Just a Quick Little Presentation

I had to make a power point for a class I was in this week, so I tried Google Presentations for the first time. I clicked on "share" and was able to publish my presentation in a format that can be viewed online. Pretty sweet for avoiding software conflicts, though there are not nearly as many bells and whistles in the editing. I think that actually might be a good thing, especially when we ask students to create presentations!

Guiding Principles for the Use of Technology in the Science Classroom

When considering the use of technology in the classroom, it is important to evaluate the motivation and expected outcomes. The following principles should serve as guidelines in this process:

1. Technology is not a replacement or substitute for effective teaching practices.
2. Technology should be used to engage students with the content through inquiry, modeling, visualizations, data collecting and processing, differentiation and multiple representations.
3. Technology should be used to do things that might otherwise not be done if the technology were not available.
4. Technology should be used to do new things in new ways.

(Adapted from Technology in the Science Classroom by NSTA Press and Evaluating Technology Use in the Classroom by Jeff Utecht)

Reflections on Web2.0 in the Classroom

The talk about Web2.0 being the future of education, the "flat Earth," and students as digital natives is stale to me. I feel like I have heard it for at least the past 5 years, which is my entire teaching career! I suppose there might be some folks that still need convincing, but I am personally ready for some meaty morsels of how to make these tools work for me in my classroom.

It seems to me that the wheels are pretty slow to turn in public education. Teachers either have the technology but don't know how to use it, or they learn it and yearn for it and don't have the funds to procure it for their classrooms. For me, this is where the disconnect is from the utopian ideals of every student creating meaningful online content in a global village and my reality:

• Only 65% of my students have internet access at home which means any type of work involving the internet needs to be done in the classroom.
  
• My classroom has 7 working and 3 non-working laptops (circa 2001) for my 140 students and there is no other computer lab available.
• If I want to show my students any content found online, I have to bring in my own laptop and my own LCD projector.
  
• My school has one digital camera available for student use and it is at least 8 years old.

Honestly, most mobile phones are more advanced than the technology available to me in my school. And my digital native students own those phones! I might sound bitter because I am (just a little bit) but I know that I probably have it better than thousands of teachers across the country. I don't want to get side tracked, but the disconnect between knowing how to use Web2.0 tools and having the hardware to do so is real in many classrooms across the nation.

One thing that I feel excited about is how technology has evolved from big ol' expensive clunky computers that needed multiple software programs to perform a variety of functions to sleek tablets that run very affordable or free apps and the availability of web based tools, many of which are also affordable or free. It makes me feel like we live and teach in a transitional time and that in the not-so-distant future it will be feasible for ALL students and teachers to truly collaborate. Once the hardware barrier comes down, I think we will see some truly amazing products from our little digital natives!

Introduction for MSSE 580

My first name is Sarah and I teach middle school science in Belgrade, Montana. I live just a few blocks away from Montana State University, where I received my B.S. in Biology. This is my first summer in the MSSE program and it is sure to be a whirlwind! I gave birth to my first child just 3 1/2 months ago (a son named Ian). My husband and I have a furbaby named Mazey- she is a Huskadore (husky lab cross) who is adjusting to no longer being the only child. We try our best to take full advantage of our primo location and are more likely to be away from home than in it.

I am extremely interested in technology for the classroom, but unfortunately it is a constant upstream battle in my district. I could go on and on about how difficult they make it for teachers to incorporate technology into our classrooms, but I would rather focus on what I have been able to do with little to zero support from my district. Many of my technology dreams are wearing thin after three years of being dashed against the insurmountable rocky shores of our tech department, but I am trying to hold on. The pessimist in me says this MSSE 580 course will get me super excited about a bunch of stuff that I will never be able to implement in my anti-technology school... but the optimist in me is very excited for the opportunity to explore the latest collaborative online resources and implement them into my classroom!