Cody Trueblood, Reflection 5

http://www.edutopia.org/video/movie.php?reset=cookie&keyword=005&id=Art_1127

The movie that I watched was titled “Laptops On Expedition” and it was basically about a school in Maine implementing technology into their entire school. Instead of the traditional way of schooling, this school decided to try certain technologies instead of textbooks. For instance, the kids would do research on the internet instead of reading it out of a textbook, and the students would do projects for their classes and when they were done they would present them to the class. However, instead of the typical classroom project most of us are familiar with, these projects were all done on CD and presented to the class on an overhead projector from the computer screen. It was very neat and creative. The students really seemed excited to do these projects also, perhaps because they were presented with an opportunity to not have to read the same boring textbooks over and over where they were not getting much out of them. Instead they could find out the information for themselves and format a plan and present it to the class in a more interesting way. It really seemed to be working at this school in Maine, the kids were excited and learning really seemed to be going on. The major technology being used in this video was computers in general, every single one of the students were using computers to do their entire classroom projects (for multiple classes) and they did basically all of their homework on a CD, that way they could bring the CD home and then bring it back to school to let their teachers know that they indeed were working on their projects outside of class. The technology was very much student-centered, rather than teacher-centered. The kids themselves were working on their projects on the CD’s and had to do it themselves in order for the work to be completed. I am sure the teachers showed them how to do certain things on the computers, but it was basically a must for the students to be able to do things themselves also, so they could get work done at home. I definitely agree with the statement that technology makes the lesson more engaging. The reason is because the students do not just have to sit and listen to the teacher ramble on and on, instead they can actually do things on their own; they are forced to be engaged really, and I think that is a very good thing for students. They have no other option other than to be engaged. From a technological standpoint, the teacher really must try to visualize every kind of problem the student could encounter at home and let them know what to do in certain situations so the student will not get discouraged and just quit. From a pedagogical standpoint, the teacher must let the students work on their own but at the same time really check on their work every day so they can correct them on certain things, for instance if they are getting their information on the internet from unreliable sources, that wouldn’t be very good. In order to assess student performance in this video, I would try to look at the information being presented itself in the presentations, rather than if they didn’t format the presentation correctly or something tedious like this where maybe the teacher could have explained that more clearly or something, because technology doesn’t come natural to everyone. One advantage of using this technology is something I’ve already talked about, the fact that the students are very engaged in the lesson, and that is really good for the students. The students are engaged and they are learning, and as a teacher you can tell that they are learning from their presentations that they are giving. Some challenges that teachers could face is having to check students’ work on a daily basis, this might be hard to do for a classroom with more than 20, but it is something that is almost a necessity to know if the students are actually working on things at home. For students, it might be a challenge to do everything at home on the computer, where if they have trouble with something technology-based like formatting or something, they might not be able to ask their parents for help and might become frustrated and give up easily. Overall, I think this was a great idea for this school and it is definitely something I could see myself trying in my class someday.