Music Ed

For my teacher interview, I talked to Mrs. A. She is a fifth grade teacher in her last year of teaching before retirement. At first, when I asked her about the types of technology she used in her classroom, she balked. Being of the 50+ generation, she isn’t too confident in her ability to use technology effectively. The first thing she thought of was a list of other teachers I could talk to, but after convincing her that her voice is just as important as anyone else’s and she agreed to be interviewed. When I asked her what types of technology she used in her classroom, she gave me a list of things she wished she could have used. One of the pieces of technology she pined over was clickers. She had seen clickers being used in a seminar and had plenty of ideas on how they would be helpful to her for assessment. Unfortunately, time restraints never fully allowed her to explore that option. She did use an Elmo to project news articles and books onto an over head screen, and her school provides four computers to use right there in her classroom. When I told her that Holton public schools bought Apple Laptops for every student, she didn’t doubt it at all because of the convenience of wireless internet usage. She thought I meant that there was a traveling computer lab. When I told her no, they bought each individual student a laptop to keep, she couldn’t believe it. When I asked her about other uses of technology in her classroom, she couldn’t think of anything. I pointed to the television and the overhead projector and she admitted that she did show her kids educational films on historical figures and the use of her overhead projector was indispensible, but she didn’t think that counted. Mostly, she talked about how much she wasn’t able to use the newer technology available due to the demands of standardized testing. Kids were required to spend so much time preparing for tests and as a teacher, she was afforded so little free time to explore and learn about these new technologies. Overall, she felt that there was so much more she could have done with technology.