My host teacher was in the high school previous to this year and says that moving down to the middle school was a real drop in the quality of the building, equipment, and technology. She also points out that the middle school is the oldest building in the district and is due for a major renovation in a year or two.
Having said that, I think that the facilities are great. The maintenance team keeps everything up and running smoothly and the building is clean. Each student has been issued an iPad, I think this is the first year for the 6th grade to have these, and the school uses Google classroom and all of the other services that come with that. The room has an overhead projector and an Elmo document camera which we use to go over the material. We also have the ability to connect the iPads to the projector or a laptop and most smart phones, and show what is on the device.
One technology focused initiative we have just started is to encourage the students to take notes on their iPads. We upload a clean version of the chapter notes and the students can use a few applications, notetaker HD is the main one we are using, to take notes as we go over the material. While we have not made this mandatory, we are encouraging them to give it a try because most of the teachers in 7th and 8th grade do not print out paper copies and so we want the students to get them use to this.
This ties into the fact that the school no longer issues the students hard copy books. We have a classroom set that the students can refer to and they all get a hard copy of the practice journal, but they are not allowed to take the book with them. Instead, we post each chapter as a PDF on Google Classroom and we have the students go and download it to their devices before they leave school. This is it eliminate any issues with internet problems or lack of internet at home. Even still, some students don’t do it and we get emails saying they can not get to it or other students are not allowed to bring the iPad home, either by the school or the parents.
Other than that, the technology is standard for the most part. Each grade has a printer, the 6th grade printer is in our room so we get a lot of traffic, and there is a large copier with an access code in the teachers’ lounge. The teacher I am working with is work with the material for the first time this year and so does not have a great deal of technology integration other than the notes on the iPad.
What I would like is the ability to display things from the iPad to the projector without the cable. I can do this at home with the Apple TV but that requires the Apple TV and the device to be on the same network, which I don’t think they will be willing to do. However, it would make it much easier to move around the room and we could even allow the students to connect and show how they are doing something or to ask questions.
Finally, a little bit about how technology has changed since I was in school. Well, as one of the older students in the GTC program right now, I am sure I can point out a few things. :) I remember a teacher telling me, when I was in middle school, that he had just purchased a calculator that could do addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. He was super excited and this calculator was big and expensive, I think he paid close to $1k for it, if not more. I took a computer class with Apple Macintosh SE computers and some sort of PC running Windows Basic and we wrote programs in Basic saved the to 5.25″ or 3.5″ disks, and printed out things on a dot-matrix printer. When I got to high school I took a class that included typing and we were the first year to used the new typewriters with the ball instead of the letters on individual levers. I remember this because the typewriters had a tiny, one line screen on the front, and I was the first one to figure out that you could save a line or two of typing and then have the typewriter “print” it out over and over again. However, it made a sound like a machine gun and so it wasn’t long before she figured out how I was getting my warmups done so quickly. :) Finally, my high school math teacher used an overhead projector with a spool of transparency. He would write on it at what seemed like lightning speed and once the entire page was full, he would wind the handle making a spine chilling squeak the entire time, and then start filling up the next section.
Funny to think that I am currently writing on paper and using a camera to project it on the screen. I think that you could easily argue that this is not a huge advancement from the overhead projector. Although, if I can get an iPad, I do plan on trying to give my lesson using the iPad and the notetaker HD app that the students are using. This way, I can upload the notes to the classroom afterwards.
Okay, probably more than you were looking for but at least you can get a good picture of where we are at with technology. It will be great to find out what the others have in their placements.
Jerry
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