The End is in Sight

Well, it's the end of May. We only have a few more days until finals and everything is crazy right now. I've got students using iPods to assist them as they finish reading Daniel's Story or Night. Students are using computers to finish typing essays, paragraphs, poems, and to conduct research. We've had some printing problems which have delayed getting some work printed for portfolios, and I'm still not sure how all of that is going to be resolved.

Overall, it's a little hard to reflect when I'm still in the middle of all the craziness. However, I know that is what I'm supposed to do right now, so I'm going to try. I think this year has had some great successes. I don't know if we exactly "lived the dream" as far as technology goes, but we definitely made some great progress. The problem with evaluating this year is that our expectations for ourselves are so high. Every time we try something, we always look at what we have done and say, "How can we do this better next time?" That means it's hard to look back on this year without looking at the areas for improvement.

I do know that my 8th grade team agrees that using the technology has been a great motivator for the kids, and for us, as well. We are so happy that we applied for this grant and cannot imagine teaching without it now. Our successes have been in working together to troubleshoot and to come up with ideas for great lessons. I know our kids really enjoyed using the iPods to view videos that connected to our curriculum, talking about what they read on Ning, and designing their own heroes online on HeroMachine. They also enjoyed just being able to access info on a computer or to be able to type up their writing whenever they needed to do so. The challenges have been finding the time to seamlessly fit the technology into our lessons. We've had a million great ideas, but we don't always have the time to carry them out or to fit them into the curriculum.

I think we've learned so much, and we're excited to actually start next year with the technology and everything we have learned this year. I know starting from Day 1 with all of our expertise will make next year run much more smoothly. We're ready for a break and some time for reflection, but we'll be excited when it comes time to get started next year!