Good evening and welcome to this weeks late night postings with Bekah Wadkins. I am Bekah and I will be here t o entertain you for a bit.
Two handheld technologies that I read about this week are iPads, clickers, and GPS. I feel it is unfair to write about clickers as one of my handled technologies since I currently use them in my classroom. I am going to write about them anyway and include a third technology that I looked at to keep it fair. J
iPads…. WOW! I want a class set of these bad boys! Not only do they have apps for everything, they can be used with multiple people. It responds to multiple touches of the screen at once! I was blessed with the opportunity to play with an iPad this weekend. Talk about having iPad fever before I had this experience! It is even worse now! There are apps for spelling, multiplication, reading, science, EVERYTHING! Literally! And if there isn't an app for it you can email in and someone will make an app that is what you are looking for. You seriously can't get any cooler than that! I could use it to enhance so many different things within my classroom. I'm not sure where to even start it would be so useful. The bare basic would be the ereader that reads the textbook to my students that are reading below level, an ebook that would motivate my students that don't enjoy reading, and it could give quick drills for multiplication. Though seriously this is just the tip of the iceberg people! So if you find an iPad for cheap let me know would you?! My students would love you forever!
Clickers… Here is where I feel I am cheating but I want to share this information with you. I'm putting it in the middle so that you are more likely to read it! I have the Promethean clickers. I love them and HATE the promethean flipchart software. Though I must admit that promethean.com has some amazing tutorials and awesome downloads. I'm just biased from being used to smartnotebook. So here is what I do… I create my lessons in smartnotebook and then use the express poll to use clickers with my smartnotebook. I have learned to integrate the two different programs. The best part of using clickers is the immediate feedback that is so important to students when they are learning. They know right away if they got an answer wrong, and I know right away to correct them. There is no more waiting for a week to get an assignment back and then trying to remember what we talked about that week before. Clickers also help save the environment, no more need for 24 copies of that workbook page! Can I hear a cheer from the tree huggers in the room? You can also set up clickers to do self paced tests and insert words into venn diagrams. There are several possibilities with this technology as well.
GPS…. Who would have thought about using GPS for a scavenger hunt around the school?! As students come to the designated spot it shows a picture, starts dialog, sends them to a webpage. One article talked about a bison hunt that students did around their school. What a fantastic way to learn geography! Another fun project would be for students to make maps of the school and then program the GPS so their peers could go on a scavenger hunt. It could be for make believe resources, or for real resources within the building. Talk about taking Oregon Trail to a whole new level!! Complete with crossing rivers!
Research….research….research….. Applying the research to students current needs can be very difficult.
One of the problems can be class size. Research has shown that students, especially at the elementary level, need as much one on one time as possible. The more students you have in your class the harder it is to get to each and every student. With blogs, chat rooms, and online learning it is making it increasingly less difficult to get to each student within your classroom.
Reaching each of the multiple intelligences is also another problem that is encountered. Technology has helped us to reach each of these different intelligences, whether it is using garage band to create songs about the curriculum or the ereader to read the passage to the slow reader. Technology definitely enhances teaching when used correctly.
Money, money, mon-ey
The problem is that technology is expensive…. even for educators who can often get a discount. The average iPad 1 (2 is out now) is going for around $500 (Sam's Club). For the new iPad 2 you are going to spend at least $800. I don't know about you, but I don't have an extra $500 laying around. GPS ranges in cost from $100 (Sam's Club) and up depending on what you want and how accurate you want. There are some that are accurate within an 8 block radius, this probably is not accurate enough to be using on the small scale of your classroom or even your block. The bonus is that this technology will last. Even though you might spend this much money on an iPad it would definitely work for several years, even if new versions have come out Mac is good about supporting its previous products for several years after it is no longer manufactured.
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