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.)
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Awesome story and thanks for sharing your experiences. Excitement and motivation are first steps in effective instruction - and the use of these tools makes such sense.
ReplyDeleteI had heard of professors in college using podcasts but never knew that this technology would be showing up in classrooms as early as 5th grade. I really like the idea of the teacher recording the steps of an experiment and groups using an ihome to play/pause/rewind as needed. I’m sure this helps to decrease the number of questions student ask and allow the teacher more time to observe and assist in students constructing their own learning.
ReplyDeleteI was also very impressed with students’ abilities to record their own podcasts. Teachers could use these podcasts as a means of showing what students are learning as well as their progress in the class during parent teacher conferences.
This school is extremely fortunate to have such an abundance of technology surrounding the students!!
First of all, that is amazing. I cannot imagine a cart full of iPod Touches rolling around in an elementary school for students to use. That is awesome. I can imagine how excited your students were when they were told that they would be using iPods to learn. I hope I am able to teach Spanish or ESL at a school that has such lavish resources. I bet there are a lot of Spanish audio files or even exercises and games that students could use. I would really like to play with one of those things myself. Thanks for letting me know that this is even a possibility.
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