At the beginning of kindergarten I'm running a million miles an hour just to get kids ready to be in school. I have to teach them how to be a student before I can teach them content. Later in the year I like to let kids use the ipad and lead their own learning while I am there to facilitate and support. For now it's a lot more teacher led but I do have some technology in use because that's my comfort zone.
Two of my primary uses for technology in these beginning days is for projection of student work. After children have completed their writing we oftentimes share our work on the projector while students tell about their stories. It is highly motivating for children to get work done and to do it well when they know it's going to be shown to the whole class. Students like seeing their work larger than life and using the teacher pointer to tell about their picture.
The other main way we use technology is during math. We do lots and lots of great hands on math exploration with our Math Expressions. I love going around and snapping pictures of student work. I oftentimes take pictures of different ways to represent the same idea and flip back and forth between the pictures to compare and contrast. If I have time I will push those pictures through PicStitch or another app that allows for multiple pictures in any multitude of arrangements. This way kids can see more than one example at a time and talk about them them. With 5 year-olds being so concrete it's wonderful to be able to project their work in a large scale so everyone can see exactly what's being explained. And once again, children are so excited to see their work displayed on the screen and the pride they take in explaining it is wonderful to see.
Some of the other ways I use technology are good but not as interactive as the previous examples. I almost exclusively use the online content for our Reading Wonders curriculum and I run it via iPad. I am running it on my own for the time being but I like the freedom it gives me to be anywhere in the room. I'm not stuck behind a computer or at the front of the room. I've actually made a conscious effort to teach from the back of the room so that the learning space belongs to the students because it is about them and not about me.
Another lesser way that I use technology is via youtube on my iPad. We use lots of various educational videos on a number of topics that we've found on youtube. My current favorite is HeidiSongs. We have used her high frequency word videos for a few months now but her newer classroom management songs are a favorite of mine as well as my students. My current playlist is here if you're interested. Or if you'd like to poke around and see what HeidiSongs has available you can find that here.
No comments:
Post a Comment