Technology Integration Video

Differentiating Instruction Through Interactive Games 

Using tech tools and games acquired through grants and his own resourcefulness, second-grade teacher 

Robert Pronovost tailors math instruction to match students' individual learning styles. 

After watching this video and then reflecting on my elementary grade years makes me feel ancient.  I remember when I was in the second grade and my school finally received some computers.  However, they were only in the 'Computer Lab' and not in classrooms yet.  Usually, as a class, we would take a trip to the computer lab once a week to use them.  They were of coarse the really old ones with barely any color and had a floppy drive (SHOCK! lol)  I remember mainly using the computers to take our AR (accelerated reader) tests on.  It wasn't until my 7-8th grade year until I really remember having computers in the classroom for us to do activities on.  Even then the encouragement from teachers to use the computers was not good.  Most of them used them as a way to waste time for the students who finished ahead or time or if the teacher didn't feel like teaching that day.

I seriously hope to be like this teacher.  He was very inspirational in his ways of teaching.  He is a great example of how we can still "physically" teach our students but incorporate all the amazing learning tools from technology.  After he taught his lesson, each student would get their computer and play their game.  He referred to it as practice but they had to get enough points to move on to the next level.  He said that the first one was an actual review of the lesson and the only way they could get enough points to move further was to actually grasp the concept.  After that is was fun learning for the student.  I LOVE THIS!  This gives the teacher time to really go around and help the students who really need help on a concept.  However, at the same time the students who get it quickly will not get bored because the application allows to continue educating them in a fun way.

I also find inspiring the amount of work this teacher put in to get this technology for his classroom. I took the quote directly from him: "My first two years that I was teaching, I didn't have any technology in my classroom. Not having access to those tools and knowing how valuable they could be is what kind of drove me to reach out to companies around, which led to receiving a few computers from Apple, and then recently receiving a large grant from Facebook as well. The iPod Touches came to us through a SIG grant, school improvement grant. Dream Box we started this year. We are just trying out, on a trial basis, because most of the software we use in this classroom I either get through beta testing or through free trials. " I feel like if we had more teachers like this our education system would be a lot better.

I also wanted to share this quote from Mr. Pronovost as well: "I encourage my students to use all the tools that are available to them. One thing that we emphasize in this class is that using computers is not always the best tool. Using your hands may not always be the best tool. And so when I have some students on Planet Turtle, they might be solving the problem on their white board, or they might be counting on their fingers, because that's the best strategy for them." 

What a great way to work everything and every way of learning together!!