Summarizing Group C's Discussion

Our group focused on the capabilities and adaptibilities of software programs, like Forgrave mention's Inspiration, because we were all curious about how easy it would be for these types of program to be used with other software programs like Kurzweil, Dragon, etc... We also shared our experiences as teachers, student-teachers, students on how implented programs were recieved by others, how laptops for the students can lead to mass chaos and how applying literacy assistance can be very tough. Here are some very interesting comments.

Thinking out loud...

Dan

I have also witnessed teachers that are using technology to a great degree in the classroom. I guess there is a fine line between using technology though. Honestly, the teaching world, at least in my opinion, is a scary place. One time, I completed a Jeopardy PowerPoint thing for one of my classes and a teacher was walking by when she observed my classroom. She told me, in a joking way, that I should stop trying to make everyone else look so bad. Find out how the story went down from Dan.

Shari

In my experiences, teachers that have been teaching for many years, have a hard time implementing new programs into their classrooms. I don't want to generalize this, but I think that newer teachers are more motivated to try new things.

Ellen

In my personal experience, technology in regular education classrooms is scarce - because of resources, technical difficulties, etc. The school I was teaching in last semester, for example, had a lovely little cart that could be rolled from classroom to classroom with enough laptops on it to go around an entire class. You're thinking this is pretty snazzy, right? Well, it was snazzy...until you actually tried to get all 36 of your kids up and running on their laptops (includes dealing with "mine's broken" and "my internet doesn't work" and "i don't have one yet"); getting something productive done; and then putting all the laptops away again - all within a class period. What began as a brilliant idea on your behalf has turned your classroom into mass chaos!

Jenny

I feel that while all of these ideas are so innovative we should always seek to find a balance as we have been reading about and learning first hand. The chatrooms, discussion boards, file exchanges can only take us so far because we are obviously missing an element of humanity and personality.Perhaps we could think of technology as a boat or raft, carrying us across the waves of information, that typical people can simply swim through, is simply a way to get us to land or to the person, where we could have face-to-face communication, interaction and idea exchange.