Technology Lesson

For my technology lesson, I decided to have students learn to add clipart to their writing. Because students are writing about themselves and trying to become "published" authors, I thought that adding pictures to their writing would really enhance the lesson. So the entire lesson actually took two days. The first day I taught the students how to open a word document and type their name and a few sentences about themselves. Then I taught them how to save the file. The next day we went back to the computer lab and I taught them how to insert clipart to enhance their writing and then we learned how to print their writing. Since my students are first graders, they have had almost no experience using Word. They did pretty well with it however. Students loved adding pictures to their writing and they loved printing their writing. Some of them wanted me to take pictures of them holding their paper because they were so excited. Students talked about how they felt like realy authors. It was obvious that the teacher doesn't incorporate student involvement with technology into her lessons very well. It was a lot of fun!

Technology Lesson Idea

I was actually thinking about doing my lesson on what the quiz was about. Other than a computer lab we don't really have a lot of technology in our school. So I was thinking of having the students use Kidsperation to sort and classify objects by looking at the different attributes of the objects. I would use the template provided on Kidsperation to do this.

Classroom Technology Inventory

It was really interesting to see the technology that was available to the students. Granted, Art City Elementary definitely did not have as much technology as we have in our classroom at BYU but it was there. The technology in the classroom was rather limited. There is only one computer in the classroom and that is for the teacher. I have already seen how this can make it difficult, not only from a pedagogy standpoint but difficult for the teacher. Students want a picture printed on their How-to book and they can't just hop on a computer and print one using clipart. They have to gather around the teacher, stand in line, then wait for it to be printed in another room across the school.

The two computer labs at the school however, are very nice. There are 30 computers in each lab and you can see every computer screen if standing at the door. The layout of each lab is very nice. These computer do not have cool technology tools and programs like Stellarium or Google Earth but this is probably because they are all PC's. This does limit the number of programs on each computer. At least the students do have the basics. They have internet, Microsoft Office, Mavis Beacon. The school could definitely invest in some more software, or even some new computers.

Virtual Tour

I have created a link on the left hand side for my virtual tour!