Field Work Week 3

This week I learned more how my supervising teacher uses the computer. She has a class website where she posts announcements, the calender, the spelling list, the weather, and other homework. She also has all her grades recorded online. The students do homework through a UEN site. There are a variety of games for different subjects and the computer even grades the student's work. Miss Kelley said the students don't even notice that they're doing homework. She also tracks the weather online twice a day and the kids record the weather.



It's neat to see what we've been learning about in class in action in the classroom. I think tracking grades online and having students do homework online would save a lot of time and paper. I think tracking the weather online is neat because it shows the kids the computer in action and allows students to have instant information.



I would like to use the computer for homework and to track grades. I was amazed to find out that the teacher doesn't even create the homework-it's already done! I will definitely use technology in the class-computers, overheads, projectors, movies, CDs, etc. I also want to use clips from the internet to help give students ideas for writing. It was interesting at our PLC meeting to see the teachers interact with each other. One of the teachers wants to do formative testing during math. One of the teachers listened to him but the other didn't seem to agree. I can see that it would be difficult to work as a team sometimes. It will be important to communicate fully with others and cooperate on projects.

I watched a Teachertube video on James Otis. He was an early patriot and government lawyer who was asked to argue for writs of assistance (search warrants) but instead quit his job and argued for it. He argued against the king of England taxing the United States. Otis is famous for his quote, "taxation without representation is tyranny." This video portrays a man in period costume explaining who Otis was and what he did. This is a fun video and I think students would enjoy it and also learn about James Otis and about the early government of the U.S. and the government of England.