Teacher Tech Talk

Welcome to Teacher Tech Talk!

As a secondary education teacher in an urban setting, it often feels impossible to adequately incorporate technology into the classroom without running into some type of roadblock-unavailable computer labs, district has blocked access to desired sites, lack of resources, lack of knowledge, you name it! However, after using, what at times appears to be minimal resources, I have discovered if you have a strong enough desire to utilize technology as an instructional or support tool for your students-it can be done! You just have to be creative in how you use your available technology, you have to be assertive, not pushy, in helping administrators understand the need for certain technologies, and you have to keep this number one thing in mind, IT IS ABOUT IMPROVING THE LEARNING OF YOUR STUDENTS!

With this in mind, I have created Teacher Tech Talk as an opportunity for teachers to dialogue on how they have successfully used technology, regardless of how limited their resources, where to find free usable resources on the web, and where they may find funding to acheive their technological dreams for their classroom. Along the way, I will post technology successes and blunders that I have attempted in my classroom.  In the near future, I will also be launching my own website called Teacher Tech Tools, in which I will provide explicit instructions on how to use these technology resources that are discussed in this blog.

Please contribute, as we are all working toward the same goal-how to use technology to improve the learning and outcomes of our students.

Michelle

Please Share

If your school is anything like the one that I work in, you have an ample supply of talented teachers who do AMAZING things in their classroom-YOU ARE PROBABLY ONE OF THEM! Teachers have a great capacity to adapt using their endless creativity-imagine what can be done when enthusiasm, creativity and technology come together! It must really be something special! Therefore I encourage you to post a comment and brag or share all of the wonderful strategies, activities you are doing in your classroom using technology. We all can learn from each other! Please share!

 Michelle

Using PowerPoint to Promote Notetaking ExampleUsing PowerPoint to Promote Notetaking

Because I work with many students who are reluctant readers and have difficulty identifying main ideas when reading historical text I have to be extremely creative in how to motivate my students to take notes on specific subject matter. Recently, I found that creating a “class powerpoint” on a specific subject matter has motivated students to read on their own, participate in identifying what are main ideas versus supporting detail, and a wllingness to take notes in class! Before I share how I did this, I will tell you that this instructional strategy took place in a high school US History class where many students are ELL, or English Language Learners, or struggling readers. However, I am sure that this strategy could be adapted to any grade level or subject-matter, with a little tweeking.

The orignal goal of my lesson was to help students understand reasons for the United Statesmoving towards war during World War II. I wanted students to understand the US’s note-so-real declaration of neutrality, their desire to continue to trade with Allied Powers, and finally the growing tensions between US and Japan. With this goals in mind I constructed a powerpoint entitled “America Moves Toward War”. I then created a series of slides in which a leading question on one slide, would then be followed by a slide in which this question could be answered and a picture could be inserted.

When I arrived in class to teach the lesson, I told students that we were going to construct a powerpoint entitled “America Moves Toward War” in which we would write a series of notes and choose pictures to help us understand why the US entered WWII. I also informed students that once we completed the powerpoint I would print it out for them to use as notes.

The students were motivated to complete the task because they would not have to perform tasks that they have difficulty with-discussing text, identifying main ideas, and recording notes on the subject matter. Creating the powerpoint as a class took the responsibility of recording text off struggling readers, and allowed them to dialogue about reasons for the US joining World War II. They also carefully considered if the answers that they recorded in the task, were appropriate for the questions that were asked, an example as followed:

Leading Question: Who were the Axis Powers and what did their alliance mean for the United States?

Students’ Answer: The Axis Powers were Germany, Italy and Japan. Their alliance meant that if the US joined the war, the US would have to fight a war on two oceans, or a two front war.

While students answered the leading questions, and I recorded the answers on the powerpoint, I used this as an opportunity to discuss sentence structure, grammer and introduce new vocabulary words. I continued to ask students to attempt to elevate their vocabulary so that we could share our notes with other US history classes. Because I was recording their answers as they were being dictated, this gave students freedom to practice their dialogue.

Finally, after recording their answers I showed students a library of photographs, images and political cartoons and they had to decide which image should go with what slide. It was a great opportunity to check the students’ understanding of the notes we just took because they had to justify their reasoning for using the images on each particular slide.

Although this lesson ended up taking 2-45 minutes lessons, it was well worth the effort because students understand and retained the content, confidently discussed main ideas, and their thinking, and finally they practiced elevating their spoken vocabulary through discourse. They also felt a sense of accomplishment, because before I printed out a copy for each of them I included an “author slide” in which I wrote “PowerPoint created by….” and I included each students’ name. They were delighted by the recognition! – Even high school students need it!

Michelle