At Monticello Middle School each classroom is equipped with chrome book laptops. The cart is left in the classroom at all times. Students access the chrome books through their school login account. Once students are logged in, the computers are equipped with access to the internet and most of the work they do on their laptop is through various google apps. This includes google classroom, google slides, and google documents. Students turn in major assignments such as projects and essays through google classroom, which acts as a hub for all major assignments. Google slides and documents are utilized to collaborate with other students on group projects or write an essay as an individual. In the class I observed, students mainly used their laptops when working on projects or essays. This was not as frequent as their work on paper or in collaborative groups were.
Using google apps rather than microsoft ones such as word is significant because google allows students to access their work no matter what computer they are working on. When students do not take the laptops home that they work on, this is important because they are still able to access their work outside the classroom if they have to. This is facilitating student learning because they have access to work no matter what. Through this, students various access to technology becomes less of a problem.
My cooperating teacher utilizes a number of technologies in her classroom. The main technology used is her laptop. As I stated in previous blogposts, the staff just switched from mac books to chrome books. My teacher has stated frustration with this as the new technology has been a very big adjustment. She also noted that some of her lesson plans were in google documents while some were on her old laptop. So, sorting through that has been difficult. Ms. Robinson uses Google apps just as her students. She has lesson plans in google document folders, lecture notes in google slides, and uses google classroom to display the due date and expectations for major assignments. Connected to the laptop is a smart board in which Ms. Robinson displays her google slides presentation. She used to have a clicker which allowed her to move about the classroom and change slides, however, with the new hardware her clicker no longer works. This has been very frustrating for her as she is no longer able to move throughout the class while lecturing but has to stay near her desk to change the slides.
The most significant software I have seen that facilitates teaching for Ms. Robinson is the use of goguardian. Gogaurdian is an online monitoring system where teachers can monitor the screens of all the students logged into laptops. This has helped Ms. Robinson keep students on task while working on their laptops. If students are on a different screen than what they are supposed to, the teacher has the ability to lock the screen and talk with the student. This is extremely important because it deals with the issue of how to keep students on task while using technology. This is a great aid because it allows the teacher to offer the space to learn with technology but not worry about lack of student focus.
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