One of the most interesting parts of my practicum experience last semester was the integration of technology into the fifth grade classroom. My class had access to a laptop each at any point throughout the day as well as a cart of ipod touches for not only the fifth grade class but the rest of the school to checkout and use as well. The students used these tools everyday to foster their learning in both technology use as well as standard curriculum. I watched the students use the variety of applications on the ipods to practice skills in math fluency. Apple offers a large number of applications that students can use to practice skills such as multiplication facts in game formats. The students also used games on the ipods to practice spatial recognition through tangrams. I have never seen students to excited to practice math fluency and skills as when my practicum teacher gave permission to get the ipods out.
The ipods were not only useful in math fluency activities. Prior to my experience in this classroom, I barely even knew what a podcast was and these fifth graders were writing scrips in teams, editing them, recording podcasts and sharing them with classmates and other students in the school. Often the podcasts were instructional. The students would provide a "how to" on different topics such as how to round decimals or multiply fractions and then share them to not only reinforce their own understanding as well as help others understand topics in a way other than the teacher explaining it.
The students were not the only ones creating podcasts though. For science experiments, My practicum teacher would create a podcast detailing the steps of an experiment. Each lab group uses an ihome to play the experiment instructions so they can pause and rewind as needed. That way the whole class does not have to stay on pace together and no groups has to just sit and wait as a group catches up or the class can be performing several different experiments at once and then report their findings back to the class.
Not only are the students learning and practicing skills in math, spatial reasoning, writing and reading with fluency and inflection, and scientific methods but they are learning to use the technology around them to their benefit and better than many adults around them, myself included. An ipod always seemed like a luxury for listening to music, but it is actually a very useful and exciting learning tool and instrument.
(News story on my technologically savvy fifth graders.)
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
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