Practicum Reflection: The Tech-Savvy Classroom Teacher

When you were a primary school student, what did your teacher do and achieve with technology in the classroom? When I was in primary school my classrooms usually had two computers in them, but during class learning experiences the most that we could use would be an overhead projector, or if our teacher had planned and booked a 'computer pod room'. 


As it has been suggested that I blog about the ICT attributes of my cooperating teacher, I did have the opportunity to ask her a few questions. She rated her computing skills quite highly, but admitted to not have acquired these naturally. She had to attend a lot of course and engage in a lot of personal use to keep up with the evolving technology that can be used in a classroom. For support, there is an ICT Executive who runs planning days and professional development days and sessions as planned by the school principal. Apart from this, teachers are made aware of any extra courses or seminars that can be undertaken outside of school hours. Teachers are able to make use of the school intranet and a space similar to UTS's 'blackboard learning' website. On these websites teachers are able to share resources and communicate amongst each other. My cooperating teacher also told me that computers and learning technologies are often the subject of much discussion in staff meetings. Topics such as distribution of resources, appropriate usage by students, and censoring of websites are all common topics.


Our discussion has led me to another dimension of teaching. I really do admire my cooperating teacher for being so proactive in ICT education. I know this won't be as much of a challenge to my cohorts and myself, but hopefully we will be able to keep up and continue to grow in our professional development beyond our tertiary education.