Blog #18: Technology Blog

The technology that was the most useful from this class was the SMARTboard presentations. The SMARTboard is one piece of technology that has been neglected in our Bradley education, in my opinion. We have received some instruction here and there when questions have come up or a classmate has used the SMARTboard in a presentation but nothing much beyond that. It was nice to be able to learn more about the special features of the SMARTboard and to practice doing them in class. Most of the teachers that I have met in the field do not use the SMARTboard because they have not been taught how to use it. In one experience, I asked to use the SMARTboard to teach a lesson and the teachers did not know how to turn it on! I think we all need several opportunities or seminars to be taught and to practice with the SMARTboard, so that all teachers can make use of them in the classroom.

The videos that we watched online of teachers presenting mathematics lessons were useful to generate ideas on how one might possibly teach particular mathematics lessons. However, the teachers who were in the videos did not use technology at all in their lessons! They used the traditional paper and pencil types of methods instead. Therefore, I was highly disappointed after watching them. If I were to teach those lessons as did the teachers in the videos, I would not want to be a student in my classroom. They not only lacked the use of technology but student engagement and participation as well. The videos on that website need to be updated with teachers teaching fun, engaging, and authentic lessons.

Finally, we also researched math apps and applets in this class. I researched a map applet, a graph applet, and a counting app for middle school and grade school students. Out of these applications, I think the map applet would be the most useful because it can provide students with a great deal of statistical information in which they can use to perform a variety of calculations. The graph applet can be useful for helping early elementary students learn how to create basic graphs and the counting game can be a great reinforcement tool for young primary students learning to count as well.