These are the following principles that I will try to adopt:
1. Be more proactive in the use of technology that are currently in my classroom. This includes using more than just an LCD projector, Word, and a SMART Board.
2. Have students be more involved with the technology present in the classroom. That includes traditional uses (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) and new uses, such as blogs and wiki's. My vision is that by having both traditional and new technologies students will become more hands on with their own learning.
3. Instruct/Guide the students on how to navigate the information overload of the web. This will include helping them to think critically about the information presented and come up with their own conclusions. Use of principle #2 will most likely be key.
4. Educate the administration about the need for technology in the science classroom. Currently I'm limited to a few computers in the room, and no other technologies for student use. (The computers do have internet access.) In fact, in our entire school (K-12) there are a total of 3 digital cameras, 2 video cameras, and 2 scanners. When it comes to technology upgrades, the business department gets the upgrades.
5. Have fun and experiment with new technology so that as I become comfortable with the technology I can effectively incorporate it into my daily lessons.
I feel for you and your small school-lack of technology plight. I am also in a small school, though maybe not quite as small as we have 2.5 science teachers and it is a fight to get new forms of technology. We recently teamed with our social studies dept to get a dozen flip video cameras through a grant and these have proved very useful in documenting experiments and interviews and the such. I think as our administrators become further from the classroom and the changes necessary to prepare students it becomes harder to justify the extra funds and resources to buy these new(er) forms of technology.
ReplyDeleteI am really interested i principle #3. I have a growing belief that we (science educators) are really missing the big picture when it comes to our K-14 (through gen ed science in college) science goals. We say that we want to create scientists, but perhaps what we really should be doing is creating a scientifically literate citizen that knows how to apply scientific thinking to problems and think critically about challenging scientific issues (like climate change).
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