Part A
The rate of technological advancement in the past ten years is nothing short of amazing. I received my first cell phone at the age of sixteen, but it's not uncommon to see a six year old carrying his or her own cell phone around today. And My son could use my cell phone before his second birthday. Dr. Strange points out in our class blog that our students will have "lived all their lives in a world with smartphones containing cameras." What does this mean for the future of education?
In the beginning of this "technology boom," electronics were seen as a distraction and were forbidden from classrooms. It is only in recent years that educators have learned to embrace the knowledge that students have of technology and the amazing resources that iPads, laptops, and even cell phones have to offer. When I think back to the assignments that I have completed so far in EDM 310, I realize that a lot of them involved creating videos. In a college environment where there are labs available for use outside of class and regular "school hours," it is easier to require work like this to be done on computers. In this class we were even required to use a specific brand of computer. However, in public school, one way to do similar projects would be to allow them to be filmed on cell phones. There are many opportunities for projects involving camera use at all ages, as demonstrated in Part B.
Part B
The following are projects satisfying ACCRS using PBL and cameras for several broad subjects at a kindergarten level:
Mathematics:
[K-CC6] - Using the class iPad, students will be asked to take pictures of groups of objects totaling greater than, less than, or equal to a given number.
[K-G2] - Students will be asked to take pictures at home and/or in the classroom of shapes around them. They will then present their finding to the class and identify each shape (square, rectangle, triangle, etc.)
English Language Arts
[RI.K.7] [RL.K.7] - Students will be asked to take a picture of an illustration in a book and explain to the class what is going on in the picture and how it relates to the story.
Science
Each student will be asked to find an example of a living object at home and take a picture. Students will then describe their size, shape, structure, and basic needs. Finally as a class, we will group the pictures according to color, shape, size, etc.
Social Studies
Using the Alabama Virtual Library, students will create two Poplets - one showing examples of wants and one showing examples of needs. Findings will be discussed in class.
Technology Education
All of these projects satisfy #10 of K-2 Technology Educations Standards.
Hello Julie. This is Melissa Keeler a fellow student from EDM310. Wow. You are definitely more comfortable with the technology at hand than I am. I Agree with your idea of having students use their cell phones for class work. Just as you said most children have their own or have access to one. It would simplify the issue of having a computer available at school or not. Why let the constraints of budget ruin your creative ideas for teaching when everyone has access to a hand held computer every day? The rules for teaching and learning have and will continue to lean toward technology and the use of it in our class rooms. I will be teaching upper level history and am excited to put some of my ideas to work. I enjoyed looking through your ideas, they are inventive and engaging,especially your ideas for math. I can tell you will be a wonderful educator!
ReplyDeleteJulie,
ReplyDeleteGood job on this post! I can tell that you did a lot of research about using the cell phones in the classroom and I think it is great how you incorporated different PBLs in this post! The only thing that I might add is that you will need to be sure that you put restrictions on what the students are doing on their cellphone. Keep up the good work and I can tell that you will make a great educator.
Thanks,
Lauren Lee