Computer classes and younger students

Computer classes for children in preschool and kindergarten is a topic that can raise some tempers in certain quarters. I have taught computer classes for children as young as 3 who would troop in to my computer lab twice a week for 45 minutes for …for what? The children were too small to see the screen properly without putting cushions on the chair. None of them could read or write. Why were they in computer classes? The answer is, of course, to give their teacher a prep period.

Students at preschool age should be working on a multitude of other tasks more appropriate for their age and developmental level than sitting in front of a computer monitor. I do think that small children should be introduced to computers, but by their parents in very short spurts. When my children were small, they would sit on my lap and listen to a Talking Book and then we’d go out and play.

As far as kindergarten students, computer use should be integrated in with other classroom activities, and should involve only short periods of time. Placing 15 or 20 or 30 students in a lab with one computer teacher for 45 minutes twice a week is basically a waste of time as the small ones will spend a significant part of each period waiting for help from the teacher when the computer freezes or they accidentally turn the program off or they get lost in their program. You know that a computer period is too long when students ask how much longer before the period is over. Activities need to be short and focused

When I was a classroom teacher and teaching second grade, my students loved going in to the lab to work because they were continuing on with something that they had started in the classroom. During those years, I had a rather large first grade class of students that would come in to the computer lab, but I loved having them there because their teacher had a plan for what he wanted them to accomplish, and he had done the groundwork so that I, as the computer teacher, wasn’t creating lessons unrelated to what they were doing in the classroom.

As more and more international schools insist that candidates for teaching positions be computer literate and familiar with integrating technology in to the regular curriculum, life will be easier for the computer teacher who has classes of younger students. The ideal situation, in my opinion, is to have mini-labs for primary students where the computer teacher goes in to the classroom and works with small groups of students on specific tasks with clear goals related to their daily activities. The computer teacher and the classroom teacher work together during this time rotating students using a center model for instruction. This would be a good time to bring in a parent volunteer or two to work with the students as well. In this type of collaborative activity, the kindergartner is developing computer skills while working on other areas of the curriculum.

I’d like to hear other opinions about this issue.

Technology, Teaching, and Retirement

Well, eventually, I was going to get around to this topic as it is one of the main areas of focus for me right now. As I’ve mentioned on my websites an probably here, I plan on retiring at the end of the next school year. I’ve been teaching on and off for the past thirty years – continuously for the past 20 – and I’m at the point where I’m ready to hang it up.

I love teaching. I always have. Back when I was in high school, I planned on being a high school history teacher. Later in college, I was going to teach university level anthropology (and picked up a Ph.D. along the way). Eventually – during a fieldwork stint in Northern California – I decided that I was going to become a regular classroom teacher. I was thinking about Fourth Grade; I’m not sure why Fourth Grade seemed to be the right level (it might have been Miss McNamara my Fourth Grade teacher), but it was the one that I fantasized about when I imagined having my own classroom.

So, let’s take it as established that I love teaching. Why quit? I’m finding that teaching just dominates my life now whereas it didn’t seem to do so before. I find that there is more to do in the same amount of time. When I taught math in Pakistan, I taught six periods a day, but to just three grade levels thus there were three lessons to prepare for each day. When I taught computers in Pakistan, I taught four levels. Right now I teach four levels of math, a level of social studies, and three levels of computers. That gives me 8 levels to prepare for. Class size is somewhat irrelevant here as I do more work with my small classes here than I did with my much larger classes in Pakistan. Add to this trying to keep a school full of aging computers functioning, I spend most of my waking hours working during the week, along with a significant amount of time on the weekends when I do grading that I should have done during the week.

So I have less personal time than before and more that I want to do than ever before. More to do? What’s the hurry? Well, the obvious answer is age. I’m at that age where friends, colleagues, and acquaintances have started dieing. Dealing with mortality is something that I may work on a little more, but death itself is not the worry. I’d just like to get a few more things in while watching the kids grow up. There are some things that I think that I could contribute to the educational community and teaching a few kids in a small school is getting to be at the bottom of that list of contributions.

Once upon a time, in the Pre-9/11 world, I had one of those dream jobs of Technology Coordinator where all that I had to do was teach a few classes and then teach teachers how to integrate technology in with their work. Wow! It was ideal, and kind of frightening. After all, I had wanted a job like that for several years, and suddenly I had it. But then it was what am I going to do? I took a few breaths and started slowly. It was going to be interesting, then 9/11 happened and the job was history. Having a tech coordinator who teaches full load just is not getting the best of the deal for the classroom teacher who wants to learn about technology, and wants to use it in their classroom.

So what can I do if I’m not teaching? I’ve been thinking in terms of being an online mentor , a virtual fairy godfather, for teachers who want to do things but don’t have the time and resources. That might mean extending what I do now (on a limited scale) with giving advice and hints to folks who email me based on reading one of my websites. It might mean developing some more easy to use lesson plans along with justifications for their use and cross-curricular references and connections. It might mean…Well who knows? I’ll be flexible, free, and willing. I’m looking forward to the possibilities.

More on retirement in the near future.