Using Technology in my Internship Classroom
Posted on: February 4, 2010
I had the pleasure of interning at Davison School in Melville Saskatchewan. Davison school is a Smart Showcase school meaning that teachers from across the province would come and observe how SMART interactive whiteboards were being integrated into classroom instruction. It was amazing to be part of a school that made technology a very big prority. It was mandatory for teachers to integrate technology ino 50% of their teaching instruction. That doesn’t mean using the SMARTboard as a regular white board to write on or going on the computers to type, that means using technology to supplement your teaching. There was a SMARTboard in every room of the school (including the artroom and even the principals office!).
I was able to use the SMART board for almost every one of my lessons which made my teaching very interactive and hands on. The morning routine was all done on the SMART board, math games, science lessons and health lessons were done on the SMART board as well. I also got to use really amazing tools called Senteos which are hand-held clickers (something like ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’) that students are able to answer questions off the smartboard on. All of the results are stored onto a file on the computer and are easily accessable for the teacher after the assessment is done. I used the Senteos a several times in my Science and English classes. Here are a few pictures from my lessons!
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5 Responses to "Using Technology in my Internship Classroom"
February 4, 2010 at 5:46 am
Wow! Bill Ferriter’s rant about interactive whiteboards was a good argument, but I have to totally disagree with everything that he is saying. I am an absolute supporter of the interactive whiteboard and I have seen how much more engaged the students are when they get the opportunity to use it. I think as a teacher, you can make your smartboard as interactive as you want. You put the time and effort into your lessons to make them so that the teacher isn’t at the front of the class doing all of the interacting while the students are just observing. I made sure that every single student touched the white board during my lessons, and most of the time, they had more then one turn. I hardly ever was doing any of the directing, they were engaged in their own learning. I even did math pods where there was a group of students at the smartboard completely on their own. Like I said, I do believe that some teachers just use their smartboards as a whiteboard and are not using it to their full potential. But I think that with education on how to use the smartboard successfully, they will be able to do a better job with it.
And I think too that some teachers feel they don’t have the time to come up with fun, interactive lessons each day so they just give up. SMART technologies have a website where they have pre-made smartboard lessons that co-inside with the curriculum. Check out the website. I used it a lot during my internship because why as teachers should we have to re-invent the wheel when we can share ideas that other teachers have already done.
Here’s the website: http://education.smarttech.com/ste/en-US/Ed+Resource/
You can go to lesson activities and search for the Sask curriculum and the subject that you want. There are so many amazing lessons on here that I don’t understand why you would EVER want to give your smart board away. I wonder if Bill knows about this site?
Thanks for the comment Dean!
February 4, 2010 at 6:01 am
I just finished posting a comment to Bill so hopefully he checks out the websites!
February 4, 2010 at 12:06 pm
Hey Ellyse,
First, I’m really impressed by your willingness to blog about your teaching and learning! That’s a great professional practice indeed. It will force you to carefully articulate your practice—-and carefully articulating practice is the best reflection that I know.
As far as IWBs go, I think you may have had a very unique experience in your student teaching.
You see, for every IWB Showcase School where remarkable things are happening, there are at least 10 schools where IWBs are useless budget crunchers because the tool isn’t being used to change instruction in a meaningful way.
The difference is that in your building, IWBs are clearly connected to the overall mission and vision of the school community. Teachers are invested in the project, professional development is provided, and there are dozens of examples of good things happening with IWBs for others to model after.
IWBs have become a part of a carefully planned whole-school reform model.
That rarely happens, though. Most of the time, IWBs are purchased without any kind of careful thought, aren’t evaluated for impact, and teachers aren’t provided with the kinds of PD and training necessary to make the kinds of changes you talk about.
And I would go as far as to argue that even in IWB showcase schools, the money spent on putting an IWB in every room—including the principal’s office—could be better spent on other things. For example, I’d LOVE a class set of netbooks that could be used to facilitate group learning and investigation in my room—-something that could easily be purchased for the cost of one IWB.
Any of this make sense?
Bill
February 24, 2010 at 6:32 pm
I am iimpressed that you had the chance to use the smartboard so much! I used the smartboard quite frequently and was hoping to use the senteos for assessment during my internship. Unfortunately I was not as lucky as you, my co-op was one of the few who was given a smart board and was not familiar enough to use the senteos yet. I was so crunched with time preparing lessons and such that I never got the opportunity to work with the homeroom computer tech to figure out how to set up the assessment with the senteos and the smartboard. I cannot wait to get the opportunity to try it out.
Ellyse's Blog 
February 4, 2010 at 5:28 am
Ellyse,
Interactive WhiteBoards (IWBs) are actually becoming somewhat controversial. The reason is that they can potentially perpetuate the “teacher at the front” model where students remain passive observers watching glitzy stuff happen on a screen.
Take a look at this article and the comments and let me know what you think.
http://teacherleaders.typepad.com/the_tempered_radical/2010/01/wasting-money-on-whiteboards.html