TECHNOLOGY LESSON

TEACHING WITH TECHNOLOGY IN THE CLASSROOM
Kirsten and I decided to create an internet scavenger hunt for our 4th grade class. We thought this would be a great way to engage them. We also wanted to introduce them to researching on the web. We talked to our Cooperating teacher about our idea. She thought it sounded like a wonderful lesson. So we got to work!!
Right away we were caught off guard. The schools computers did not have Microsoft PowerPoint (which was the program we wanted to use with hyperlinks). Our Cooperating teacher told us they had a similar program on the school computers called Keynote. So we decided to try it. We had to mess around with the program for a while to learn how it worked. We had no manuals or anything, so it was discovery learning at its best. My partner Kirsten is so smart, thank heavens she was there to help me.
We finally got everything all worked out and created a Keynote presentation on mountain men with hyperlinks. We were so excited to test this out on our students. But then we ran into a new problem. How were we going to get our presentation on all of the student computers? We talked the tech specialist and she said to use of junk drives and download it to each one. We knew this would be time consuming, but we decided it would be worth it.
That’s when we ran into our next problem……… laptops. The school we worked at only uses mobile labs. We could not get the computers until right before our scheduled time. It ended up taking my partner and our cooperating teacher 25 minutes to get our presentation onto all the student computers. While they worked I explained the assignment and answered any questions the students had. Talk about not being prepared I just sort of babbled on as long as I could.
Finally we had all the students working on the computers when suddenly hands were going up left and right. “TEACHER, TEACHER, TEACHER!!!!” is about all I heard for the next hour. Some students could not pull up the links, some could not find the answer, occasionally a mouse wouldn’t work, etc. I wanted to pull out my hair by the end of it. I mean we planned on 40 minutes for the lesson and it took us over 2 hours by the time we finished. WOW!
The good news is the students learned so much. They loved being able to use the laptops and they loved the scavenger hunt. Our cooperating teacher loved it and said she loved how it engaged all the students. The only statement that sums up the experience for me is “Cant live with technology, but you cant live without it!!!”