How might I change

 Is there something that we did or read that sparked something in you..  and made you think - I could be doing something different that would make me more effective in my job, my life, or my role as a student? 



One of the things that I need to change in technology is to really research the technology product that I get for my classroom. I feel like I at times I rush to just use it in my room that I don't make sure that whatever I am doing with it really brings a meaningful lesson that the students can learn from.

I need to work on putting an assessment after using the technology. I need to ask myself, "What do I want them to learn from this?", " How am I going to assess what they learn?", " What do they need to know?', " What do if they don't know?",  and " What can I do once they know the skill?" There has to be a purpose to whatever technology that I am using in my classroom.

I need to work on looking at the whole picture, instead of being instantly sold on a new technology idea of teaching. Just how we tell our students to "stop, look, listen,"  I need to stop, research, and look at the possible outcomes and see the pro's and con's about the technology product. There are budget cuts going around through out our district, so we can't afford to misuse our funds over something that will not give us  results.

We have some pieces of technology that our administrator bought because it looked good on paper, and it read proven to raise test scores.  One of these products was the Smartboard slate. This product in reality did not produce nothing of what it promised, and became problematic. The product would not work half of time, and when it did, it was just faster to go up and manipulate the smartboard yourself than using the slate. I don't know what it was about this product, but this is the product that really got me wondering about the effectiveness of technology in the classroom. I think it was because they were really expensive and I found out how much the total was!  Not all technology is the best technology for the classroom, and because of that, I need to change how I select what I use in my classroom.