Templeton Elementary Observation 02/28/2007

Today we worked on creating story board for the students' moviemaker projects. They were required to use Paint to create quick layouts of their stories. I was impressed with the fact that most of the stuents knew how to do most of the stuff. That i, most knew how to use the right cick functions well on their mouse and copying and pasting. I forgot to mention that on Monday these students knew how to use F7 for spell check without me even mentioning it. However, seems the laptop battery is about to go dead so I shall continue this post when i get home.

Templeton Elementary Observation: Digital Story Telling 02/26/2007

Today's session was presented by Anne over digital story telling. As I told her at the school, every example that Anne gave that the students was to create a story for all had elements of pain, suffering, destruction, or crime. Bombs were a favorite topic of the children. From a picture that was of a man eating a pizza slice, the kids all created stories that had bad endings. An example was one story where a group of two students said that the pizza slice had a bomb inside of it because a bunny (I think they said bunny) was going to eat the man. So the man made a pizza fort and was eating the last pizza which had a bomb in it. Another story was that the man was eating the pizza slice to get super powers in which to "burn badguys' eyes out into a million pieces." My point is that these kids all had ideas that invoved bad thoughts. So I wonder where they get these ideas from. My guess would be television. When I was that age I was more concerned with when the next basketball or baseball game was. My parents never allowed me to watch too much tv and even today, when I have a tv in my room and a huge one in the living room, I still do not watch that much tv. In fact, I only watch 24 and star trek if I'm even in the room. Sometimes I watch grey's anatomy with my redheaded friend. But these kids are being exposed to too much TV or video games. That has to be a weakness of modern technology.

However, today the kids did seem to participate quite well. They seemed to be very interested in the powerpoint presentation and especilly the Rosa Parks video. I do see the potential of programs like Powerpoint in the classroom even at such a young age. Most of the kids seemed very interested in the pictures and they loved Anne's story about her dog. I do think that they will be excited to create their own movies.

Case Study

Primary issues: time, lack of systems, students’ lack of remembering their user names, booking, and demand for use of the lab

These problems would be very problematic because of course you need time to teach young children the basics of using a computer. Other teachers booking the lab and the projectors and other resources also takes always from your students. However it is not fair for you as one teacher to routinely use all the equipment while the other teachers wait.

One solution, however difficult to accomplish, would be to simply buy more equipment. But I actually feel indifferent to her entire situation. A good teacher would make the best of the situation whether he or she had technology or not. If you fret about having to book for the lab or other teachers taking your projector, you are doing a disservice to the students by worrying too much about that. Find another way. Teachers are not here just to teach, we are also there to improvise new ideas by using resourceful.

I also am baffled by the fact that the kids continue to forget their user names. In a school such as this I do not think that user names are necessary. Assign a seating chart and that solves it. The network administration will know information such as IP addresses for each computer. So get rid of the user names and passwords and make a seating chart.

I also see that the teacher got a laptop from the state from a grant. My mother works in a title-one school presently. She has to write grants all the time for simple art supplies. Maybe this teacher needs to write another grant for another projector. The students fight over the one computer because the tech guys don’t want to help fix the machines. They told her that they don’t want to help her at all. Seems to me that this teacher needs to tell them its their job to fix them, regardless of how old they are.

Last couple of weeks

Boy the last couple of weeks has been complete hell. Not only having to deal with kidney issues, which if some of you don't know I have kidney problems that create kidney stones and other problems, but the snow is terrible. To top if off, last week I was without power for 2 days in this cold. My house got down to like 39 degrees because its an old house with poor insulation. I live right behind Eigenmann so I would have expected to get power back soon but of course not. Duke Energy said 13000 people lost power during that ice storm we had...and in 12 hours 11,000 of the powerless had power back. So my roommates and I were one of the lucky 2000 that did not get power back till forever. It was really bad. Really cold....really cold. My landlord would not give us any heaters or anything and my cat was frozen. I spent one night in Eigenmann library till they kicked us out. But obviously I have had power back for a while. My point of that story is you never know how much you rely on technology till it is gone. Can you imagine trying to teach a class in a one-room wooded school building? No lightbulbs, no computers, no projectors, no dry-erase boards, no fancy posters, NO AIR! Now I am not sure of anyone else lost power last week but just from what my experience was, I am spoiled and cannot even begin to imagine living without it.