Week 5 Reflection

The technology I tried out this week felt like a bit of a failure. I wanted to create a Grockit activity in which my students would watch a video on a trash item they have been assigned (plastic bottles, cigarette butts, paper cups, or soda cans) and learn about how the item is created, used, and discarded, but I could find no suitable videos that were short and simple enough. After hours of searching, I decided to go with my original plan of finding suitable reading material for them on the internet (so still technology based, but not as fun). The Socrative activity I made did not work on my students' cell phones, and I felt mildly frustrated in class that I could not participate in the online survey questions because the application would not load on my phone. I guess the lesson from this week's attempts is that technology is not perfect and in many cases is not needed when other suitable, tech-free options are available. All of these applications and technologies seem so interesting, fun, and useful, and I am excited by their existence and promise, but I don't think our classrooms, teaching techniques, students, or ourselves are quite at the stage where we can take all of these apps and successfully use them in a meaningful way on a daily basis. As time passes, though, and the technologies improve, the classrooms get better equipped, and the people (teachers and students alike) become even more tech-savvy, I think my experiences of the past week will become rare occurrences and technology will become more seamlessly woven into classroom life. That's my hope, at least.