Week 7: Field Interview with Mr. T
May 11, 2014
I had the great pleasure of visiting DJ Bakie Elementary School in Kingston, NH and observing a class with Mr. T. Mr. T is a 4th grade teacher and has been teaching for 4 years.
When I arrived the students were just returning to the classroom from NWEA testing. As the children came in they were pretty wound up. It took a few rounds of having the students sit down together on the carpet and "turn off their voices" to get the class settled. Once everyone was settled down Mr. T introduced me and told the students why I was there. He then went on with instructions for the lesson.Science is a wonderful thing
My observation took place during a science lesson. The students were in groups based on their seating arrangement in class. There were four or five students in each group. Mr. T gave instructions while everyone was seated on the carpet in the middle of the room. One person from each group needed to get a laptop, another person needed to get a temperature probe, and then all students were to return to their desks to read the instructions to figure out what else they were going to need. One by one each group sent a representative student up to Mr. T to get three cups graduated cylinder. Mr. T reminded the students about the setup of their laptop and temperature probe - laptop on one side of the desks and temperature probe way on the other side of the desks, as far away as possible. They were going to be using the temperature probes to measure the temperature of water.
As the students booted up their laptops I began walking around the room and talked to a few of them. I asked one student what login information they were using and they explained to me that they were given a login (which was their first initial last name) in kindergarten and that it is the login they always use. The password changes each year. After logging in they started a program called "Logger Lite". They plugged a temperature probe into one of the USB ports on their laptop and they were ready to go.
The students each had a packet which they had been working on for a few days. Today the students were running three experiments with cold and hot water. First they had to go to the sink and get a predetermined amount of hot water in one cup, and a predetermined amount of cold water in a second cup. As a group they would measure the temperature of the hot water and record the highest temperature they saw. Next they would measure the temperature of the cold water and record the lowest temperature they saw. Finally they would mix the hot and cold water together and measure the temperature of the mixture. They did this three different times with different volumes of hot and cold water. Based on their results they needed to come up with a hypothesis about the temperature as it related to the amount of hot and cold water.
As I watched the students it was obvious to me that they were very comfortable using the computers and the temperature probes. I saw one student remind another that the laptop and the probe had to stay on opposite sides of the desks so that the water didn't get near the laptop. I saw another student reprimand one of his classmates for swinging the temperature probe to try and cool it down, telling him that it would break the wire if he kept swinging it like that. This class has definitely seen its share of technology in the classroom.
Once the science lesson was complete and everything had been cleaned up, Mr. T brought the students back to the carpet in the center of the room. Mr. T read aloud to the students while one group at a time went and cleaned up their desk, packed up their backpack, and stacked their chair to be ready to go when school was over. It was an easy transition from technology to tradition and the students seemed to enjoy it as well.
Interview with Mr. T
I was fortunate to be able to ask Mr. T several questions regarding the use of technology in his classroom. My interview went something like this:
Patty: How often to do you use technology in the classroom?
Mr. T: Every day, multiple times per day.
Patty: What types of technology do you use?
Mr. T: Laptops, Educreations (on the iPad), Mimio (like Smartboard), Kidblog (online blog for students), Senteo clickers, Khan Academy, Reflex math, Loggerlite temperature graphing software and more.
Patty: How do you obtain devices for use in your classroom?
Mr. T: We have a technology committee which works to get devices for use in our school.
Patty: Do all of the teachers in your school use technology at the same level as you?
Mr. T: No. We have 25-ish teachers, and only 5-6 of them are tech savvy.
Patty: What do you do if the technology doesn't work as you expect it to?
Mr. T: You always have to have a Plan B. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen.
Patty: What do you do gain by using the technology?
Mr. T: Engagement of the student, speed and efficiency, help for the environment, and the opportunity to go deeper with the student.
Kodu Game Lab with Mr. T
After school was over I was extremely fortunate to be able to observe Mr. T during his after school "Video Programming Club". This was the first session for a new group, so I got to see Mr. T introduce the program to the students. In the span of one hour Mr. T introduced the program to 15 students, got them each setup on their own computer, and had them creating their own world in Kodu. The club goes for four weeks and Mr. T said that at the end of the four weeks every student has a working video game. Mr. T said that the purpose of the club is to teach students about how programming works.
As I watched the students start to create their worlds in Kodu I was struck by how quiet it was for the first five to ten minutes. Every student was deep into finding their way around Kodu. Then all at once the room exploded with questions and conversations:
"Mr. T can you show me how to make this guy fly?"
"Hey, how did you do that? Show me how you did that!"
"Mr. T check out my world!"
"Wow that's a really cool lava pool!"
There was major collaboration between the students and their neighbors. One student was working and the program crashed. He restarted the computer and program and recovered his work without asking any questions. Mr. T didn't know anything had happened! By the end of the one hour session one student actually had a partially working game!
Final thought from Mr. T:
"The technology isn't the teacher. I am the teacher who uses the technology as a tool to educate."
I learned a great deal from this assignment. I was able to observe a teacher who has embraced the use of technology in their classroom. Mr. T has his own website which includes a page of links for the students to use. This is similar to the portaportal and diigo sites that we learned about in class. I was able to see students using technology in the classroom and creating their own video games in a club after school. This field experience was fantastic for me. Not only did I learn a great deal, but more importantly I got to see the reality of a classroom.
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