Gnets Project Begins Two

One of the teachers was not there for the meetings because of circumstances outside of her control. The other teachers were kind enough to give me some background information about Mrs. C. She is the other middle school teacher and teaches Math. Her class is focusing on area, perimeter, integers, algebra, and measurements right now. I will need to spend actual time with her to gauge her level of comfort with the technology and to discover exactly what she wants the technology to help with in the classroom. I want to not only cover the teacher's content but also to encourage her to enjoy the technology and further the student learning in the classroom.

Next I met with Mr. W. who is a 3rd and 4th grade teacher of all subjects. His situation is very different because he does not have access to the Smartboard in his classroom. I asked about his access to a computer in order to be able to create the Smartboard lessons, and he does has his own personal laptop, but the screen does not work. He connects his laptop up to the classroom computer in order to see the screen from his laptop. Mr. W has had experience with Smartboard technology a little bit from playing with the one in his wife's classroom. i would say that his skills are where he could quickly be proficient with level 2 of the technology with an introduction and refresher course. He also introduced me to the idea of using the Wii Remote as a piece of Smartboard technology, which I am going to further research. The lesson he wants to create is one about geometry where he can have his students manipulate and build something on the Smartboard to get the students engaged.

The final teacher I met with was Mr. C, who wants to create a lesson for social studies. His 3rd and 4th grade class is learning about the Native Americans, colonies, and the United States Government today. This is a part of their citizenship learning. He does not have much experience at all with technology and does not consider himself comfortable at all with using technology, but he is more than willing to learn. Like Mr. W, he is excited and sees the potential of the Smartboard as a learning and behavior tool in the classroom. I would rate his level to be below 1 because he does not have a clue about the technology as far as how it works or what it is capable of as far as enhancing his classroom. I want to make him more aware of other great websites and games on the Internet that he could project onto the Smartboard and allow his class to participate together in the activity.

At the regular computer class at the library, we had the most people that we have ever had come. Dawn and I actually had to split the class, so that I could walk through setting up email addresses while she worked with our regular group about archiving and organizing emails. Everyone seemed to have a great time and learned a lot. Our regular group has come a long way and really works hard to master the concepts that we teach before returning to class the next week. Dawn set up two private lessons for later on the week because one woman had a particular set of computer problems that could not be answered adequately in the classroom setting. A nurse also brought in a special needs man who wanted to learn more about how to work a computer, so we scheduled him a separate class in order for him to get the most out of his learning experience.

I came to help Dawn with the class for the man with special needs because that is my field of study. I only wish that his helper could have or would have given me more background information about this mans abilities because I could not very well gauge his strengths and weaknesses for the class. I just kind of had to fly blind about what we were going to learn and try with him. He has a great capacity for learning technology and its difficult concepts. His touch pad skills improved drastically over the course of the lesson. He also understood the concepts of closing, enlarging, and minimizing the page on the screen using the Macintosh formatting. One great challenge with him was that I do not believe that he can read, so finding what he wants on the Internet is going to have to be accomplished through visual cues like pictures. He really enjoyed our lesson and talked more and more as the lesson progressed.

As you can see, a lot of my time was also spent blogging and make connections. This was a very productive and successful week on the project!

(10 hours)