July 8- fifth blog post

The discussion on TPACK today made me think of an experience from my student-teaching practicum that serves as an example of what can happen when the priority in planning is driven by the technology rather than the curriculum. My supervising teacher was big on purchasing technology. He had equipped his classroom with a large number of imacs (when they first came out). He wanted a chance to see what these computers could do, and so he decided that another student-teacher and I would co-teach a unit plan in which we created an imovie with our students. Nobody in the class (teachers or students) was familiar with this program.

Using technology in class without
adequate training
 can be frustrating for all involved! 

I don't know that our students actually learned any French that month, to be honest. Figuring out the technology as we went along was really frustrating and much time was wasted.  It was hard to organize as a collaborative task for the students because we weren't really sure how we could best manipulate this tool in order to maximize student involvement with the content and with each other. In retrospect, although the experience was not a great learning experience for our students, I gained a lot of insight from our mistakes.  The content and pedagogy must come first. If the task is all about the technology itself, it is doubtful that the students will really engage with the content.


On a different note, today's class was awesome!  I learned about a lot of great tools that I might be able to incorporate into my practice:
1. wallwisher (on line bulletin board)
2. picnik (photo editing website)
3. flipsnack (makes flipping books)- also quizsnack, photosnack, etc.)
4. symbaloo (bookmarking site)
5. prezi (moving ppt-type presentation creator)
6. xtrannormal (create a moving cartoon)
7. toondoo (create a cartoon strip)
8. tagxedo (create a word picture)