Chapter 11- Preservice Teachers

Reflection to TPACK, Chapter 11- Guiding Preservice Teachers

There were many valuable things that would apply to my classroom in this chapter. I think the whole idea of teaching preservice teachers to teach in a way different from how they learned is interesting. I do believe that children and adults alike can learn more by teaching others. However, I do think it is possible for new teachers to use technology successfully in their classroom even though they didn’t necessarily learn through technology.
The biggest concept that I identified with was that classroom management can be entirely different when using technology. The use of technology, as with anything else in the classroom, needs to be introduced with specific rules and guidelines. Just as we spend tons of time in the first week of school learning all the procedures of the classroom, learning how to walk in the hallway, learning how to use the bathroom, or learning how to eat in the cafeteria, students need to be taught how to treat all types of technology- computers, overhead, or calculators. Without the preteaching and training, all technology will be chaotic. I did enjoy the definition of a noisy, but positive classroom. It is true that not all noise in a classroom is negative!
I like to consider technology as a way to sometimes better give students access to learning. It is not always necessary to use technology, but it is important to use technology to enhance your lessons. Pushing technology into many lessons for the sake of doing so, I believe, can cause the chaos and craziness that is not productive. I love exploring the assistive technology center to find new ways to make learning easier and exciting for my first graders. This is the kind of technology I especially enjoy. Simply having laptops on tables does not improve instruction in my classroom.