Measuring usage with SAMR

Well I haven't used any iPad apps in class with my students as of yet.  I haven't purchased the cord to make it at least viewable to all students.  If I use the SAMR to measure my use of technology in the classroom, I would have to say that I live in the automating zone but aspire to escape to the informating zone.  My use of the smartboard for instruction scores as augmentation if the students are doing any interactive lesson but more often as a substitution.  The occasional webquests and even the use of the Galaxy Tabs and an interactive virtual lab are not getting my students into a learning experience where they work on their 21st century technology skills.  I see other subjects requiring prezis, animotos, powerpoints, etc... but I also see teachers struggling for computer access for all students to create and share as well as assignments taking twice as long to create and present.  I believe better subject to subject communication and coordination are definitely a must so that students can take the time to see connections between subject areas, and maybe the importance of their own voice in their own discovery as they take the time to create a product that has depth and meaning for more than one class.

The only program that I personally use at school is Accuity.  Now when I say I use Accuity, I must admit that I give the test during the window, and I have when forced gone back to look at the data to see weak areas in instruction by the teacher or understanding by the students.  Using the SAMR, this program appears to be another substitution for a paper-pencil test.  In fact I often given it as a paper-pencil test and just have the students enter their responses on the computer due again to difficulty in accessing a classroom full of computers.  This type of testing seems antiquated when looking to the top tier of the SAMR scale where we want to evaluate student progress through generation of products that show knowledge gained while using the best technology available.

21st century skills

My science classes have been doing a series of experiments involving changes of states of matter.  I can always claim  developing/practicing collaboration and communication skills with this type of small group activities, and some of the questions do let the kids relate their real life experiences to these concepts.  However I still feel that a lack of  a consistent digital element in my lesson falls short of what our educational goals should be. 

Technology Woes

This past week was speckled with my normal amount of technological mishaps.  The elmo is hooked to my computer and if I forget to turn it on before I log in to my computer in the morning, then my smartboard will not show my computer screen.  This happens fairly often so I know to look at the elmo if I can't show my bellringer power point.  For some reason my smartboard is temperamental and will work well in the morning but has hiccups in the afternoon where it won't allow me to write on it.  Most of the time I see that the red light on the screen is on and I do the paper clip trick to reset it but it takes a while to right itself and I lose writing capability again.  A few weeks ago, I lost writing capability for a week.  Paper clip wouldn't work, rebooting wouldn't work, and sysop seemed stumped.  We thought the next thing would be to order a new pen board for smartboard.  Luckily before we did this my friendly neighborhood TIS saved the day by discovering that the pen board was unplugged and he unscrewed the smartboard so that the pen board connector could be accessed and reconnected.