Lesson Three

I’ve really enjoyed this week’s lessons and videos. I used to believe that technology belonged in higher education and should be avoided or at least limited in early childhood classrooms. I couldn’t have been farther from what I now believe. I did not realize how many resources there are for young children to use technology. There are so many tools to make planning and assessing easier for teachers, but also to make lessons more appealing for the students.

The video we watched concerning tablet computers particularly appealed to me. I was fascinated at how the teacher was able to teach everything he would ordinarily teach through tablet computers, a tool that was significantly less than a desktop computer. I would really like to experiment with some of these tools and gain better skills at developing lessons that use computers, cameras, tablets, and Smart Boards.

While I am not currently teaching, I have some ideas of what I would like to send home to parents. Having worked in Head Start for the past two years I recognize that there are many parents who have difficulty reading large amounts of text, if they are able to read at all. Something I find helps many parents is to highlight or bold face the critically important areas. Microsoft word, along with other publishing programs, has a feature that allows you to change the colors of text as well as highlight and boldface the print.

I am an advocate for parental involvement in schools, whether it is through participation in the classroom, or simply knowing what their child is learning in schools. Therefore weekly letters sharing what we’re discussing are very important to help parents feel connected to their child’s education. I plan to also send out individual weekly contact sheets telling something positive that each individual child has achieved. I plan to work with children who have special needs and learning disabilities. For many parents the only contact they hear from the school is negative. Every child can succeed at something weekly, and parents need to know that.

The document below is an example of a parent letter using the highligher technique to draw attention to key important information.