Early Childhood Technology

I’m moving on up . . . to the first grade.  I’ve spent the last six years very happily entrenched in the world of the kindergartener.  I really didn’t want to move.  I don’t particularly like change.  Then again, I am so delighted to have a job – working in a private school in Michigan, that I’ll do anything that is necessary.

So I’ve been mulling over the change to take place.  The truth of the matter is that I’ve taught first grade before, but I was a new teacher and it wasn’t my best teaching experience.  But as a friend pointed out, that was then and most experienced teachers look back and their beginning years and say oh, yeah – I’m so much better than I was then!”   As we grow and mature we get better at the art of teaching.

What it comes down to it, there are two things that I get stuck on: One, I have fully accepted the identity of a kindergarten teacher.  In fact, when I fell in love with teaching kindergarten I felt that I came home, that I’ve always been a kindergarten teacher at heart – so  now who am I if not a kindergarten teacher?

Second, I know I’m a really good kindergarten teacher, I know that sounds conceited, but I know and love and live and breathe kindergarten – I really am good at it – the way a confident teacher who loves her job is good.  I have a fear.  What if I’m not as good as a first grade teacher as I am a kindergarten teacher?

Well, this is it.  The change has been made.  I’ve new curriculum to learn.  I have a new team teacher to teach with.  I’m delighted that I’ll have my returning students – we had a fabulous year last year and I’m excited to continue to grow with them!  So – I’m using this process to expose my fears and face them head on.  I’m ready to begin this new school year with a Can Do attitude. 

My principal has faith that I will do a great job, my close friends and cheerleaders have perfect confidence in me.  Now I just need to grab hold of that faith that I will do everything in my power to be the best teacher I can be.  I have a lot at stake, not only my reputation as a teacher, which I take very seriously, especially in the private school community, but my daughter will be in my class again this year.  I owe it to all my students, parents, administration and co-teacher to begin the school year with a positive and enthusiastic attitude.

We’re going to have a great year!

I came across a blog post by G. Steve McCallum that really peaked my interest and made me want to explore the topic more.  Along with discussing the early childhood IT possibilities he brought up the security issues that we are forced to deal with in this day and age.

I suppose I have not put a lot of thought into this area for a while, just as we automatically do something that is ingrained in us.  Back in the late 1990’s I was involved in a grant funded program – project GET-IT; that’s goal was to train educators to effectively incorporate technology in their classrooms.  During each training session, we spent a portion of time educating teaching about the dangers on the internet.  This was before schools had internet filters and firewalls; we were just beginning to explore student internet agreements and such.  Now certain security measures are second nature to me – for instance, all my Facebook friends will be wishing me a happy birthday on a day that is not my real birthday, and when posting family pictures, I do not include the name of my mother’s mother.

So this poses another question.  Am I paranoid?  Perhaps I am.  However, I’d like to make it extremely difficult for people to find out pertinent information about me.  Likewise, on my classroom website, I don’t want to give away too much information about my students.   

I absolutely love using technology with my kindergarteners.  It is a wonderful tool for learning, exploring and sharing.   It is a marvelous marketing tool – a priority for me as a private school educator.  My classroom parents love being able to “see” some of our classroom highlights.  Pictures and voicethreads paint a much better picture of our week than our photocopied newsletter.  My parents also take comfort that I promise to protect their children’s identities.  I don’t need to use the smiley faces that one school tried, but instead have become adept at capturing pictures from behind, profiles and such and occasionally use editing to crop or blur as needed.  I want to share with all the great things we are doing in our classroom, but I refuse to give up my peace of mind to do it.  So over the top or not, that’s what it’s going to look like on my site, at least for now.

Now when I see other teacher’s sites with all those beautiful children’s faces that are engaged in learning I try not to cringe.  I hope that they have asked parent’s permission, do not include first and last names or the exact location of their school.  I hope my anxiety is for naught – like I said, I’m probably a little paranoid.  My goal is NOT to judge, I don’t want to overreact – call it my own personal phobia.  I also realize that perhaps I am the one to take it a little too far.  Hopefully if everyone uses a little common sense all of our young bloggers will be safe.

I find myself with a totally different kind of school year.  Wonderful, but somewhat technology limited so far.  This year I team teach with another K teacher.  You would think that it would give us extra time, but actually, it does the opposite.  Strange, yet true.

Daily, as I log onto my computer, I see my iGoogle account, and look longingly at BeTwittered.  How did I find time to check it so often last year?  How can I find some of that time, and search for some more technology to use in my classroom? Good question.  Do I need more technology than what I used last year?  Better question.  Is it just the time of the year and it will naturally progress as the children continue to develop – more food for though.

So what have I done so far?  Well, I actually keep up on my classroom blog weekly.  That is a good start.   I’m finally writing a post on my professional blog – once again using this rambling as a way to verbalize my scattered thoughts and work through them.

Hmmm.

This week for instance, I have found some little resources that I am incorporating rather nicely:  a little interactive book of The Gingerbread Man, activities from starfall.com and janbrett.com.  Of course, I also used an older piece of technology – a video of Jan Brett’s The Gingerbread Baby. That brings me to another technology tool I’ve been using – my public library’s website.  I choose items from the database, request them online and then pick them up – they’re ready and waiting for me – hooray!

