Technology in the Classroom

During the Summer Institue at Eastern Washington University I did not only take part in languages and content classes, I also wanted to find out more about the importance of technology in the American classroom.

We visited more than ten schools in five weeks, from preschools to colleges and universities. In every school I found a huge amount of technology. Some schools offered technology carts to their teachers with laptops, others had several desktop pcs in every! classroom.

At the writing center at Eastern I found a state-of-the-art tech cart. It was an wheels, which made it easy to transport it. On the cart every imaginable piece of technology was present: document camera, ipod dock, tablet pc, dvd player, projector and even a portable screen for the projector.

When talking about tools that teachers use in the classroom I found out that the internet is big in the United States. Teachers seem to love wikis and blogs to stay in contact with the students after school. Programs like this help to keep up with English writing and to serve a diverse class with optional information. If you integrate them in classroom management software like moodle and blackboard it guides the students throught the lessons.

All teachers I talked to agreed, that those tools are very helpful. However, they also all agreed that they miss support while using them. Teachers complained, that there is hardly any training and follow ups. Additionally, teachers said that they felt that they need to invest a lot of time in the beginning.

I totally agree with the teachers I talked to. I love using technology in the classroom but you should not use it a) just for the sake of it and b) you don't know how to use it properly. So there should be an expert about educational techology in every school, which supports the teachers when they struggle. If you know that there is somebody that can help you with a tool, you are also more willing to try out new things and loose you fear. - I could even imagine to be the educational techology expert at my future school.

Seattle

Space Needle



Pike Place Market



Seattle Aquarium





Museums



Streetview

In the Middle of Nowhere

Last weekend we visited Seattle and Portland. On our way to Seattle the nature that surrounded us changed several times. It was very interesting to see forrest and desert, farm houses and skyscrapers - all in one state.

Responds to Minority Cultures and Languages in Germany

North Rhine-Westphalia is an immigration state. Demographic developments show that one –third of all children and teenagers in this German federal state have a migration background (75 % in the Hauptschule). And the number is still growing. Experts forecast that it will increase to fifty percent in the next ten to fifteen years, especially in urban city areas.
Schools in certain neighborhoods have lots of students who cannot speak German properly. This makes it very difficult to teach and the learning progress is very low To compensate this, NRW recruits additional teachers for schools with a high number of students with migration background.
The international PISA studies revealed that there is still a huge gap between students with and without migration background. So instead of just sending more teachers into the school the state started a new survey that measures the integration with indicators like the German language skills, the number of students staying down, the number of students sent to special schools and the number of positive transfer from school to the working world. After reviewing the currents situation, goals are formulated to improve the integration level. This changed the attitude of most schools according to this problem. Teachers feel more responsible to integrate minority groups.
A lot of school books changed the stories to integrate more students from other countries. More and more schools have open doors tilll afternoon to offer tutor classes and a positive learning enviroment. Many schools offer language classes of at least lubs to integrate the culture and language of our immigrants - most of them for the Turkish students because the biggest group of migrants are from Turkey.

Message of the Day

Found in a medical center for Native Americans in Spokane, WA.

Inquiry Question: Use of Technology in the Classroom

As part of our language class with Andrea I plan to write a short essay about the pros and cons of using new technology in the classroom. During my studies I learned a lot about tools that a teacher can use in a classroom (blogs, wikis, webquests...). When we visited schools in the United States I realized that almost every school had computer rooms or laptops. The use of computers seems to be very important for American teachers. In the following weeks I want to find out in which way American teachers use these computers and which tools/software/gadgets are popular. As a student I only know the theoretical part, so I am looking forward to see which pros and cons those tools have when you use them in a lesson.

Picture (c) Wellington City Council New Zealand

Spokane Indians Baseball Game

On Wednesday we watched a baseball game of the Spokane Indians. For most of us it was the very first baseball game, so Lisa was busy explaining the rules. The Spokane Indians do have a mascot which, in my opinion, does not look very nice. Some small chilren were even afraid and started crying when the mascot came too close. The funniest thing was when a hero called recycling man started to collect empty soda bottles. Happily, the team played very good. When we left, the current result was 10-0 for the Indians. So you can image how the atmosphere was :-) The stadium offered German dogs (a German sheperd?) but I preferred the traditional food: a hot dog. It was great!

Coeur D'Alene + Riverside State Park

This week we visited beautiful places like a big lake at Coeur D'Alene and the Riverside State Park in Spokane.

