Refelctions

Being a technology teacher and starting your own curriculum is sometimes more difficult than it seems. As we all know its not true technology until something goes wrong on the day you need to use it. This happens many times at my school and it is very hard to describe to some people who don't understand technology that I honestly have no control over some situations and that is when you just roll with the punches. But enough about that!
I would like to share about something I noticed this week. Last year was the first year many of the students in my school had ever been exposed to a computer. This week I decided to see how much the students remembered from last year. I was not sure if they could do it but I had spent a lot of time with one grade using PowerPoint. This grade I sent onto PowerPoint and told them to create a 4 slide presentation about themselves. I also told them they had to add animation, and change the fonts and colors as well as add a picture. I did this for myself just to see where I needed to start from this year. I was so proud of the students because yes they didn't get it by the first shot but they remembered how to do it all on their own. Now last year I didn't have them take notes, nor did I test them on what they remembered. It was more the final product that I was looking for. Their classes were completely hands on and they had to apply what they learned each day (practice). They had fun doing work and learning but I was scared that over the summer, not using the programs and possibly not even using a computer that they would lose everything. There is usually a typical "Drop" in learning because of the summer. Yes they didn't know it as quick as they did at the end of last year however they didn't lose it at all!
When I was a classroom teacher I taught my classes differently than i teach my technology classes only because that is how my partner teacher taught.
I still added my touch to everything but it wasn't the way I would have taught completely. Having this position at the school has given me the opportunity to see that if taught with hands on and application our students might not forget everything that is taught to them during the school year over the summer. Now if i could get all of the teachers in my school to see this we wouldn't have to worry about the state tests as much as we do!

Reconstruction

After tonight's class I decided to re-do my posts! Looking around at everyone elses made me feel like I could have done better. So here it goes!
I hope to challenge myself to the level that I expect all of my students. Going back to school was just a thought before I came across TEAM on C.W. Posts website. I am working on actually liking the way this blog looks so with time I hope to be happy with the content and all of the details.