INTEGRATING TECHNOLOGY IN THE CLASSROOM

Jacqueline (Mitzi) Day, Madison County School System, Danielsville, Georgia

On November 9-11, 2005, I attended the Georgia Educational Technology Conference at the Georgia International Convention Center in College Park, Georgia.  During the three day conference, I learned more than I had ever expected to.  It was by far one of the best conferences I have every attended.

I work as an assistant to our Technology Support person at our school.  The information I gathered and learned at this conference will be beneficial to me in many ways.  I will be able to help integrate technology into the curriculum.
 
At the conference, I attended fourteen sessions.  It was interesting to experience a variety of different aspects of technology. One of the sessions was on using Power Point in the classroom taught by Tammy Worchester of ESSDACK.  At this session, I was impressed at the ways the instructor showed us how to use Power Point to get the students involved and showing them a fun new way of learning.  I went back to my school and was ready to show the teachers what I had learned.  For instance, using Power Point, we could use the ABC’s and have students use each letter of the alphabet to describe a person in history.  I bet we sure would have some interesting words for some of our historians!  I believe the students would love using this.

Another session I attended was presented on the search engine of Google.  This was presented by Patrick Crispen from California State University.  I was shocked at all the information you can obtain by using Google.  This is a great reference tool to use at school or home.  When a student is doing a report or looking up information for a project, the sources are unlimited to what they can find to create a great report or project.  All they have to do, most of the time, is just type in one word and all kinds of information will be available for their use.  There are also ways to pinpoint specific information, also.

The Smart Board, presented by Nancy Knowlton, CEO of Smart Technologies, was another session I attended.   The Smart Board is an amazing piece of technology for the classroom.  What a great way to get students involved into interactive learning.  We have a Smart Board at the school I work at but I had no idea all the stuff you can do with this board.  Our teachers are all fired up and excited about using it now.  It is a great tool to use for all subjects.  After showing some teachers how to use it, even those who didn’t want any part of new forms of technology, were excited and motivated to try the Smart Board in their classroom.  Before, no one had an interest to check-it out.  Now, the Smart Board stays checked out all the time now.

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