As a side note, I found this great link for interactive stories that I’ve just got to share!  It’s from the UK, so many of the recorded voices have a delightful British accent.  Interactive Stories for Kids!

Now I found myself doing something else this year for the first time.  I have purchased a webkinz for my classroom.  We introduced it yesterday.  Around half of the children already have a webkinz and are familiar with the concept.  We voted on the gender – it is a girl, her name – Chica, and created a kinder friendly log-in and password.  During our Friday free play, we had the sight up on my computer and visible on our big screen television.  It was actually really cool to see my kinders work together to play the “CashCow” game, one child learning how to use my remote mouse to click, and his friends at the screen pointing to groups to click on.  Ok.  So now we’re playing video games in the classroom.  Is that technology at its finest, or is it going down a slippery slope?  Hmmm, interesting question – one I’m sure could be debated from either side.

So, maybe I’m doing ok so far.  Perhaps I need to remember pacing.  Also, it’s not just about the gadgets and gizmos but the content.  I do know that I’m getting the content across to my students, so perhaps I need to be satisfied with that for now.

I did all the work for my workshop presentation and then I came home and I’ve practically avoided all technology for two weeks. 

Diagnosis: A mild case of techno burnout.

It can be great, practical and timesaving.  It can also be a black hole for my time.So now I am looking for my happy medium. 

My webcam is installed, I’ve used it once, and I have plans to use it once or twice this week.  Check.

I’ve updated my classroom website, I’ve been meaning to for two weeks.  I had to edit pictures to blur the faces of the children.  We also just had a really fun and busy couple of weeks in the classroom.  But now that’s done.  Check.

I found some good kidspiration templates that I tweaked a little for my students and added a cool website link to one.  Great tech lesson! Check.

I am working on my first blog post in a few weeks.  Check.

Have been using my Google calendar to organize my most dreaded time of year – end of school year.           

     Hmm.  Spring fever – probably an underlying cause to my techno burnout – actually it’s probably a bit of life burnout.  My husband is currently working out of state.  He’s been gone this time for about two and a half weeks and doesn’t return for another two and a half weeks.  Add to that the end of the year classroom to do items, one daughter in dance class and another in soccer, not to mention homework!  Oh, and yes, my youngest (4) has been tantruming again – I’ve been lucky, no teeth marks yet!

NO WONDER I FEEL BURNT OUT!

So, now what to do?  Prioritize!  My Ning activities – bare minimum.  Twitter- it’s been calling my name, but I have to put it aside – that black hole thing I was talking about, so it gets the least amount of my time right now.  I think all those awesome links I love to follow were leading to my feeling of being overwhelmed.  So twitter is very limited, mostly just what I see on BeTwittered when I check my iGoogle. 

Now I need to breathe deep.  I just realized that just the process of writing this down helps me to identify what’s going on.  There’s a great reason for blogging – public journaling of your thoughts.  Could save people thousands of dollars they would otherwise pay a shrink (grins).

I was chatting with my girlfriend yesterday and telling her how my web/technology knowledge has tripled in just the past six months.  Now that I’m not taking any grad classes, now can I fill up my time questing for knowledge.  I shared with her about my webpage, my new blog, my nings and how much I adore twitter.  

 Tonight I participated in my first Women of Web 2.0 live chat at http://www.edtechtalk.com/.  I saw so many names of people I follow at twitter.  Some of my “tech heroes” were there, Jen Wagner, MariaK and more.  I listened to everyone, and boy, did I feel out of my league.  I have SO much to learn! 

Will I ever have enough time to learn everything I need?  But then, perhaps I need to think about what I am using and not worry about the rest right now.  My next immediate goal is to get a webcam so that I can start using Skype.  Hopefully I will have it in a week or two.  My class really misses our classmate who moved to Germany at Christmas time.   

As far as Moodle, Yugma and some of the other things that were mentioned in the chat.  I’m not going to race to learn it all.  I want to effectively use what I know, learn a little more and enjoy the day in and day out activities of my kindergarten class.  Perhaps sometimes I get a little too caught up in the technology.  I need to be a great teacher first, but one who effectively uses some cool technology.

The Michigan Association for the Education of Young Children conference is over and I’ve had the weekend to pull my thoughts together.
First:  Although I enjoyed the conference and gleaned some new ideas for my classroom, I was disappointed.  The last time I attended four years ago, there were quite a few workshops geared for kindergarteners (even first graders) as well as lots of others that were adaptable.  This time, over a three day conference, I believe there were two kindergarten workshops, one of which was cancelled.  Of course there was quite a lot to adapt, but still, it was disappointing.

Second:  I don’t know if it was me or the conference, but it seemed like much of what was offered I didn’t feel like I needed to learn.  Either it was too young, I’ve taken several workshops like that before, or I know enough that I could probably teach that workshop.  It’s not that I’m being conceited; because there is so much that I still need to learn!  What I think it might be, is that the conference has become geared for preschool teachers and daycare providers who need the basics that I learned in college and then in graduate school, where I got my M.Ed. in Early Childhood Education.  The other kindergarten teachers there were for the most part, from what I gathered, from private schools.  It may be that the public kindergarten not to mention first and second grade teachers are being sent to more skill related conferences.  Disappointing as this conference is known to be so inspiring and teachers leave enthused. 

