My Half-way Feelings

Well, my feelings have not changed much since the beginning of the semester about using technology in the classroom. If anything I feel even more strongly against it. I have not found much of anything we have done in this class to be helpful to an early-childhood classroom, except for resources for teachers. Some of the projects we have had to do, such as the Imovie will never come in use in my career as a kindergarten or first grade teacher. They will never use Imovie and I will never use Imovie in my teaching. Many of the skills we are learning in this class are geared more towards students in middle childhood or high school level. First graders are not going to be using ERIC research databases nor will they be keeping Blog's online. I do believe that the internet and technology can be great tools for older students. I mean we used the internet for research and as a resource in high school all the time. I really wish we would study more useful ways to incorporate technology into the early-childhood education class in this course.
I also feel that we could use some more time in class to work on projects assigned. Often times we are left hanging with so much work that it is hard to keep track of it all. For example, the Imovie. I really wish we had been given the time to bring our clips into class and work on it in class for a while. I ran into many problems with my Imovie that even the tutorials could not aid me with, so I had to call student tech several times. I think it would have been much easier to have had some time to work on it in class where I might not have become so frustrated.
This class has taught me some new interesting things. They will help me in personal uses of technology, but not necessarily in the classroom. Like I stated before, I would really like to learn more techniques that incorporate technology specifically into the early-childhood education class because most if not all of us in the class are early-childhood majors.

Internet Use in Elementary Classroom

The internet can be a very risky tool in schools. Many things can go wrong, but there are also good uses of the internet.

Some pros to using internet in the classroom would be to connect students to help sites that will help them with their letters, shapes, colors etc. Another good aspect to internet use is the ability to teach students how to safely search the web. Teachers could also use the internet to let the students look up information on a topic they are discussing in class. The students would be working on autonomy.

The cons of using the internet in the classroom are the lack of fine motor skills young students have. These students must learn to first write and hold a pencil before they rely completely on computers to do their work. Also, there is the possibility that students could end-up on a very bad and inappropriate website on accident. Also using the internet for research can leave the student unable to use paper copies found in the library. Using the internet is also not giving the students the social interaction that is so important to early-childhood development.

Personally, I do not believe in using the internet in early-childhood education. I would tell a principal this and also tell them that the only way I may use the internet is to make accomodations for students with exceptionalities. I would also explain to the teacher that I believe in hands-on, movement involving activities that get the kids up and excited to learn. I do not feel that staring at a computer screen and doing the work independently is beneficial to students at such a young age.

I do believe in teachers utilizing the internet for new and creative lesson plans or curriculum ideas. One website I love is author and illustrator Jan Brett's website. On her site she has many different games, flashcards, activities, and crafts to go along with her books. She is my favorite children's book author/illustrator and I love all the activities teachers can print out and use. It can be a really helpful site to incorporate ideas to use her books in your curriculum! Check out her site! It's awesome!

Kindergarten Standards, Good or Bad??

The quote at the end of the article from veteran teacher Veronica Rieck sums it all up for me. I agree that having standards is a good way to keep teachers in check. I believe that teachers need to be addressing important curriculum, but if it was not laid out in standards, then teachers would not teach it and those students would miss out.
I do not agree with how high the standards are for the kindergarteners. If these standards were in place when I was a kindergartener, I probably would have been held back. I came out of kindergarten not knowing how to read and sometimes I couldn't even tell my numbers from my letters. In today's society, it would not be ok for a kindergartener to be that far behind. The amazing part is that I became and excellent reader and was in all the advanced courses through middle school and high school. I was just a little slower than others at first, but once I was ready I picked up on the idea. I turned out just fine and I was not held back and did not know everything that the students of today are expected to know.
I feel that it is unfair to expect such high expectations from kids that are so young. If they are developmentally ready, then yes give them a challenge, but do not punish them if they are not quite there yet. Overall, I feel that the standards are a good idea to give some guidance to teachers in what direction to point the students, but I do not believe in forcing them to stick strictly to the standards. Teachers need some room for flexibility!