The Ideal Classroom Today the mood and the technology as well as the costs in our classrooms have changed. Many of our schools in the U. S. plan the technology into budgets and are requiring teachers to learn how to use it. In my 5th grade classroom I would like to have the latest that technology has to offer. It used to be that technology was a luxury in a classroom, but now it is becoming more and more of a necessity these days.
Being that 5th graders are about to reach middle school, I would like to educate my students so that they are prepared to do the best research and presentations using the latest technology. My ideal classroom would have either a high-definition plasma display or a rear projection system. The rear projection solution gives us whatever size screen we need while the plasma screen is limited in size. I particularly like the plasma setup because as the teacher walks in front of the images he isn’t blinded by the lamp from the ceiling projector hung in the center of the room.
In my ideal system, the front image has touch screen capability so I can control all computer functions (mouse, left/right click) with the touch of my hand. I’d like to annotate on the image as well, and be able to save it and send it to all my students, who are equipped with wireless laptops, through a wireless access point within our classroom. In this classroom, the teacher has the option of presenting from her computer or from any of the students’ laptops. Wireless internet would do away with all the wiring that would distract and take away from the eye pleasing setting of the classroom.
Some of the software I would like to have in my classroom would be for the use of publishing, photo or video uploading and sharing, blogging and podcasting which would all help my students learn to prepare presentations. For publishing there is Microsoft Publisher which is included in the Microsoft Office Suite. Photo and video uploading and sharing could be done using Power Point 2 Video Pro by Wondershare Software Company (2010). The entire Microsoft Office software will be essential because it includes Word for word processing and Excel to do spreadsheets, charts and graphs.
Word and Excel will assist the students in creating essays and research papers which they will continue to do throughout their school years. Blogging and podcasting can be done using Feed for All, a software program designed to create RSS (really simple syndication) feeds & podcasts, edit RSS feeds & podcasts, manage and publish RSS feeds, and create iTunes or compatible podcasts (Note Page, Inc. ). I would like my classroom to be in contact with other students across the country and.
This way they have point of views other than their local classmates to gain knowledge from which would make it much more interesting for them to learn. If my students were to learn how to use and even master using the software mentioned above it would be an advantage for them to have this skill. This would not only prepare them to begin the journey to the secondary level, but also the journey to the real world! I would like to have each of my students carry a flash drive daily, so that they can save their files onto them instead of to the computer’s hard drive. This will prevent the problem of disk storage on the classroom laptops.
The idea of the students carrying the flash drives will also instill in them a sense of responsibility which is always extremely useful for them. If the seating arrangements need to be changed, the fact that the files are on individual drives would make those transitions smoother, too. Conclusion CDW Government, Inc. (CDW-G), a provider of brand-name technology to educational institutions and government agencies, commissioned a survey to measure the role that computer technology plays in today’s classroom, and to explore the emerging trends in education technology (Starr, 2003).
The “Teachers Talk Tech” survey, which provided a forum for teachers to express their views about technology in their classrooms, found that teachers view computers as a valuable teaching tool that can improve students’ academic performance and attention in class, while strengthening the lines of communication with parents (Starr, 2003). In this survey a large majority (76 percent of over 600 educators) of the teachers said that training is the key to increased technology use (Starr, 2003).
Technology is now a necessity for our 21st century classrooms and educators need to be ready with the training to be able to share that wealth of knowledge with their students. ? References Note Page, Inc. (n. d. ). RSS and Podcasting Software. Retrieved on March 24, 2010 from http://www. feedforall. com/software. htm Starr, Linda (2003). How Teachers View Technology. Retrieved on March 25, 2010 from http://www. educationworld. com/a_tech/tech/tech180. shtml Wondershare Software Co. , Ltd (2010). PPT2Video Pro. Retrieved on March 25, 2010 from http://www. sameshow. com/powerpoint-to-video. html
