Linwood and Port Republic School Visits

I went on visits to Port Republic elementary school and Linwood Middle School to observe the various uses of technology in the two schools.

I was very impressed with all of the technology that Linwood Middle School had to offer their students. We visited several classrooms that had whiteboards in them. These white boards were used for many things such as student presentations and teacher lectures and lessons. I was impressed while watching student power point presentations that they knew how to use the white boards and could present their power points without any help from the teacher. Another good use of the white boards was in a math class. The students were learning about geometry, but instead of having to draw the different shapes on the chalkboard the teacher was able to draw accurate shapes with the white board and projected them on the board. This allowed for the teacher to ensure that the shapes were accurate so the students could get their measurements and it saved a lot of time because the teacher didn't have to painstakenly draw the shapes by hand. In the library Linwood also had many different kinds of technology available to the students. They had laptops for the students that had lights on the top so the teacher could monitor if the students were using them when they were supposed to be listening.

Port Republic School was small but it had a good amount of technology for such a small school. We were told that almost every classroom had a whiteboard in it, and we were able to observe one second grade classroom making use of theirs. The teacher pulled up different websites with interactive educational games and the students were able to actively participate and play them by using the white board. I think this kept the students attention and kept them engaged much better than if they had to tell the teacher what to do for the game. We also visited a technology room where students were learning how to do excel spreadsheets.

Overall the two visits were very helpful in seeing how technology is used in many different classrooms for many different lessons and subjects. I will definitely remember these visits and make use of what I learned through them.