Third:  Most puzzling for me, is that the workshop I presented on Technology was the only one of its kind.  Is that good?  Is that bad?  What does this say about the importance of technology in the classroom of the young child?  Is it because the teachers don’t know how to use the technology?  Is it because technology simply isn’t provided in these classes and what does that say about administrators of these programs.Then again, how much technology is available for preschoolers and kindergarteners?  How necessary is it for them to be exposed. 

Personally I think there is a variety of technology offered for little children, and I use many different forms of it with my kindergarteners, for their parents as well as for myself as a professional.  My children are not in any way intimidated by technology and eagerly attempt new projects and skills.  Of course it does take teacher involvement every step of the way at this level, but it’s completely possible.
Hmmm, my thoughts have been pulled together, but there are still a lot of issues still needing further discussion.
Please comment on your thoughts. 

“Technology won’t replace teachers. But, those teachers that use technology in their classrooms will replace those teachers that don’t.”

http://teachers20.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=598604%3ATopic%3A2439

Day one – MiAEYC ConferenceI am thrilled to be here, and I’m feeling very relaxed now that my presentation is over. Today I presented my early childhood technology presentation. I think it went well. Ultimately, besides sharing what I’ve learned, my goal is to find early childhood teachers to network with. I know that there are some preschool, kindergarten and lower elementary teachers out there doing lots of technology, but I’m hoping to create a place to congregate together. I would love to have a successful forum to share ideas, lessons, successes, failures and solutions. I hope that forum might be my ning - or someone elses – I’d love to know if someone else has a successful group of early childhood teachers who are interested in sharing tech talk for our classrooms.

Is there ever enough time in the day?  Of course not!  Today is an incredibly busy day for me.  I have things I need to do before I leave for my conference tomorrow  at home – I’m taking my husband and kids with me for a mini vacation so I have to pack for me and them.  I have to leave substitute plans and unfortunately my students will be having two different subs.  I am still putting the finishing touches on my presentation – nothing like waiting until the last minute. 

OK, so everything I mentioned really has nothing to do with my actual job of teaching today.  Isn’t that how it often is.  Our administrators give us extra jobs and reports to do.  Here, tour this parent around the building, and by the way, during your prep time, test this child and see if he is ready to start __next year.   Hello!  I’m a teacher.  I need to teach! 

You may not have the same exact situation as me but I bet you feel like you never have enough time.  I had some unfortunate circumstances collide at the same time and became unavoidably busy.  But isn’t that life.  Something is always coming at us out of the blue.  We are teachers, perhaps we are parents and spouses.  That’s life.  So now what do we do?

When you find our please let me know!

Meanwhile, when I actually stop to take a breath – which is what I’m doing RIGHT NOW – I can notice that my kindergarteners did an absolutely fantastic job writing three sentences about morning, afternoon and evening in their journals.  When I listened, I heard them say; “Hey, there’s the phonogram ‘oo’ as in boot in afternoon.”  “Yeah and there’s our new phonogram ‘ar’ as in jar . . .” Some really great learning is going on and once I can take a breath I can really enjoy it.  I am very lucky – I have a job I love, how many people can say that?  So, in spite of my busyness and my braining whirling, I am taking this break to readjust my thinking for the day, and I am putting myself back into teaching mode and am ready to enjoy my kindergarteners . . .as soon as they return from recess!

I love technology.  I love using it.  I love finding ways to incorporate it into my kindergarten classroom.  I have a privilege of working in a school with small class sizes and lots of technology.  My students love their two tech times with the tech teacher each week, but they really have tech time daily with me.  This year I decided to apply to present a workshop at the Michigan Association for the Education of Young Children (MiAEYC) Conference in April.  “Fun and Effective Ways to Use Technology in Your Early Childhood Classroom” is the name of my presentation.  So I submitted my proposal, was accepted and now I have to put together my presentation.  I went into techno overload.  I joined, perused and often tried every new technology idea that I came into contact with.  I not only have a mission, but an obligation to create an informative presentation that Early Childhood teachers can take back to their classrooms and use!  I created a simple classroom website.  I joined a ning.  I joined twitter.  I started my own ning. (Still in it’s infancy.)  Then I was asked – “Do you have a blog?”  Humph.  I don’t need a blog, I thought.  What can I say that’s important enough for someone else to read it?  Wow, these other bloggers are really good writers.  They sound so . . . professional . . . so . . . grown up.  I can’t do that. . . but then I thought about it.  Ok, perhaps I won’t have the most profound blog – but it will be MY blog.  If I want to show my co-workers and workshop attendees’ realistic things they can do, I should try them first.  I really can’t knock it until I’ve tried it.  So now I’m stepping up and acting like a real grown up professional.  I’m stepping out of my comfort zone and giving this blogging thing a try.  Who knows, maybe I’ll really like it.