As of right now, I do not think I need to modify my plan at all. Currently, in keeping with my goals, I am trying to find a way to incorporate the Mobi tool I recently learned about from our media specialist. I have been searching online for ideas of how to incorporate this tool into instruction, but have had little success. I am assuming because this technology is new, teachers have not had a chance to share their ideas on blogs and so forth.
I have, however, been brainstorming on my own of how to use this tool in the classroom. I was thinking about having students make their own assessments on the Mobi. Perhaps as part of a jigsaw-type assignment, when students are teaching their peers, the final evaluation could include a quick quiz for their peers to demonstrate what they just learned. This may take a lot of preparation on my part to ensure the students know how to create Mobi files, and can use it properly.
Through this experience so far, I have learned that I must become 100% comfortable with using a piece of technology before I expect my students to use it. Sometimes we automatically assume our “digital natives” will catch on quickly, but that is not always the case. I found this out today while working in Microsoft Publisher with a student. We cannot make assumptions about our students’ background knowledge in any sense, whether it is about content we are teaching, or tools we expect them to use in the classroom.
Since I work with first graders, I try my best to show my students the basics in computer technology when we have our computer lab time. I believe that if students start young in learning the tricks (for example, I had to show my students how to make a letter capitalized when typing), then they will be more successful in the later school years when using technology is more prevelent. I only hope that this will make technology integration more successful for their teacher next year. Like you said, we simply cannot assume that students know how to use technology at all. We as educators must be patient and show them how to use this great resource we have at our fingertips.
ReplyDeleteMegan,
ReplyDeleteI received a Mobi last spring and have not experimented with it at all. I am ashamed to say it is stashed in my podium! I do not have the student response clickers. There are 4 teachers at my school that have gone to a full day training of how to use the Mobi and from I have heard from them, you can do a lot of great things with them! I do know that there is a way to use it to take notes or draw on a web page to point out elements of the page to your students - but I haven't quite figured it out yet. I will ask my colleague this week and get back to you. I will also ask her for websites with Mobi tips. I need to get mine out and figure it out too. Your post has inspired me to make that a priority in the coming weeks. Thanks and good luck!
Megan,
ReplyDeleteI am not sure what age your students are, but I don't think you necessarily need to be 100% comfortable with a technology to use it. It is good to have spent some time using it and to know how to do basic functions with it, however, I have found that as I use a technology more and more I keep finding more functions it can perform. Even if I think I know all the ins and outs of it, I still sometimes come across something in the toolbar that causes me to stop and say, "hey what's this?", and in exploring what it is find some new cool function. For example I had been using MS Powerpoint 2007 for over a year before I discovered the "preset" functions that can add some cool shading, angle, and shadow options to text boxes and pictures, but I didn't need to know about this function to effectively use it with students. I also know that I do not know every in and out of MS Publisher, but I have used this effectively with my students many times despite this. The main questions I have found that I needed to be able to answer for my students when using MS Publisher were 1. Where to locate it on the school computer, 2. How to insert a text box, 3. How to set up pages for folding, insert pages, and move between pages, and 4. How to fix it when it was printing off the edge of the page. The fourth of which I actually didn't know might be an issue until my students started using the program and some of them were having problems getting it to print without some of their work disappearing off the edge of the page. Which brings up another point: your students aren't necessarily going to run into the same problems that you did when you were using the program, so even if you have figured out problem areas for you and feel comfortable with using it, helping your students with the basics of it, and some trouble shooting, your students are bound to find new things for you to help them figure out.
Also I mentioned the age of your students at the beginning as that would make a difference. Miss Taylor mentioned above about having to provide a lot of guidance with her 1st graders which is understandable as they most likely have limited experience with computers and technology and the exposure they have has likely been mostly for entertainment and not for academics. In my case I was working with high school students. I still had some who did not have a lot of technology exposure or comfort when it came to academics, but I usually had several who were computer whizzes.
And well one tip I have for anyone using computers with kids who are very familiar with computers: learn how to flip the view on your screen right way up again after they flip it upside down because they think it is funny.
Laura Ricker