I haven't been teaching very long. I am going into my fifth school year with Ashland Public Schools. Even over the past 5 years, I have experienced the shift in technology. The year I started the main piece of technology we used in the classroom was an overhead projector. I
start this past school year by moving it out of the
classroom. I felt like it was taking up wasted space and used very
little. Two years ago, we received learning carts at our school that can be signed out per class. Luckily at my school, I am one of the few who uses the learning cart often so I never have to worry about there being one available. The learning cart consists of a hook up so you can either use the computer that comes with it or connect your own computer or iPad to it. It projects whatever is on the computer screen onto the white board. You can also project items by using the document camera. This works similar to the overhead projector - whatever you place beneath it, it can project it up onto the screen. I use the learning cart to show short videos connected to what we are learning or for slideshows. Sometimes I put a read aloud book on it during snack time and the kids can watch a short video of a book being read aloud while they eat snack. It just gives one more way for to students to access learning.
This past school year, we received an iPad cart! We have 15 iPads for classroom use. We need to sign out the cart for the time slot that we will utilize it. Once again, I feel lucky because there are only a few people that take full advantage of having this iPad cart. I sign it out often! It calms my class as they practice math skills or literacy skills during our center time.
Carolyn, these sound like great resources! I don't have a document camera but I've come to realize how useful it would be and really want one now. Another AHS teacher and I were just taking a grad. credit class this past week for science teachers and we used a Flex Cam a little bit. We both do a lot of dissections (in marine bio and anatomy and physiology classes) so we were motivated to look into Flex cams or Document cams and write a grant for one or more to share. I think they would be SO useful for science labs! In order to project any document right now, I've been using a nice function on our copier that turns anything into a pdf and sends the pdf to your email. In the past, there were things that I'd get somewhere and just have a paper copy of. This allows us to scan it super fast in the copy machine and have a saved electronic copy that I can project through my computer. If you hook up your document cam to your computer can you save an image or even video? At our class, some teachers were talking about newer flex cams being able to save short videos.
ReplyDeleteAlso how many people share the learning cart? It sounds like that's your only access to projecting a computer? I imagine it's different for 1st grade vs. high school science, but use my projector SO much. I honestly can't imagine having to sign one out and potentially compete for it (or having to do an extra step of planning with others who might want to use it at the same time). :( Hopefully you're not sharing with too many people or perhaps this can be a place for more technology expansion in the future!
I am not positiveifyou can save images from the doc camera. That is the pieces have used the least. I have never had to compete for a learning cart but I think that is because not that many people in my school use them often. I also do not need it every day by any means.
ReplyDeleteGreat post! It is so nice to hear that you use the iPAD cart and that it "calms down" your classroom. Advanced Technology is wonderful tool for all children. I especially use the iPAD to help with self-regulation and also visual motor skills. Advance technology is motivating which helps enhance children attention level to learn novel topics. I would have loved to lean through an iPad when I was a youngster!
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