LindaStopper-Reiss

[|preschoolconnections.com]**Email**:st_reiss at smfcsd.org

My favorite personal/professional use of technology
My favorite personal use is emailing friends and family. Professional use of technology would be easy access to the internet for researching information for my classroom, especially medical information of my special needs children and their families.

The most frustrating aspect of using "technology"
Not having enough time to learn everything I need to for work and pleasure. I am very intimidated by technology and not daring enough, especially when it comes to all the uses for teaching.

Vision statement Vision of Settings: Technology, being so important in today's world, is becoming essential even in the early childhood setting. Therefore, my vision will be to integrate technology into my classroom, beyond the use of computers(i.e. picture schedules/Boardmaker; digital cameras; Power Point presentations; grafts/spreadsheets, etc.).

How are you currently engaging students through the use of technology? I have the children assist other students using switches to activate games and toys. I have also given the children "throw-away" cameras to take pictures in the classroom. It was interesting to watch how comfortable the children were with the cameras. Some of the children who had been with me for a few years kept looking for the pictures to come out. Yes, I had used a Polaroid camera often. Sad to say, instamatics have disappeared. We are just embarking on using the digital camera. In addition I have had small groups of children play games on my computer. Some of the games are CD's while others are from the internet. I am also teaching the children how to use the CD player for a listening center.

In the past few weeks I began using the FLIP to record the children during dramatic play. The children were fascinated watching themselves. It was one more way to document play skills, speech development, social interactions, and IEP objectives. In addition to this the children and I looked at the photos they had taken with throw away cameras and started talking about the digital camera. We looked at some of the photos I had taken with the digital and discussed which ones we would like to print. We started looking at how we were going to display the photos and how we could share them with our other classes in the building.

How far have I come where have I made progress? I have made great progress using the digital camera, personally and with the children I teach. I have used the camera more this year in my classroom than in the past several years and am excited about what I have accomplished. As far as challenging myself, I am still easily intimidated but pushing myself to keep going. Probably my greatest successes have been documenting the childrens' interests and progress. My classes have been very involved with construction/building for several months and are always asking to take pictures of their structures or having me capture them by their "works". I realize I need to make a valid effort to continue using the cameras. My goals for next year are to learn more about the flip camera especially editing the movies I've taken and learning how to make books for the classroom.

Final session on April 23, 2010

My greatest accomplishment with technology has been learning how to use power point. I finally realized "an old dog can learn new tricks!"(Ha!Ha!). My greatest pleasure has been watching the children use the camera, preview the pictures, and talk about all that we have done together. In addition I have used the digital camera for recording developmental progress and gains. Many of the pictures will be used for an end-of-the-year project for all our preschool classes.

There are still many more things about technology that I have added to my "bucket list" for the summer.