Classroom technology observation

My mentor teacher was very intimidated by technology. We never used technology in the class unless it was absolutely necessary. We used an overhead projector and tape player for shared reading. Once a week, the lab assistant would bring in a Mac laptop for every student so that they could take their weekly assessment on the literacy skills they learned that week. I would often see Ms. Leighton writing notes on her own laptop. But, honestly, she would try to avoid using technology for teaching or administrative tasks if she could. I think we could have enhanced our lessons with technology.

We had a promethean board installed in the class while I was there. My teacher didn’t know how to use it and so we used the promethean board as a projector screen with the overhead projector. The other cohorts had promethean boards in their class as well and told me how much it helped them teach their lessons. I think the promethean board would be especially useful in teaching math allowing students to learn together and have a visual representation of the mathematical manipulations. I finally had to bring in my own laptop and teaching a vocabulary lesson giving a small group of students visual representations of words. The kids loved my technology lesson and were so engaged! Technology can really help give students a multimodal learning experience allowing them to see things, hear things, and move things, interacting with the promethean board for example.