I absolutely love using technology within my classroom with my students. It is part of our daily routines and practice and a wonderful way to engage students. There are so many different ways to use technology and so many I still am yet to explore.
There are times when technology fails you. It can make using technology frustrating, difficult and quite frankly at times want to give it up all together.
This week we had a few hiccups with our technology. The first was our interactive whiteboard that decided to act up periodically. For whatever reason, it stopped being interactive at random times. It can make a lesson that was headed for greatness to fall smack down face first. Luckily, the lesson we were doing was about what hinders communication. So there we go great way to lead us into the discussion about how technology can make communication break down and how it can be frustrating at times.
Then there was the issue of my students collaborating on a Prezi. First of all, there have been some changes to signing up for Prezis for education since last year when I did it which was a bigger process than expected. Then we had the issue of all of us trying to collaborate on a single Prezi. Trying to have 16 students on one Prezi at once slowed down the entire process as it began to lag. Eventually we had to rethink our idea and only had 3 students on the Prezi at one time. This seemed to work but took longer than I had wanted it to.
Being able to roll with the punches is so important because in the classroom full of students, your going to have a few days like that. Technology can enhance teaching and learning in so many ways. But it is important that as teachers we remember it is only one of many available tools.