PLE Week 12

My mentor teacher does a very good job at teaching content, but there are limited resources with technology. During Halloween, she used the television and VCR in her classroom to show a video about trick-or-treating safety. She also has a stereo with tapes that students use at a listening center. During reading centers, students can listen to a book on tape and illustrate what is read to them. This particular use of technology is fun and effective with her students. She uses a personal digital camera to take pictures of fun and momentous occasions in the classroom that really get the students excited. She also uses a computer for a lot of the tasks that she does. She makes a weekly newsletter to send home with the students to give to their parents. This has been a useful tool to foster communication between parents and the school. Also, she uses the computer to keep track of grades and do report cards. There are some times when more digital technology could be used in the classroom. For example, she could check out one of the four ELMOs in the school and use it to help teach a variety of subjects. She could have used this to help model what she wanted done with various activities (for example, the turkey assignment). The school has a computer projector that is available for check out. She could have used this to do a PowerPoint to make the segmenting activity a little different. However, there aren't too many of these available for use. Overall, I think that she does a great job at using the technology that is available to her to meet the needs of her students (and not try to make them focus longer than they can).