I enjoyed the presentations from Thursday’s class. Prezi, Wordle, and Edmodo are three technologies I would potentially use in my classroom. Prezi would appeal to students because of the different possibilities with regards to manipulating the graphics and words throughout the presentation. Wordle also has an artistic element to it that I think students would enjoy, though it didn’t seem to have as many options as Prezi does as far as ways in which to present information. With social networks being as popular as they are in today’s society, Edmodo would likely appeal to the vast majority of students at all levels.
I am not currently using any of the technologies presented in class, but I feel I could incorporate Wordle into each subject area in elementary school. Students could use it as a brainstorming activity before beginning a writing or prior to starting a unit in any of the content areas. Students could do this individually or a teacher could do it with the class and then words that were mentioned most often would appear bigger in the wordle. In addition, a teacher could use a wordle as a culminating activity where students listed the key vocabulary words that they remember from a specific instructional unit. This would be a creative way for a teacher to know what words students are most familiar with and those vocabulary words that may need reinforcing.
Prezi would be another tool I could use in my classroom. I really liked the zoom feature and the way the group presented it. I could use it to make presentations and also to analyze paragraphs and identify parts of speech or grammatical errors. Students could also use Prezi to create their own presentations on whatever unit was being studied.
I would be compelled to use a new technology if the presentation of that technology was delivered in a way that effectively explained the benefits and at the same time didn’t make its use seem too difficult or overwhelming. You’re still going to have your resistors and saboteurs, but the number can be reduced with how the initiative is presented. In many teachers’ minds, it won’t matter what the benefits of a specific program are if the implementation of that program is deemed too difficult or too time-consuming. If teachers leave a staff meeting or in-service with that mindset, they will most likely become resistors or saboteurs. For me, it really is all about the delivery. Well, not all about, but the introduction and delivery does lead us to form an immediate opinion about the technology or initiative being presented. The presentations on Thursday gave me an opportunity to gauge what may or may not work in the future when presenting a new program to staff members.
