YETC Resources fieldtrip

Today I once again felt like the digital immigrant I am. As we surfed through YouTube selections and Celestia, a really cool simulation of the universe, my head was swimming and often I couldn't get Jupiter to spin the way I wanted it to go. I felt like an ESL student who isn't speaking the same language! It is obvious to me that I need to assign myself some homework to spend a few hours a week surfing through all this stuff and learning how to access it!

The resources available online in general and specifically in the collection at the YETC are seemingly without number. I really wish I knew more what grades I will be teaching so that I can be stockpiling podcasts. My peers shared experiences in their practicum classrooms how they are using smart boards and other teaching tools, but the only technology we've used so far is the CD player for the "Days of the Week" song and the standard overhead projector to direct-teach how to fill in the "Ll"s on the Saxon paper worksheets.

I loved the discussion of how best to teach the Civil War: the difference in student attention from a teacher saying "Now, class, open your textbook to page 758" to "Now, class, log on to this website that offers a virtual simulation of what it was like for a young Confederate soldier on the battlefield." I also recognize that being able to manipulate the rotation of the planets and their position in the solar system is much more relevant and exciting than reading about it and creating a written report. The time-honored coat hanger mobile of construction paper circles no longer creates the enthusiasm for students that spending a few minutes on the Celestia site will.

I am excited to go home and show my children some of the sites we visited today and let them show me how to use them. I know they will be able to get me over my techno-stupidity and gain a better appreciation for what is available to me beyond just the "push the planet number and the Gkey (for go there)" commands I used today in the lab. I plan to glance through the core curriculum topics for the upper elementary grades to refresh my memory of what the students in the grades I want to teach are studying in science, for example. That will give me a roadmap of the sorts of resources I should revisit in the YETC lab as I begin my stockpile.

I appreciate this course for FORCING me to dig into this stuff. One of my reasons for going back to school to be a teacher was to translate my enthusiasm for learning into a career and I can't be "dumber" than my students when it comes to technology. I am overwhelmed with the resources available to me at no cost and will on longer accept the common excuse I hear that "if we just had more money, we could do some really great things in the classroom." So now I need to go home this afternoon and open that new laptop that has been sitting in the box downstairs "daring me to come open it." James, my son asked me this morning when we can play with it. I hate to admit that it intimidates me. But I'm getting up the courage .....