The students in the classroom use an extraordinary amount of technology. Part of this reason may be to the shift of the digital age post COVID and I know for sure a large reason for it is because my cooperating teacher told me the copy machine has been down all year. She simply cannot use worksheets as she cannot make copies of them. I did notice her hand writing the assignment for two special ED students which I thought was a stellar example of altering the curriculum as needed for each student and kind of her to put so much work into handwriting the assignment. Students mostly used Chromebook and they all seemed fairly confident with the technology.

From what I observed there was two types of ways the students used their chrome books. The first was the teacher would lecture with an interactive activity on the board and students would follow along with her on their own devices, highlighting and interacting as instructed. The second way was independent work. They would write essays, fill out study guides, and play class games all independently. Most of the software used by the teacher weren’t programs but rather scanned PDF’s that would have been a physical worksheet being utilized or else a premade PowerPoint. However, when I was there on Monday the students were playing a review game called, “Blooket.” It was similar to Kahoot however you acquired points by choosing students to steal a percentage of their points as a reward for answering correctly. I foresaw many fights breaking out over this and indeed they did.

One way in which the hardware is impeding the conditions that make student learning possible is that mistakes are often made on virtual worksheets. Yesterday at least 5 students unknowingly deleted the word bank and didn’t understand that they deleted it or how to get it back. This would not happen if it was on a piece of printed paper. For my cooperating teacher, the technology like this review game allows offloading because she does not have to do anything but walk around the classroom. The game asks the questions, records students accuracy rates, and presents the results to the teacher. Overall, the classroom is loaded with technology in ways that both facilitate and impede the conditions that make student learning possible.

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