An Educational Need

Today in class, I evaluated some educational needs that exist in my own school. In spite of the many areas in which my school excels, I thought of a few needs which I can have a part in "fixing." Since my colleague and I are getting a SMARTboard next fall, I would like to focus in on the SMARTboard. However, one of the serious issues that I would like to address is that we would like to implement SMARTboards school-wide, and have a part in developing the plan for the school. I would like to tackle this issue because I feel that it's a bigger picture of what's going on in my school. But, my colleague Jason suggested that I keep the focus small. I heeded his wisdom, and so my focus will be on an educational need inside my classroom. I find that Geometry students have a difficult time visualizing the concepts that we cover in class, and I as a teacher have a hard time supplementing my teaching with good visual aids. I hope to find a tool that integrates technology to help remedy this issue. In addition, I hope to increase student engagement with whatever visual aids that I find. In order to best evaluate my solution, I will focus on the 8th chapter of our Geometry book, which deals with triangles and Trigonometry. This chapter is very visual, and I want to increase my students' Trigonometry abilities so that they are better prepared for their next class.

Where's the balance?

I’m in the process of getting my Master’s Degree in Educational Technology, and I’m becoming more aware of blogging, moodling, and cajoodling in the classroom. (There’s a strong possibility that I made the last one up. And by strong possibility, I mean 100 percent). I feel like I’m on the back end of the curve when it comes to these web 2.0 technologies, even though I graduated from college only recently. By the way, would someone please explain what web 2.0 means? I never got my 90-day free trial of web 2.0 in the mail, like when AOL 13.0 came out. Boy, was I glad to get those in the mail, it was like a new kind of ninja star after a couple of good throws at my older brothers. Anyway, I teach math and I would like to start blogging in the classroom, but I’m worried about webfilters at my school blocking most blogs. We do have blackboard, and that could be a starting block, but I want to be on the front end of the technology right now. And yet, I would also like to have free time…where’s the balance?