Playing Catch Up...

So I haven't blogged since the beginning of March, and I need to keep everyone posted on what's been going on with my project. To be honest, it has been at a bit of a stand still while I try to work on all of my other course work I have been balancing on my plate, and it is also about to reach the heavy stages of planning.

I have been observing every week and seen lots of interesting things that I am enjoying soaking up in terms of the upper grades. and of course in terms of ESOL ideas. Everytime I am at school I spend a little bit of time with Ms. M planning or swapping ideas back and forth or reminding eachother what we need to do next in terms of the steps we need towards completion. I can't remember if I wrote about this or not, but I did get to see a lot of these students work during their content times, sticking my head in and observing them during social studies and watching the content areas in action, which will be helpful with the content of science as I work out the details.

I have also spent time with Ms. M during her planning block and gotten to watch her prepare her technology-heavy lessons, which sometimes work and sometimes don't and witnessing the process is really intriguing. One morning a few weeks ago we showed up at GE the mornign after a major power outage in the area. Of course, teachers usually have a back up plan for things like this happening, but it wasn't even a technology snafu, it was the whole upstairs of the school having lights and air conditioning, but no working outlets. How scary is that? Something that doesn't seem like technology suddenly becomes not-working technology. Students were struggling to sharpen pencils and clocks were unplugged, and the 5th grade Social studies class was supposed to be working with the laptop carts on powerpoints, but without charge at their base all night - they were dead. This was so exciting for me as a technology student looking for things to observe, but I am sure as a teacher I would be in a FULL ON panic! While the social studies teacher had to scrap his entire plan and work out of the textbooks for the day, Ms. M prevailed. She literally looked me in the eye and stated, "It's my way or the highway." She was convinced that there were still some working outlet somewhere, and had moved furniture away from walls and taken a tiny clock with a plug and tried every outlet along every wall in her wing. She finally found one that worked over the sink in the common area and we ran a HUGE extension cord all the way into her room from another room (taped it down to the floor and had signs indicating caution when walking through that hall) all for the sake of her cause. While other teachers were pulling their hair out and forced to work with worksheets and other low-tech activities, it was business as usual in her room. She had such a succinct plan B that she was able to work with the extension cord and power surge protector to plug in an Elmo, speakers, projector, laptop, just to name a few. She turned on the software and her kids were listening to a slave song on the internet (she even worked out a speaker snafu by replugging everything in) for their Civil War worksheets. It was amazing. Now THAT is what I call Teaching with Technology.

I did end up seeing the social studies use his powerpoint lesson on a later day, when everything was up and running the following week. He was using technology, but I'm almost certain that he was half as excited (his student too) about what he was doing as Ms. M has been when I've observed. It is crazy to me that you can go through the motions, pull out all of the stops, and give each student their own laptop, but if you're not excited about it or if you are just using the technology for the sake of using it, your students can tell. His kids were just typing up something he had already made and putting it onto slides to "review" for their civil war quiz/test the next class, but he was yelling at students he walked past who had the wrong window open or who were lost in the directions, and was just trying to knock the assignment out, instead of letting them have the time they need to work out the technology and content. It was a great example of what "not" to do.