The Blogosphere

I recently read an article titled Fifth Graders Soar into the Blogosphere on Education World's technology channel site. The teacher, Gillian Ryan, describes how she requires her students to enter entries into a blog. She says that this type of assignment keeps her students engaged and excited about writing because they aren't writing an entry on a piece of notebook paper to her, instead they are able to share their thoughts with the whole cyber world. She describes how she uses blogging in every subject area in her classroom. The blog allows her to look into the minds of her students in a way she never had been able to before. The ideas, questions, and thoughts that come out in the blogs are so much more profound and in depth from her students that she shares how the blogging has truly changed they was she will teach forever.

I found this article to be very inspiring and hope to find some interesting ways to incorporate blogs into my third grade classroom!

http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech253.shtml

Is Technology Always Our Friend?

Today I hit a roadblock with my students and their use of technology. I don't know if it was because it was a Monday or if because this activity took place in the afternoon, but whatever the cause the learning did NOT take place. I had my students researching one of the thirteen original colonies on an internet site that I had already pulled up and modeled how to use. However, there was not one student in my class who was able to pull the required information from the site without a mishap. They either closed out of the internet so I had to pull up the site for them again, had no clue how to use the site because they weren't paying attention before, or sat and stared at the information not knowing how to use it. I found myself very frustrated because I felt that using the computers would have been a fun way to engage my students in the information because we had been using textbooks for the past few days but instead it backfired. The lesson that should have lasted 30 minutes took more than an hour and will have to be revisited tomorrow to even make sense of the goal. Now I see why rookies to technology integration come in hesitantly and turn away quickly...

What is technology integration?

As an elementary classroom teacher my definition of technology integration probably differs from that of an educator in another setting. However I think that most educators can agree on the generic statement that says technology integration is using technology to support learning. In my own experience I have taken this definition and expanded on it to make it my own. I define technology integration as any way that an educator can use any form of technology to enable students to better understand what they are learning and remain engaged in the lesson. I have done this in many different ways, through many different tools and have found that it substantially adds to the learning that takes place in my classroom. I hope to continue this practice and expand my knowledge of available tools and their uses to better myself as an educator.