not. This speaker spoke about using cell phones for making videos,taking pictures, audio recording, looking up information on the web, looking up definitions. Harvesting technology that is already available makes great sense. Teachers need to have freedom to customize lesson based on student need. They are professionals and are working together to find solutions to teach with tecfhnology, even with limited funds.
Just read your comment on Spencer's Scratch Pad about following kids interest and how they are encouraging it on your teacher training. I was quite interested to hear that and would love to know the reality of it. What proportion of people actually do it. I'm all for the run with the curiosity, kids will learn a lot more from it but in my experience, when it comes to the crunch and schools are under pressure from external pressure etc. the reality of being able to just run with something other than what was intended isn't always encouraged and it takes quite a bold teacher to step up and do it anyway.
ReplyDeleteI don't know how far along you are in your teaching practice but I'd be very interested to know how this pans out. I hope it continues to be encouraged.
Sarah
Sara,
ReplyDeleteMy Dyad teacher, who is AMAZING, does just this all the time! He stopped a lesson about correcting paragraphs to talk about the origin of Ms.
The paragraph that the students were correcting had the word"miss" and it should have been capitalized. A student asked what the difference was between Miss and Mrs. The teacher stopped, sat and began a discussion about the origins of this. He then went into the history of Ms. and the history of women's rights. I loved this!! Now, since we are talking 4th grade here, the discussion maybe lasted 15-20 minutes. You keep it on their level and go with it!
I truly believe that this is important in a classroom. A teacher should stop if there is a teachable moment, even if it is on something that is not going to be on a test.
How inspiring! I love studies that "prove" whether certain teahing methods are effective and which are not. This speaker spoke about using cell phones for making videos,taking pictures, audio recording, looking up information on the web, looking up definitions. Harvesting technology that is already available makes great sense. Teachers need to have freedom to customize lesson based on student need. They are professionals and are working together to find solutions to teach with tecfhnology, even with limited funds.
ReplyDelete