Technology in the Field

At Lancaster Catholic, technology seems to be at a premium. Most English and math teachers have smart boards, and all teachers have at least 5-year-old desktop computers, but that's about it. They mostly use VHS tapes, and my co-op still has her overhead projector. (However, a few students identified as needing help from the guidance office are to be given their own iPads---about 1 student per class.)

My co-op told me that the reason why they don't have much technology is because they get little grant money from the federal government, and their best hopes for new technology come from alumni donations.

My co-op uses the technology she has pretty well. She had the students listen to a record of The Canterbury Tales in Old English, and she uses snippets of video often. She doesn't use her smart board all that often, mostly as a means of showing video and to display the morning announcements to her homeroom.

I like her use of video, so I would definitely echo her choice of that in my own teaching. In my own classroom, I might use my Smartboard to get students involved. I could see a vocab warm-up activity where students had to come to the board and circle the antonym; or breaking down a scene from a Shakespeare film adaptation like a sportscaster to show who's "in the lead" or who could have made a better "play."