Teaching with the SmartBoard

This past Friday, March 30, I taught for the first time using the Smart Board. I was very nervous since I had never used it with students. I arrived early to help get the board set up. Mike, the tech guy, came about 45 minutes late so I was a little nervous that I was going to have to change my entire lesson plan. However, once he arrived it only took about 5 minutes to get everything set up and I had plenty of time to run through my lesson plan and mess with the board to make sure I was comfortable. The lesson itself went very well. Mr. Tucker was very interested in the Smart Board and after the lesson admitted that it was "pretty neat." The students were really engaged in the lesson and seemed excited to have a change and want to use it again. I am looking forward to the next time I get to use the SmartBoard and hopefully even more students will be engaged in the lesson.

Visual Narrative

Project #3 --> Spring Break 2007 - Villavicencio, Colombia

Next week

I talked to Fred today about the schedule for the next two weeks so I have more advance notice about what is happening. Because of my busy schedule with midterms I will only be observing this week. I am excited though because they are learning about radicals which is a pretty difficult topic so it is very informative for me to see how an experienced teacher teaches the subject. I should be teaching both Monday and Friday next week. I am really excited because Wednesday we are supposed to be learning about the SmartBoard in class. For Friday I am teaching a review of the the Chapter 7 material which I was hoping to use the SmartBoard for. I am going to look through all of the material this weekend to get a better idea of how I may include technology in my presentation. With the advance notice I should be able to get a SmartBoard for the classroom. Learning about it the couple days before will also hopefully prepare me more and maybe give me further ideas of things I can do. I am really excited and I hope everything works out!!

Friday's Lesson

This Friday I will be teaching for the first time this semester. I am going to be teaching the students the introductory section on radicals. I am hoping to use PowerPoint for the first time. I have not looked at the material thoroughly due to the amount of work I have had in my schedule this week. Because there is going to be a bit of a rush with everything I am not sure if I will be able to pull everything off. If not, I am hoping that this will give me good insight into what to expect for the next time I will teach. So however the class turns out on Friday I know that it will be a wonderful learning experience and help to know better what to expect for the future.

The beginning

At the beginning of the semester I was pretty nervous about what I would be doing for my TIP project. Because I am in 488 I already knew my placement prior to the start of class. I am working with Fred Tucker at Monticello High School. The most technology he has in his classroom is a projector which he does not use that often. This made me nervous because I wasn't sure how willing he would be to using other forms of technology within the classroom. I am interested in working with SmartBoards, mainly because we are strongly encouraged to use them for math education. To my surprise when I mentioned this idea to Fred he was very willing. He is interested in having me teach him knew things about technology since he does not have a lot of training or experience using it. The next day when I went in for observation, Fred informed me that he talked with his fellow algebra teachers about using a SmartBoard and one volunteered to let me use it. I have also contacted my TIP coordinator about getting a SmartBoard in the classroom. He informed me to let him know when I would need one and that he would help me set it up. I have been rather surprised by how helpful everyone has been in this process. I did not expect Fred to accept the use of technology so willingly and to take the initiative to try and find me a SmartBoard. The class that I work with is finishing up a chapter and Fred has told me that I will not be teaching until the next chapter (most likely after Spring Break). My current plan is to look through all the material on the sections I will be teaching and see which would possibly work with the SmartBoard.

Technology Autobiography

Prior to college, I had very limited experience with technology. I used the computer primarily for research on the internet, windows, and instant messenger. In high school, technology was not used very frequently within the classroom. Technology was only used in the cases with PowerPoint or television for showing videos during class. We had one computer class, Computer Science that very few students took. Other than that one class, the computer lab was not used very often by teachers for class purposes but rather used by students for other activities. It surprises me that technology has been such a small part of my educational life but such a large part of my life outside of school.

Since entering college I have had a greater deal of exposure to technology. My second year, I took the class for teaching with technology. It was in that class that I was exposed to different types of technology that I had never experienced in an a classroom setting before. In this class I was introduced to the SmartBoard for the very first time. I have become very fascinated with the SmartBoard and learning how it can be used within a mathematics classroom. I have had more experience using the SmartBoard in my pedagogy classes. I am excited to give students more opportunity to get hands on experience with the material and a chance to see and learn the material in 3-dimensions with technology.

I have not had a lot of experience implementing technology in a classroom yet. My only experience that I had occured last semester during one of my teaching sessions for 488. I learned the hard way about how important it was to check all of my work before I present it to the students. It is much easier to fix a wrong number or error on the board, just simply erase and start over. However, with a PowerPoint presentation, those errors are not as easy to fix. My attempt to help the students understand a more complicated concept by presenting it using PowerPoint did not go as well as planned and I ended up reverting to the white board. From this experience I am a little more apprehensive and nervous about using technology when I teach, but I am more certain about the postivie benefits for the students' learning that I want to overcome these fears.