Week 1

What did you learn this week that you will use immediately in your classroom?

• In learning about technology this week, I have come to understand that integrating technology into my everyday life will be essential to creating a technology-friendly environment in the classroom.  I want to try to implement technology into every aspect of teaching.  This will include technology in the planning process, throughout the teaching, assessments, and sharing assessment results with the students and parents.  I have also learned that technology is still constantly changing around us, and we need to be open to the change that is coming.  I cannot comprehend how different our technology world will look like in 10 years, and what steps we will need to take to keep our students engaged.

What steps will you take to implement this in your classroom?

• Some of my students' grades have been falling and to show them visually how their grades look over time I will create an Excel spreadsheet that tracks their progress.  Every week they will be able to see where their grade was last week and how it has changed this week.  In each cell, it will be color coded to help the high and low points stand out.  If a student's grade has improved, the score will be highlighted in yellow, however if their score has gone down the score will be highlighted in red.  
• I will also incorporate technology into the lessons that are presented everyday.  At our school, we have a system called CPS that allows the students to have a remote control that they can use to indicate their answer choice in a multiple choice setting.  This system is one that the students become excited about and really encourages them to be involved with their learning.  I will use this software on a regular basis, in different formats, to obtain more information from each students, as well as keep them interested.

What challenge(s) will you face when using this in your classroom?

• My challenge when using the spreadsheet will be to input the grades on a regular basis so that the report will accurately reflect the students' grades.  I will also need to make it a habit to make these reports accessible to the students and the parents.  This will be an additional responsibility on top of inputting the grades into the regular gradebook.  
• In wanting to use CPS I will need to become creative in integrating this into everyday lessons.  On the days that I plan to have more of a lecture format I will need to leave space for the students to have an opportunity to use CPS.  Additionally, when Centers are being used and I don't necessarily have the whole group's attention at one time, CPS could be difficult to integrate.

What will you do to overcome these challenges?

• Hopefully, I can also create a system that will export the information from one program to another, so that I will not need to enter the information multiple times.
• Once I become more comfortable with the CPS program and I can see how it works with my students, I will be able to better gauge its impact and alter my plans accordingly.  Instead of asking questions to the entire class expecting hands raised, I will adjust my expectations to have information relayed to me through CPS, rather than expecting to hear each students voice.  I will also need to keep a balance and make my expectations clear that the students can ask questions at any time, and do not need to rely on CPS to communicate with me.