My 21st Century Classroom

HI !!       (1) Welcome to MY 21st Century Classroom..

     My name is David Segoviano, I am currently pursuing an Elementary/Special Education degree at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. My ultimate goal after completing my education and obtaining my degree is to be able to teach in a special education classroom. My hope is to be able to be a great teacher and role model in order to help my students to reach their full potential. A teacher can either be a great positive influence in a child’s life or a very negative influence who may even damage the way that child sees others.     A good teacher will role model to his/her students to help them learn not only in theory but with his actions. However, there are some teachers who believe that violence and rock hard discipline with lecture and no time for hands on activities is the way to educate young children. For instance, my I Believe video talks about a teacher who should not have become a teacher in the first place. His beliefs about education of young children are simply obsolete. He believes that discipline comes together with physical abuse towards the students. We all know that it is not the way to educate a child.

     At the moment I plan to continue with my education. I am trying to learn as much as I can about all the teaching techniques and resources available for teacher today. Also I like to keep myself updated with the latest information about the latest developments in the area of education. I want to be able to incorporate as much technology as possible in my classroom, because children love to play with the new gadgets and if we can tap that love for technology and turn it into an educational purposes then we have found a great educational tool.

     My future plans as a teacher are to try to incorporate technology into my classroom to teach children in a interactive manner and keep them engaged in the class. In today's world technology is all around us, therefore, we should take full advantage of it. One way of incorporating technology into the classroom is using the smart boar as much as  possible, with interactive lessons and educational games.

2. My classroom

     The school I will be teaching at is a city school. The school district in charge of the school is running extremely well. Therefore as part of the newest improvement all the schools in that school district receive smart boards and computers for their classrooms. This school district is doing so well because there are not politics involved at all with education. However, since my school is located in the city we have lots of poverty in the area surrounding the school.
   My classroom has 20 children 10 of them are girls and 10 are boys. I have 4 children who depend of a wheel chair to move. I also have a emotionally disturbed child who needs to be alone from time to time in order to calm down when he feels overwhelmed. There are also two ELL students from Ecuador who need specialized reading lectures and also required the teacher to allow them extra time to finish their reading and writing assignments.

  

The classroom above illustrates what I would consider a classroom designed to satisfy the needs of each of my students. The classroom has two computers, a smart board and a projector. It also has two kidney tables, one student table, a circle rug (for group activities or reading time) and a privacy corner (marked by the square rug) where children will go when they need time alone, or when they need a time out to think about their behavior. Included are also the teacher’s desk, one small fridge, a sink as well as storage and shelve cabinets form the remaining      

Technologies that I would choose to implement in my classroom would be:

1. Smart board. It will allow me to connect with my students thought interactive games,e-books and other activities that we would engage in using the smart board

1. Blogger. It would allow me to connect with my students and parents outside of the classroom. I would create a community of learners where questions about the classroom can be answered by other students or parents when the teacher is not online. It would also allow us to publish student's and teacher's work.

1. Email, chat or blogger. Those would be my choices for communication with my students and parents outside of the classroom.

1. Skype or internet videos. It would allow us to get live interviews or videos about relevant topics from experts around the globe.

1. Google drive. Is a great tool to create works collaborating with groups without the need to be present physically. It is a great tool because one person can be in China and the other in US and still be able to work on the same document at the same time.

3. Assisted technology for Mark

        My student's name is Mark he just came from Ecuador about six months ago. Mark is an ELL student who really wants to learn. He also broke his spine during a accident in Ecuador and for that reason he is paralyzed from the waist down. Mark needs special adaptations in the classroom in order to be able to move around. Also Mark needs academic accommodation to be able to be active participant in the class and to socialized with other students.

     Mark needs enough room in the classroom to be able to participate in group activities such as reading time. He also needs to have an electronic translator that is also Spanish/English dictionary with him at all times. Due to the fact that he recently moved to the US he does not speak English, therefore those academic accommodation are a must for now.
4. Feedback

5. Bibliography
                                                                Works  cited
 Blogger." : Create Your Free Blog. Google, n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.

"Google Images." Google Images. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.

YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.

YouTube. "'smart board usage"YouTube, n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.

Wherever You Are, Wherever They Are - Skype Keeps You Together." Free Skype Internet

Calls and Cheap Calls to Phones Online. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.

6.Self Reflection

      This project helped me understand that I did learn a lot from my technology class. Now I am able to create pages like this one with no problem at all. In the begging of the course even linking something was a huge challenge, and now it is the easiest thing in the world. I took a risk by recording myself reading the essay, but in the end I improvised and just mentioned what I remembered about my ex teacher. It was a different experience for me. Then I realized that I could add some effects to the video but I decided to leave it just with visual effects and no music, because I thought that it looked nice that way. I think that thanks to this class I learned the benefits of incorporating technology into the classroom would bring to students, teachers and parents. Therefore I can safely say that I will do all I can to incorporate all the technology that I can in my future classroom.