The lake at Coeur D'Alene was a very good place to swim. It had a beach and lots of rocky places to rest for a while. The water was quite cool in the beginning, but after some minutes of swimming it was not cool anymore. It was a huge contrast to the beaches I visited in Southern California, just a week ago. The beaches at SC were very sandy and dry whereas this lake was sourrounded by cliffs and very green forest.

At Riverside State Park a mosquito bite me into my hand. Two days after the "attack" my hand was still swollen so that I had to take some medicine. Fortunally, my hand looks normal again today. Here are some photos I want to share with you:

Thanks to Beth and Fran for some of those photos!

TASK: How to create an enviroment where students want to write...

I am not a good writer - so before I start teaching how to write, I have to improve my very own writing skills.
This is the first step a teacher could take to create an enviroment where students want to write. Teachers are role-models, so how can we expect students to write when the teacher does not seem to enjoy writing himself?
In my opinion another factor is to give students positive feedback. Of course the teachers should help the students to get better writing skills. Instead of telling the students what they did wrong I prefer to give feedback about the things they did well. Additionally the students have to get tips about how to improve this productive skill.
A third point that comes into my mind when I think about a good writing enviroment is "learning by doing". Students need practice to get a feeling for writing texts. So I am of the opinion that we should offer to write something whenever it is possible - even in maths lessons! Student could also reflect their own learning progress in a learning log or write about hobbies or family activities.
This brings me to a forth point: Students should have to change to write about topics they are intested in, in a way they like to write. For me it is much easier to communicate about topics that I am familiar with. The others in the peer mentor group agreed with me. So I thing we should give students the possibility to express their thoughts about things they like to talk about. The focus should be on expressing what they want to express instead of sticking to a genre or specific type of text.
Of course, there are more factors which help to create an enviroment where students want to write. If we combine the four suggestions I just mentioned a first step into the right direction is done. Now I am exited to read about the ideas the others had...

Picture: (c) Uni Leipzig

Julyamsh Powwow

This Saturday we visited the Julyamsh Powow at Post Falls Greyhound Park. Hundreds of Native American dancers were celebrating their culture. Tribes from all across the U.S. and Canada took part in this big event. It was amazing to see and talk to people from all over the country. Here are some pictures and videos:




-

Domino preschool observation

Today we visited Domino preschool on EWU campus. The school has a total of twelve students, six of them are autistic. The pupils in this school learn by positive reinforcement. Praise, food and games are used to get the pupils to learn something. Instead of telling the students what they did wrong the teachers only tell what they need to do. Bad behaviour is ignored. There is an observations room from which you can see the whole classroom. The room has a one-side window so that the pupils can not see that somebody is watching them. This observation room is used by some teachers and students but also by the parents who want to see how their child behaves in the classroom. Every familiy is visited once in a month for about one hour by a teachers of this preschool, to make sure that the program meets the needs of the parents.

I do not have any experience with autistic pupils. In Germany we generally seperate children with disabilities from typical developing children. They go to different schools with special educated teachers that were trained to deal with pupils who have problems with following regular classes. At first I was shocked when I saw that the teachers primarly used food to reward the pupils for positive answers. It reminds me a bit of Skinners experiments with animals. But it seems to work that way.

We talked about differents views on how to deal with autistic pupils. Some people are of the opinion that is important to help autistic pupils to behave like a typical developing pupil. Some others think we should not change the behavoir of those children. We just had to learn to accept them the way they are instead of trying to make them behave the way we do.
I think that it must be a combination of both. In my opinion it is important to make the people aware of the fact that not everybody is the same. We should learn to accept differences and how to deal with them. On the other hand it is a fact that those children how are autistic have problems to find their place in society and to interact with other people. So they can benefit from a program like this. It maked it much easier for them to communicate and to find their place in the regular classroom after preschool.

TASK: Language in the Classroom

One focus of this program is to improve our language skills. I started learning English at the age of ten. In the first years the focus was on social language aquisition. We learned vocabulary that are important to communicate with other people and got an overview of the grammatical structures that help to make ourselves understud. The teacher trained our Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS). When I entered the upper secondary school (year 11) we started analysing and comparing pieces of literatur. The focus moved from BICS to CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency). At the university where I study we did not work on our BICS anymore. We read and interpreted academic texts and concepts. I feel comfortable when I talk with other people in English but when we start talking about academic topics I have problems with my accuracy and fluency. Because of this I am not very self-assured and try to avoid talking in the classroom (as a student). I really need to improve my CALP.

EWU Impressions - First week

-text and photos to be added by the end of this week-

Around the World in One Day - Legoland California