1. Nintendo Wii controllers to make the white board act as a smart board is a way to use stretch out finances of a school buget, during these tough economic times, to provide students with interactive learning. This allows the student and the teacher to provide immediate information to the student using the Internet, Excel, Word,...etc. Students become more engaged in learning and are able to see more examples and teachers are able to display more real-life situations to the class.

2. Personal Labtops for students to use at home and at school. This will cut down on the lack of technology provide to students once they have left school grounds. Students will be able to use them to take notes and submit work to the instructor. They will also be able to expand on the learning that was provided to them in the classroom.

3. Professional Development that enables a teacher to feel comfortable with the instrument or program that they are being instructed to use in the classroom. Sessions of development that are being taught at too quick of a pace are no good to the person sitting in the course because when the session is over they have already forgotten the material.

I constantly use BrainPop as an introduction to a topic. The worksheets and short quizzes are a fast way to assess my students knowledge of what they have seen. Also the students love the extra information that BrainPop provides about everyday items.

Safari Montage is such a great tool to extent the curriculum.

Engagement: The students will complete a webquest in on the subject material, and then you bring the class together the next day to go over the information that was gathered.
Exploration: The students could use Lab Pros, internet, Safari Montage. The technology listed will allow students the ability to gather information and understanding without teacher guidance.
Explanation:Use of power point lectures to bring visual, audio, and game like tasks for the student learn. This hits of several of the body's senses for possible long term retention.
Extention: Use of Excel to graph data collected in a lab or use of the Interwrite board to allow students the ability to display their information for immediate feedback.
Evaluation: Develop a review lesson using Turning Point so that it is a multiple choice format for the use of clickers

There is always a fear of having a Technology Penalty when you are using any of the laptops in a lesson. Most teachers prepare to have a backup plan with another teacher to switch rooms in case the laptops decide to take a day off. That way they can use the desktops that are already hardwired. I also have issues with my Interwrite tablet when they want to update the system,when I delete my icon, or when my pen is non-functioning. Sometimes I just put the pad down and start writing on the board because it would take longer to figure out how to correct the problem.

In teaching you need to have a plan A, B, and C when dealing with technology. Technology is amazing when it works but when it doesn't it really is a burden. Sometimes you can plan ahead but then you always have those little moments when nothing is going right.

We are so managed by a budget and time restraint that we will never catch up. BCPS will catch up to the present time technology in like ten years, however technology will just keep moving forward without us. Also, we can't train teachers fast enough in the current technology so we are always behind. What a headache!!!

Students enjoy Challenge Based learning because they feel less guarded to participate more. This works very well in my classroom with classwork activites. Sometimes students feel very shy to ask an adult if what they are doing is correct, however if they can just ask their peers the same question then the person that will be grading them will never know. Collaborative learning works very well with webquest, lab analysis, and reviewing for an assessments. For example I promote study sessions during the class period. Students are broken down in to different groups to work on a reveiw packet and at the end of a set time they need to take a part and explain it to the group. I post the answers on the screen so they feel confident in presenting the information. It is very interesting to see how the students interact with the material and each other during this process. I have noticed ever since I started this process their assessment grades have increased and their stress level for the topics has decreased.

1. Group work, student - student, is used a lot in lab work in order for the students to gather data from an experiment and then analyze the information. I constantly have them working in pairs and then sharing the information with each other to branch out their understanding. This really helps students prepare for groups study session in college and meetings in the work place. They can take other's ideas and expand the information presented.

2. Yes this would require time to set up the groups and the activity. This may extend a topic however the knowledge that the students get from doing a collaborative assignment is way more valuable and they will retain the information better because of .using multi-senses.

3. The students would love to use the technology. They are very technology hungry and would rather take the time to set up the technology then to look in a textbook.

1. This article is very relevant to my classroom environment. My kids are constantly telling me that I am going old school using the chalkboard to deviate from my powerpoint slides. Whenever students ask me a question I find it easier to address the question using the chalkboard rather than trying to see if I can get my interwrite tablet to work. I have tried to to use the interwrite tablet in my classroom, but I feel that it causes me to look bad in front of my class. The class does like to use the computers and electronic lab equipment when we do activities, but I need to take the time to feel comfortable with the equipment.

2. I think that our school is trying to stay up to date with technology however between the budget and how quickly technology changes it is hard to keep up. Not to mention the hours it takes to do professional development.

3. No, I think his observation is correct we as educators are trying to hold on to what we know and what we experienced when we learned the material. However, we need to prepare this new generation to move into this new virtual world. I think that we both can learn a lot from each other, the Digital Natives will help us through the technology and we will help them through the material being learned.