Reflection Five

The first trend, using mobile devices in the classroom, just doesn’t really seem like the best idea to me. In high school we were never allowed to have our cell phones which seemed like the worst at the time, but I know I would have just been texting and not paying attention if we were allowed to have them out (because I was texting and not paying attention already, just secretly!). I did like the “Scavenger” App we used in class but I just feel like from personal experience high school students weren’t given as much freedom to go all around the school on their own.

Tablet based learning sounds like a great idea. I am from a small town in south Georgia however, and I know that my school district wouldn’t have been able to afford all that!  It’s seems like a very great idea but pretty far fetched to believe each teacher would have access to their own personal iPad!

I actually just had a substitute come teach my class on game based learning. He is getting his PhD on this idea. I feel like this would work really well for younger students who might enjoy silly games more, but for college students the idea just wasn’t really connecting with us and we all thought it was a little pointless because we all knew we wouldn’t go home and create an optional game to help ourselves study. College students have a lot more going on most of the time but younger students could definitely benefit from game based learning.

The challenge I could relate to the most was the institutional barriers. I remember in high school they would always block so many websites. It only affected the students really when we had free time and we were trying to play games, but it would affect the teachers sometimes as well. YouTube has some great educational videos but the site was blocked at my school so when my teachers tried to show us things on there, they couldn’t access the sites. To avoid this problem I would download the video onto some sort of hard drive and bring it in to show my students.

I would like to try the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) method, just to see if it would work with my students.  I feel like everyone can navigate their own electronics better than other people’s. If you have ever picked up your friend’s iPhone, it usually takes a minute to find all of the apps and buttons because they are arranged differently. Same with computers! I just think as a teacher I would have to monitor my students very closely to make sure they were staying on task.

Reflection Six

I think Facebook groups for the parents is a great idea but could get a little tricky because people post personal things on Facebook that they might just intend for their friends and family to see. It would be a great, simple way to inform parents of events or have them bring items to a class party. I also think sharing photos via Shutterfly would be great! It would be very simple to make a separate classroom account so you only post pictures of the students in your classroom and you can still have your own personal account to share other photos.

I would definitely like to use the Google calendars because that seems like a very efficient way to keep parents up to date on the many things that would be going on in the classroom that month. I could use color coding to differentiate between events like homework, projects, or parties so the parents could see what the child is responsible for and what they are responsible for. A class blog would be great too because I love how easy it is to post things. The blog seems to be working out great for our classroom so I hope it would work out just as well in other classrooms.