What I wish I would have known in August

I have to quote Sara Kajder, "We're past the point where we can keep doing old things with old tools, or old things with new tools. Students simply won't allow it." I have to say that I could have used this information at the beginning of this year. The kids I have this year are extremely technologically motivated, however I did not recognize the extent of this motivation and learning opportunity until the last month of the school year. As we learned propaganda, I gave my students the chance to develop their ad campaign on Windows Movie Maker or Power Point or whatever other new form of technology they wanted to explore. I told them that I would not teach them how to use the technology, but that they were allowed to use whatever they could figure out. The kids produced some fabulous ad campaigns for their fictional products and proved to me that they understood how to use the various techniques to reach the intended audiences. I had no behavior problems during this time. Students were motivated and focused. If something disrupted our learning, the kids were asking when they could finish their projects. Not only did the technology make it easier for me to teach, the students learned much more than in previous years. They were truly proud of what they did.

Had I known information from this chapter back in August, things might have been different this year. I might have had an easier time. This was one of my toughest years of teaching--engaging the students was a great challenge. This was a social group with a collected disenfranchised mindset. Had I known how to use the technology to engage them, more learning could have occurred.

I intend to utilize more of the technology with my students in a way that engages them and takes their learning to a whole new level. No longer will technology be used primarily as a reward for reading or improving scores. It will be used to support reading and improving scores. How can you use technology in your classroom?