I was able to interview Chris Craft, a grade 6 teacher from South Carolina that integrates technology initiatives into his classroom.  Here is a little background information on Chris Craft taken from his website:      

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Who am I?

I am a learner. I teach and learn with my sixth grade students. I teach and learn with a variety of adult learners. I also present at conferences.

I am nearing completion of a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and Research from the University of South Carolina. My dissertation research is exploring instructional design methodologies for inherently complex tasks in medical simulations. For more details about my educational background, see the about page.

I am a Google Certified Teacher, a SMART Exemplary Educator and a Discovery STAR Educator. I have won several awards during my time teaching sixth grade, including the Making IT Happen award, was a finalist in the Leaders in Learning award, and won an excellence in student media production at the International Student Media Festival. I also delivered the keynote address at the Upstate Technology Conference in June, 2009.

You will find me to be a well-balanced mixture of real-world design skills and knowledge of the underlying theories of learning.

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We conducted our interview over gmail. 

1.  What specific technology tools do you tend to use the most in your classroom? Which do you find the students enjoy the most?
 
I use many different tools. I have a SMART Board, I have eInstruction CPS Remotes, I have a mounted projector, a laptop, several student workstations, an Airliner, among others.

The students most enjoy the CPS remotes.
 
2.  What is one example of a time when you used technology to enhance the learning for your students which was not successful? why?

Of course! One must learn to embrace failure and learn from mistakes. It ended up not being successful due to inadequate planning on my part and insufficient tech support from my school/district.

 3.  Has there been any challenges for you in implementing technology in your classroom?

The district filters are a constant pain, as they often filter out valid sites.

4.  Do you feel that teachers in your school are on-board with your technology initiatives in your classroom?

They know very little about what goes on in my room, and tend to struggle with the technology they attempt  to implement in theirs.

 5.  What do you think is the greatest challenge facing students today?

Poor home lives, absentee parents.
 

6.  What is your stance on teachers having facebook.  Do you think that it is okay or not?

Teachers can have Facebook profiles all they want, they just need to know the proper boundaries and understand the public nature of it.

 And lastly, I am really interested in how you were featured in Ed Compass because I have had the opportunity to work at a smart showcase school in Melville, SK that has also been featured in that SMART Technologies journal.  I have done a lot of work with the smartboard and think it’s an amazing tool to have in the classroom.  If you could tell me a little bit about your experiences with implementing the smartboard in your class, that would be great!
 To be honest, I don’t use the SMART Board quite as much as I appear. Despite being featured in EdCompass and being a SMART Exemplary Educator I am afraid of my classroom being forcefully focused on the front of the room. We work so much on our student workstations (laptops) that the SMART Board is often used mainly to annotate existing web sites or control them with my fingers as opposed to being behind a laptop for demonstrations. But remember it’s a foreign language class, so I try to give kids the chance to speak and practice online as well.