While I love the idea of having so many opportunities to use technology in my classroom, I’m having a hard time reconciling those opportunities to the amount of time I realistically have to use them. Aside from being able to use my Ipod Touch for Literacy, I have not had many opportunities to use it in the classroom. Maybe this will change when I take over my 4th grade classroom in April, but for now, it's difficult to find the time to use it. I feel like I can see use in the bigger picture, but when I'm co-teaching and/or only teaching a couple of lessons a day, there's not too much time to teach the kids what they need to know about the technology for it to be successful.
I can see using the touches for my own purposes in terms of recording running record assessments or recording student interviews, but in terms of differentiating instruction, I'm not sure how it can work logistically with just one ipod touch. I feel like those that get to use it will be a distraction to the ones that don't and it may hurt more than it helps, having only one.
You have only one... we certainly can't buy touches for all the kids in all the placements :), but teachers who use these do get sets..
ReplyDeleteI think that you can trust kids to figure out simple tools like apps. I read recently of a school where kids just used Touches in all the transition time -- those three minutes before lunch, the left over time between clean up and time to go home... and achievement went up pretty impressively.
YOu have yours for a few more weeks. Play with it! Hand it to a kid or two!