Technology in the Classroom

Well I'm onto Week 2 in the classroom and things are going great. I get to teach The Canterbury Tales tomorrow and Friday so I'm really looking forward to that. I hope everyone's placements are going well and apparently we'll be getting our student teaching placements next week! We'll see! :)
So at LCHS there's little use of technology as far as I've seen. They have the equipment for it, like smart boards, but there's little carry through. I know my co-op uses her smart board, but only from her computer. She'll pull up a document and then navigate it through her computer rather than on the smart board. I'm unsure as to why she does this, yet at the same time she raves about how much she loves the technology. In addition to that, I've been sharing some of the links and websites we've been learning about in our tech bloc class. My co-op is totally fascinated with all of the ideas and always tells me how much she loves learning about them so she encourages me to send her more info any time I run across anything. I'm glad she's so willing to try out new things, but I can already tell she's feeling a little overwhelmed with all the possibilities. In general, the school is pretty traditional. It seems like the majority of the teachers stand at the front of the room and talk at the students. Surprisingly, they are learning something because of the comments I occasionally catch from them. I think the teachers could be a whole lot less traditional if they utilizied technology better.
As I said, later this week I'll be teaching and I've already worked it out with my co-op to use a lot of technology. I set up a class website for them to use so that will be a major contributing factor. I want to emphasis the means of publishing something publicly to the internet so that we can become a larger community with similar goals. I'm looking forward to seeing how the kids react.
My co-op did tell me that next week they have an in-service day and someone's coming in to talk to them about how to use a whole slew of technology in the classrooms. I'm excited for my co-op to hear and learn about some new ideas and see what she can then pass onto me.