GVSU Technology Fair

Well . . . I think Kristen and I may have missed out on a keynotes speaker since we spent all the time we had checking out the different booths of the professors, but I definitely received a lot of information about technology usage within the classroom.  First off, not for brown-nosing purposes or anything, I would like to begin with the Second Life presentation I was given.  I believe that this program could be extremely beneficial for teenage students since computer/video games are becoming more and more popular.  First off, I really like the way that students can travel to many different locations that would be normally out of the budget for a regular field trip.  Students also have time to explore at their own will rather than being shoved along in tour groups, without being allowed any freedom.  Although one drawback is the fact that these are computer images and not real life, the places these students can visit are amazingly diverse — places they may never have the opportunity to visit.  Secondly, discussing the brilliance of bringing video games together with literature seems so simple, yet it can be extremely complicated.  Many video games fail due to lack of action and adventure, so the program needs to incorporate plenty of suspense for the student while maintaining the ideas of 1984.  This idea is great because students can experience the complications of living within this world while reading along in the book.

Another program I was interested in was the SMART Board Interactive Whiteboard.  I found this use of technology very beneficial because a teacher can prepare notes for students using PowerPoint, then continue writing notes on the saved documents using the whiteboard and save these extra notes for further classes.  I also thought this could be helpful in the classroom setting because teachers can have numerous students brainstorm on the board for English classes.  After students have completed writing their ideas on the Interactive Whiteboard, the teacher can save the document and print out copies for every student, combining everyone’s ideas together and helping students keep organized notes.  I am interested in exploring this technology further in order to see what other features I could possibly use in the classroom to encourage learning.

From a coaching perspective, the Technology Applications in the Physical Education Classroom information was helpful because it showed how to be an effective coach and run efficient practices.  For example, the professor explained to us that she videotaped practices in order to watch how much time was spent simply standing around versus actual physical exertion.  This helps because the coach can then bring attention to the team that everyone must work hard in order to compete at a high level and then the coach must take responsibility by encorporating everyone into the practice.  The professor also explained to us a system for rating our own teaching in percentages of time spent instructing, time spent with students not participating, time students discuss and are active in class, etc.  Although she was focused on physical education, she explained that we could also us her system within an English class in order to promote efficiency within the classroom.

The last use of technology I want to discuss was a clicker.  Although I could understand how these could be useful in a classroom where information retention was important, for an English class, I had a difficult time seeing how these could be used within an English class without driving students into closed-ended questions and regurgitation of book information.  Maybe, if the PowerPoint questions were more open-ended and students were asked to discuss their answers after seeing how the class responded, that could be useful.  Overall, this technology fair was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot.  I hope the school I teach at has the budget for some of these items, but if not, maybe I’ll just have to come up with some sort of new radical idea to encourage learning.