TPACK

I think that it's really interesting to try to navigate away from integrating technology and into innovatively using it to our benefit in the classroom. Sometimes, teachers think that they're using technology really effectively, even though there are lots of things that they could be doing instead. It was interesting today to look through the lesson plans that were already created on the smartboard sites to see what they were doing.

I think that some of them were reinventing the wheel. Some of them were "Which items will sink or float?" I was curious why people would spend so much time working on this lesson, when everything is just as easily demonstrated, and perhaps even better, with a bucket of water and letting kids choose things in the classroom and make predictions about whether the objects will sink or float.

I just thought that some of these things were more difficult to use than they were worth. I understand that it's more fun, but I don't think that using technology in every lesson is either appropriate or necessary. There are lots of ways that these things can be illustrated without using technology, and while using these things sometimes, I think that some things, such as science, is best left as a hands-on activity where kids are actually touching the things that you're talking about. This bars, of course, those things that you can't always do in the classroom, like dissect a dinosaur or something.

I think that we need to use technology and use it innovatively, but I also think that we still need to be mindful of giving them these hands-on experiences that they may not always be getting at home. That being said, how cool were some of those? I saw an autism classroom during student teaching, and one of the ways they used smart boards was simply circling things and pointing things out, but it was so interesting to see how much more involved these kids were, and these were children that weren't communicating with their teachers on a regular basis.

I think that it was really interesting to note how much we integrate technology, and sometimes, it's forcing a square peg in a round hole, you just can't make it fit. So why do we do that? Why are we always trying to just make it fit, instead of creating an instance where it does? Why do we refuse to do things in our classrooms that has been proven in research to work and be effective? Are we just that lazy?

I'm really excited to see how much all of this changes in the next few years, because I think it will be something that we are doing so much more without even thinking about it. I think that there will be so many more opportunities for us to do things like this, and I think that a lot of school will be creating ways for teachers to be able to do it more easily, and probably even adding curriculum standards related to education.