Online Teaching and Learning

I have first-hand experience with online learning completing the courses for my Master's degree in a completely online setting. These experiences are beneficial to draw from when incorporating technology into my own teaching with elementary students.

The amount of background knowledge regarding specific technologies can make or break an online learning experience. Therefore, as an elementary school teacher I feel it is important for me to expose students to a wide variety of online learning experiences with LOTS of guidance and scaffolding. This will help them when they enter middle school and beyond to engage in online experiences effectively and independently. Given the 20 hour requirement of all students in grades 6-12 to engage in quality online learning experiences; I want to ensure my elementary students are familiar with a variety of online learning tools through teacher modeling, group projects, and enrichment websites that can be used with support from home.

Technologies that qualify as useful online learning experiences in my fourth grade classroom include webquests, blogs, and educational gaming. Incorporating technology into my curriculum requires careful planning, modeling, providing examples, and sustained practice in groups and individually. I use technology to help me teach all content areas: math, reading, writing, science, social studies, and spelling. In order to not overwhelm my students (or their families) I introduce a new technology each month of the school year, so by the end of the year students are comfortable using a variety of technological tools.  The beginning of the year is spent introducing students to navigating their way around a computer and our class website (safely). I use our class website as our home base, so I know where students are headed when we visit the computer lab. I am very limited in my classroom by having only one student computer. 

Webquests help my students explore a variety of topics including endangered animals and biographies of famous people. I like that the websites have been set so students can spend time processing the information instead of searching for information. Blogs are a great tool for shifting book discussions online. While reading a book in class individually or in groups students can post their responses in a place where other students can easily leave comments. I utilize a variety of educational games bookmarked on our class website for repeated practice for students. These sites can be used as a free choice in school, assignment, or assigned for homework outside of school. I especially like Arcademics for online math practice with a variety of topics and Spelling/Vocabulary City to assist students with practicing their weekly lists.

When using technology in my classroom I utilize the gradual release of responsibility model. To introduce an online tool I show my students the resource in a whole class setting using our projector and model how I would like students to use this resource. This process may take a few days depending on the complexity of the tool. I then schedule time in our computer lab when students can practice using the online tool individually or with a partner. Once their exploration phase is complete I will give students a task to complete individually and demonstrate they are able to successfully use the tool.  I have found this strategy very effective with fourth grade students.

I would like to see typing practice become a focus for technology instruction in my fourth grade classroom. The ability for students to type efficiently and quickly is essential for future success in using online learning tools. We spend a lot of time at the beginning of the year learning the location of the keys on the keyboard and practicing typing.  Even though it is not an online learning tool, I personally believe it is very important for students to understand how to effectively use Microsoft Word, or a similar word processing software. 

Technologies that are harder to use with my students are ones that require them to have an individual email account. Technologies such as Wikis or subscribing to RSS feeds are very useful for older students, but not as effective with my age group.  My students and I use sources like Wikipedia to locate information on the web, but I am not expecting them to contribute to the website. We check current events, but because my students do not have one-on-one computing everyday of the week most of the accounts for online learning tools are managed by myself or the district. Students have individual logins, but are not yet responsible for managing their accounts. Exposing students to a lot of experiences should provide them with a strong set of background skills for the upper grades when they will be asked to independently monitor their online learning.