Blog Post #13

What Did I Leave Out?

This week's blog post is centered around EDM 310 and something that I felt my professor may have left out that we should have done in this course.

We have done so many creative and useful things in this course throughout the semester. Many of the activities we have learned about and had to demonstrate I anticipate I will bring to my own classroom. There is only one thing that comes to mind that I feel might have been beneifical in our journey with EDM 310. I think if we did a blog post or video post that centered around a classroom observation in our area of education by taking a so called "field trip" to in my case an elementary classroom and observed their use of technology and ability to access and use the technology. 

This assignment could be done either as a collaborative or individual blog post. This type of assignment would give future teachers a first hand look at what we will be surrounding ourselves and our students with as well as techniques and first and ideas and experiences from a teacher and their students' use of the technology.

I observed Ms. Beck's first grade classroom at Mary B. Austin. In this classroom they have a Smart-board and only four Ipads available. The Smart-board is used a lot for all subject areas such as spelling, phonics, math, grammar, even art and science activities. It is great for interactive activities for the students' to not only view but also participate in. The Ipads are also great for practicing and reinforcing what the students are learning through interactive games and other apps. A down side to the Ipads is that there are not enough to issue each child one to use for the school year. This means that access is very limited to the students and they do not get the full benefactors that the Ipads could be giving them. Overall, it is great to see technology being used at such a rapid rate in today's schools and I look forward to seeing our classroom technology progress even more in the future.