Monday, March 30, 2009

If I had another million dollars...

I thought I would add to my last post. Matt and I have been working hard to complete our ideal classroom scenario project and here are some points that we have looked at along the way...

1) Describe the topic of your Ideal Classroom Project.
The two units that Matt and I decided to work on were life science and earth science. The life science unit that we decided to focus on was about plants and the earth science unit was astronomy.

2) Why did you select that topic and what did you hope to create?
We decided on those two units because we thought we could create a really good classroom environment for both of them by implementing all types of technology. It's important to foster creativity and learning in the classroom and we pictured a lot of those things when focusing on two different science units.

3) Describe the thinking and creation process that you used to create your final project.
We really had to go outside of the box for this project. Our main focus was fostering student learning so all of our ideas came from that idea. We knew we would need to reach all types of learners so all of our ideas came from addressing the needs or those learners.

4) How did you use technology to collaborate with your team partners?
Matt and I used Google Docs to share our information. We had an Excel sheet that organized our information and we also collaborated ideas on a document page. This seemed to be very helpful especially when we were working on it over Spring Break and when I was in West Des Moines for my practicum week.

5) Explain at least one barrier that you confronted while completing the project.
One barrier was definitely listing and pricing all of the items in our classroom. I think we also struggled with why we had to price the items if we have an unlimited budget.

6) Explain what you learned from this project? This could include topic material, group work, etc.
I learned that in order to create an "ideal classroom" it would require a lot of money. It is important that in a realistic classroom situation a teacher should be creative and resourceful with what he/she has available. You can create a positive learning environment with or without an endless amount of funds...even though having an endless amount of funds is a lot more fun! :)

7) Any final words that you might have about the project or the process.
I thought that this was an interesting project. Although it is not really practical or applicable in real life it was a lot of fun to think about. Maybe teachers will have this luxury someday in the future.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

If I had a million dollars...

In my computer classroom applications class we are currently working on an assignment that allows us to create an "ideal classroom". We have unlimited funds and we even get to choose how large our classroom is! I am excited about this assignment - I would be even more excited if we could apply it in our future classrooms! :o) I think I would start with different stations in my classroom. I would definitely have a podcasting station where students can create and produce there own podcast and then post it on the web. In this station I would have a high quality microphone, laptop, several sets of headphones and places for them to have scripts and other needs. The next station that I would have would be a guided reading station. I would have a kidney shaped table with eight chairs so I can have a varying amount of students for guided reading. I would have a smaller Promethean interactive whiteboard that I would use to encourage conceptual learning within the small reading groups. In the front on the room I would have an Elmo, another larger Promethean and a book shelf with a large variety of different digital books.

More to come...