PLE Week 10

The most important thing I learned from the videos was that technology can be used with very young children. I was surprised that the teacher in the spider lesson used the digital camera and web page to teach about spiders, because it seemed to me that young children would get bored quickly because of the technical aspect. However, the students seemed to be really excited about taking the pictures of their spiders and communicating with another class. The neat thing about the web page is that it allowed both teachers instant access to each other’s findings, rather than having to wait to reply through regular mail or even email. Attaching pictures to email takes a long time to do and open, but putting pictures on a web page is fast on both ends. In the Brown Bear lesson, I was surprised that kindergarten students were using the computer themselves to draw pictures. I think that is an excellent way to help children become comfortable using computers, as well as a good way to help students improve hand-eye coordination. I was also impressed with how much using computers helped non-English speaking students. English language learners can get the experience using computers without needing English, and this might be the most successful learning experience and feeling they have all day. It was also interesting to see the difference in ages using technology. In the kindergarten class, the teacher sat next to the student drawing on the computer. In the third grade class, the teacher was able to have the students work in small groups to complete the computer drawing. However, students in both grades were able to use the computers to draw, even the four and five year olds. I thought it was a really good idea to have the third graders use the favorites tab on the internet browser to help students access specific web pages. This kept the students from accessing sites where they might run into questionable content, and also helped the teacher and students obey copyright laws, since they knew exactly where the student had accessed material from.