Blog Post #3: Describe what your classroom will be like in the year 2020.
It is difficult and, let's face it, impossible to know what the future holds. I would have never guessed that when I was staring high school in the year 2000, that 10 years from now, almost everyone I know would be on a social networking site and that email would be a primary form of communication in my life and education. That was less than 10 years ago, so who knows what the technological world will be like in another 10 years. So here's what I think might happen in my classroom in the year 2020:
When I walk into my 3rd grade classroom, I see all the kids' cubbies along the wall and sitting on top of that area is another small shelving unit that holds a personal laptop for each student with their names and numbers assigned. From the beginning of the school year, as part of the classroom routine, we practiced retrieving, handling, returning, and charging the battery on the laptops. We also routinely do interactive math lessons using the laptops while I give a presentation and instructions on a SMARTboard. Students still get excited to come up to the screen to move the images and share their thinking. In the area of language arts, as writing assignments start to be written with the keyboard instead of a pencil, I find myself having discussions with the class about why it is still important to learn how to write "the old-fashioned way." In order to keep this practice alive the students having writing journals in their desks that they write in every day.
Most days I still feel like my students know more about how to use the laptops than I do. They come across technological glitches and problems and learn to figure them out themselves and then share this knowledge with their classmates. It also helps that a Technology Teacher comes into the classroom once a week to give a lesson on features of the computer to help students problem-solve as well as introuducing different applications and tools they can use to make new creations. They learn to apply and use these for the class projects they are assinged which require the creation of powerpoint-like presentations, digital videos, and podcasts. My students also love to enjoy interacting with each other via KidChat and other online friends on the internet during free choice time. The school has been able to create a safe-online network for students to have video calls with a school in South America.
I often look around the classroom and look at the students with ear-buds in their ears and eyes fastened to the screens in front of them and wonder if this change in the look of my classroom is good or harmful. Then I remember that it is up to me as their teacher to find new ways to incorporate the personal computer as a tool for collaboration and interaction.
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I like how you referenced not being able to imagine what things look like today back in 2000. It made me realize how much things have changed. I can't really remember what I used to do online before facebook, blogs, and google came along. You also brought up a good point about whether the image of students sitting in front of the computer all day with earbuds in their ears is good or bad. And I thought it was interesting that you said it was up to teachers to teach them how to use those tools appropriately. As with most other things...there is a potential for good and bad. We just have to have faith that people will teach kids to use them for good, and that they'll follow.
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