Computer

by Michael Jhun Angelo T. Bea

Introduction

     There are 22 students in my fifth grade class, 10 boys and 12 girls. Most of the students are 9 – 10 years old. They are coded as ESL students, receiving all of their instruction in English; the rest of the group is classified as a Bilingual Transitional Class and they receive all of their instruction in English as well. Three of the students are in the TAG program, four are in the Advanced Math program, five immigrant children struggling to read are in the Accelerated Reading program, and the rest are average students, which are reinforced with after school activities and tutoring. In the technology area, all of the students can log in the computer, create a Word document, save files, and access the Internet Explorer. Unsupervised, they would rather navigate to Cool Math.Com or Inventivekids.Com and play games. They all have a functional knowledge of the keyboard, but are not proficient in typing. Most of them use two – four fingers on the keyboard, instead of ten. Although they are all familiar with the concept of searching for information in the Media Center using books, Encyclopedias, and Atlas, they have not experienced a search for a specific topic using the Internet. The students responded positively to the lessons that have been prepared using presentation station and my visual cues. They are auditory learners, often doing something else while the lesson is in progress, but they respond quickly and accurately to the evaluation questions. All of students can sit and do about 20 – 30 minutes of paper and pencil, but after that, they all get restless. This is when the behavior problems begin. The LEP students still have several vocabulary-related questions and I continuously try to compensate for the lack of background knowledge. All of the students are kinesthetic learners, preferring to use concrete materials to just reading about it, and the students continuously are interacting among themselves. 

Task

TEKS - 5.25 Social Studies skills. The student applies critical-thinking skills to organize and use information acquired from a variety of sources including electronic technology.

LIBRARY - Principle 3. The librarian collaborates, designs, and provides ongoing instruction for staff and students in the integration of information technology and information literacy, emphasizing and modeling the ethical use of resources.

TECHNOLOGY - 5.4 Information Acquisition. The student uses a variety of strategies to acquire information from electronic resources, with appropriate supervision.

Process

     In the Media Center, teacher and librarian will gather the students around the presentation station and conduct a discussion about websites that the students visit frequently using collaborations from the student’s journals or logs. After the discussion, students will view a PowerPoint presentation on website evaluations and they will be introduced to the Website Evaluation Form to be used during the assignment. Finally, the teacher and the librarian will divide the group into two smaller groups and take them to different stations to guide them through the stages of a search, using the Boolean strategies, the different kinds of search engines, and choosing a website for evaluation. Both groups will be able to witness and aid in the evaluation of a pre-selected website with the teacher or the librarian, prior to doing the exercise in pairs. 

Conclusion

New technologies are dramatically altering every aspect of life from work to education.

In particular, multimedia technologies, like CD-ROMs and Internet websites produce new resources and material for expanding education.

I demonstrate how this lesson provides important tools for any content area of education, as well as making the reality of the collaboration vivid in the school environment. Also, multimedia can provide an important supplement to multicultural education, bringing the experiences of marginal and oppressed groups to the mainstream. The fields of science and math increasingly rely on technology for scientific visualization, data visualization, three-dimensional modeling and online searching. These technologies can be incorporated into interactive multimedia activities for students, often improving the motivation, learning, and academic engagement of students. It’s important that students get contact with the newer technologies for math and science, including the use of computer graphics, the Tablet PC, immersive virtual reality for scientific visualization and internet. This lesson support learning and provides applications for creative,

interactive project-based activities for elementary, middle and high school students that integrate the use of technology and build technology skills.