Towards the end of day 2 at Tech Club the kids had used Google maps to explore some towns that they were familiar with. The kids were very excited about using the satellite maps, and most of them were familiar with how to navigate the program. Our plan for day 3 was to further explore our world using Google Earth; with an emphasis of using the National Geographic layer to explore interesting facts and stories about the states. This lesson was going to fit into our over all goal of creating an after-school blog that could be continued throughout the course of the school year. I was excited to create the blog, which would motivate the kids to work hard on providing content they could take pride in.
Fortunately I had taken some time to use the computers at the school one day prior to our scheduled lesson. I quickly found out that even though technology exist which can motivate and benefit children's learning, often times there are barriers that prevent it's implementation in the schools. My first road block occurred when I tried to access blogger on the schools computers. The school has a block on any programs that have a blog extension. I also tried to setup a word press blog but was quickly redirected to a notice about the blog extension. Strike one was a mildly devastating, but I hoped that there would be another possible route using either Google docs or Google sites. Fortunately it appears that we may be able to build a class site using Google sites, which will require doing a bit of research on how to use the program. I am sure that with some time on the Google sites application I will be able to build a site that will be workable for the program, however it appears to be a bit more complicated to use than either blogger or WordPress
The second road block was that Google earth is not a program that the school has uploaded to their computers. I contacted the library staff to find out about the use of Google earth and they directed me to Mrs. O'Shea, who is the technology liaison for the school. When I arrived at the club today, the librarian informed me that there had already been a request for the program, but there was concern on the amount of space that was required to run the program on the schools computers. There is an outside possibility that Google Earth will become a platform on the new I-Pads the school purchased, but they are still in the process of seeing how much room will be left on the I-Pads after they load the programs they already have planned for the new technology.
With this in mind we were limited on where to go with this lesson. We decided to continue researching the states using the Library of Congress website, rather than the World Book Program we used the week before. The Library of Congress site provided more in depth articles, with some stories about important figures or stories that are unique to each state. We instructed the kids that we would provide them with a platform to put their work on our new site, that parents will eventually be able to view.
The lessons learned this week is that even though there is some amazing technology available, there are many obstacles to implementing it's use. I have learned that implementing technology in the classroom environment requires very advanced planning and lots of patience!
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