Hello to All!

This is the first post of the "Blackboard Mama!"  I will not be abbreviating it for obvious reasons:)  This blog is my comments on taking my teaching skills from the world of the 1970's blackboard into the 21st Century.  As you will notice, most of my posts are my initial embarrasing attempts at trying to master the world of technology so that I can bring it to my classroom and my teaching.

 So once upon a time there was a lawyer who had a mid-life crisis and realized her job did not motivate her anymore and she missed her three children, so she up and quit.  Then, being a motivated type-A person who did not want to make her children crazy she realized she needed to figure out what she wanted to be when she grew up . . .  A firefighter, nah, don't like being hot . . . A chef?  love to cook but would weigh 400 pounds, that's out . . . mmmmmm?  I love kids, I love to teach and watch them learn, why don't I be a teacher?  Best idea ever, but how do I do it????

Well at 40, you go back to school to figure out how to teach and realize the last 20 years of technology for the classroom are like nothing you have ever done, except for maybe a verrrryyyy basic powerpoint!  You have a learning curve!  But on the upside you will learn how to create some really cool stuff!!

So, you put on your big girl pants and decide if you are going to do this then you are going to do this right! You go to your first technology class and begin learning about all kinds of new ideas, IMovie, Webquest, Blogs, Smartboard, etc., etc, etc.  What I began to realize is although I was and still am a little overwhelmed I am more excited about figuring this stuff out and how I can teach my kids to learn from these tech advances and how to manipulate them as well!

The first project I had to do was powerpoint.  I thought, o.k., I have done powerpoints in my former life, I should be able to do this.  However, one thing I had not thought about that has been a recurring theme in all of my technology assignments is how to write and create for people who are not lawyers and are not adults.  Learning how to present for children is tough, and frankly my best critics are my 10, 8 and 5 year old kids. Who bless their hearts say, "Mom, I don't get it" and then I go back to the drawing board.  I did my powerpoint for a high school economics class as I was getting ready to take the state test to be able to teach middle school and high school history as well as elementary education.  God forbid, I wouldn't do everything!  I was super proud of it.  It had music, it had words flying in from all over the screen, it had different readable fonts and cool graphics.  However, after it was all said and done, I think it was too much for a high school class.  So, we live and learn.  Next post, Smartboard presentation!

What the Heck is a Smartboard and what makes it soooooo Smart???

  This was my first smartaleck question when I found out we had to do a smartboard presentation for my class in technology.  I had heard about a "Smartboard" from my kids talking about it at their elementary school, but I had no clue what the heck one does or how it works!  Time to get smart! Which I feel like I have been saying to myself a lot, i.e. I know nothing about the topic in front of me, I better figure it out fast!

  So the first thing I figure out, which I already kind of knew, is that there is a "Smartboard" company that builds and sells these Smartboards to all kinds of groups, not just schools.  Not only do they sell these boards, but there is a whole website dedicated to the development of Smartboard  ideas to implement in the classroom.  See https://exchange.smarttech.com/account/login?continue=.  This website was super, for not only showing me how to create a Smartboard presentation, but it has a lot of Smartboard presentations that have already been created that you can steal from!  Yay!

  To begin creating my Smartboard presentation, I tried to keep in mind what my professor has said, which is in a nutshell, "is the use of technology just a gimmick or does it in a real way further the learning of student's in a way conventional methods do not?"  My answer to this was not clear until the implementation of my Smartboard presentation, which was "Causes of the Civil War".  In creating this presentation I was under the misapprension that I needed to have the students come to the board to complete everything and do all of the touching of the board.  In the presentation of it however, I as the teacher took over many of the aspects of touching the board, while still having the students do some of it.  I found that this worked much better for the flow of the material, but still was an innovative method by which the students could learn.  I got good responses to this, especially about mixing up who went to the Smartboard.

  I am officially a believer in this technology!  Here are some other good sites to find materials:

http://www.scholastic.com/browse/collection.jsp?id=190
http://teachingwithsmartboard.com/
http://www.actiondonation.org/articles/smart-board-resources.html

So teachers are now supposed to make movies???!!!  Yes, it is true and actually really fun and awesome! Using IMovie on your apple computer you can make a movie, movie trailer or a movie short on any topic.  You can add your own voice as a voice over to pictures or video or you can use the sounds within I movie or download your own.  The possibilities are endless!  And in some ways that is the problem.

  When I first started looking at how to build the IMovie I was totally overwhelmed by the options that are available to feed your creativity, BTW, I have NO creative gene at all!  My suggestion is to take some time to look at all of the features in IMovie to understand what is available.  Do a "dummy" movie to try out all of the options first.

  Once you get an understanding of what you can do then you can download and work to your hearts content . . . right?  Not quite.  One of the downsides to IMovie is that you have to create the entire thing in one sitting because once you save it you cannot edit what you have already done.  You can add things to the beginning or the end, but you are stuck with what you have already created.  Because of this, the review of the options for I movie is even more important and doing a story board of the pictures to put them in order and picking the music you want beforehand is key.  I would also, if you are going to do a voiceover, write it out beforehand so you have it ready to go.

  However, once you are set it is a pretty easy application to use and the results are amazing!  Apple also has a help site to familiarize yourself with the technology:  http://www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/.  This should help you as well.  You will really impress your class with what you can do.  My grade for an IMovie presentation is an A-, the only minus being for the have to do it all in one sitting part.  Hope you like creating!

Meg

TO TECHNOLOGY OR NOT TECHNOLOGY????

   What?!  Someone is learning from a BOOK????  In this fast-paced world, where we are all being bombarded with how inferior our education system is compared to others and how our children are falling behind, the mantra seems to be that technology and use of it by all students will fix this.  That to me seems to be an oversimplification of a systemic problem in our education system, which is how do we educate children while encouraging them to love education at the same time?  Without a love of learning, children may learn some things, but they will not be life-long learners and this is what we need to build.
  Technology may help with that, but it needs to be implemented in a way that using it improves the teaching itself, i.e. not just using it for the uses sake.  As such, we need to build training on these technology pieces for our teachers and reward them for getting the training.  Our teachers are already overloaded with tasks to do, forms to fill out and lessons to create.  We need to find ways to create a teaching of the technology to the teachers that will enable them to do their job better.  This is the tricky part.
  I have been in my technology class for a semester learning the key types of technology I hope I can utilize in the classroom.  However, am I proficient in them?  Not by a long shot!  It is still a cumbersome process for me to create teaching materials for the classroom from these items, however, it is easier than when I began.  It will take practice and more training.
  My point is that technology IS a great thing but its use is not to be mastered quickly.  It takes dedication and promotion from the administration in a constructive vice authoritarian manner to foster it in the classroom.