Technology in Education (part 2)

Okay, so today was Day 4 of MIT and Day 2 of our Technology in Education class. Which means, of course, that I have several more sweet tools to show you. Let’s get down to business:

• SMART Boards: Oh my goodness, these are the coolest things. Hook up a projector and SMART board to your computer, and suddenly you essentially have a huge tablet PC. You can do so many sweet things with this. Check out the video for some great examples of how to use a SMART board in an elementary class:

• Inspiration: In this program, you can type an outline and it will automatically get turned into a flowchart. You can also do it the other way around. I made a great map of the characters from Romeo & Juliet and then replaced the default images with pictures of actors that I chose to play the roles of the characters in the play (which, by the way, is a great class activity for understanding Shakespeare).
• Blogging: The instructor talked about how most school districts require each teacher to have a website with contact information at the bare minimum, although most teachers put more content onto their site. He also showed us Edublogs, a place specifically set up for teachers and students to create blogs for class. Here’s an example of a sixth-grade blog that a teacher set up to record his students’ homework assignments throughout the year. Our instructor also pointed out Blogger, a free blog website which is all well and good. But of course, I now have company loyalty to WordPress. That’s where I think you should go if you aren’t associated with education or using it for a class project.
• Document Camera: Seeya later, overhead projectors! Document cameras are taking your place. Instead of using transparencies, the document camera digitally projects whatever is placed underneath it onto the screen.

Tomorrow we’ll be finishing up the class (!) by talking about podcasting and Audacity. Also, after class I have my first meeting with my potential mentor teacher over at Mead! Whoa! I’m going to get some sleep now so I can be sharp for that. Happy Friday, everyone!