EDEL 3250 Field Experience Service Learning Project

EDEL 3250 Field Experience Service Learning Project
Heather Allan and Elisa Kelson
November 28, 2010


1) Our first meeting with our cooperating teacher was the first week of November.
2) After discussing the curriculum our class would be studying during our field experience we decided with our cooperative teacher to create a digital story about Utah’s geologic features.
3) We started our digital story in the computer lab at UVU and continued work with our story at home on our personal computers. By downloading the photo story directly to our computers we were able to create and edit our digital story at home, making it much more efficient than trying to find times to meet in the computer lab.
4) We showed our digital story during the last lesson we taught about Utah Geography. We used it to give the students another overview of all of Utah’s geographic features before they started creating their Utah geography salt dough maps. The students loved the digital story and thought it was great to hear our voices on the movie. They enjoyed watching the digital story and it kept their attention as well as refreshed their memories of the different areas and landforms. The coordinating teacher as well as our field supervisor who observed our lesson both commented on what a great movie we had created.
5) We talked with our coordinating teacher about technology in the classroom and talked to her about creating a link to her blog and website, as well as telling her about the photo story program we created our story with. Our coordinating teacher used a apple computer so she would have to create her digital story with a different program. She enjoyed our digital story and the other vidcasts we created to supplement our lessons, but she didn’t use technology in her classroom very much the only equipment she used was the over head projector.
6) A) By going into this classroom we were able to show the cooperative teacher current technology could help enrich her lessons and help provide her students with more learning experiences. We could help her by sharing the information we have on creating digital stories and vidcasts along with giving her assistance in setting up her classroom blog and it’s links in her Canyon’s School District site.
b) By working in this classroom and seeing the need we were able to address a need in our community and assist in providing additional help in this classroom.
c) In working in this classroom we became very aware of the need for additional help in this grade level, since most of the classes were set at 31 students.

7) We were assigned to work at the Willow Springs Elementary located in Draper, Utah in the Canyons School District. This was a new school built only four years ago in a new urban higher income area. Our assignment was to work with Miss Crista Holt in the 4th grade. Our class had 31 students, with 18 boys and 22 girls.
We enjoyed working with Miss Holt and felt that she appreciated our help in the classroom. We assisted her in various areas with; reading groups, spelling groups, and math groups. She was good to communicate with us and let us know what she needed and also very easy to work with and helpful. We treated Miss Holt with respect and professionally and she returned that same respect to us.
She liked our digital story we created but I don’t know if she will herself create something of that nature. She didn’t use very much technology in her classroom and was only interested in having us help her in creating a blog link from her Canyon’s School District site to her blogger account. She seemed always so busy she was unable to devote the time necessary to create and use this type of technology.
She said our lesson was well done, and gave us positive feedback on it. She was always very supportive of our lessons and good to give us helpful hints to improve. We provided many lessons during our field experience teaching more than 8 different lessons over the three week period.
The training session was alright, she only had about 5 minutes in the morning before the students arrived. She was constantly busy creating her team lesson plan for the day, they made their plans for teaching each morning and lunch hour. We were able to discuss technology and talk about how we created our digital story and how she could put links to vidcasts and podcasts on her professional site. She was interested in putting links into her Canyon’s Site which could link her students and parents to her blogger account. We helped give her ideas of how to accomplish this.
This was a good experience and gave us the opportunity to discuss the tools we have already learned in our computer technology course with another teacher. Our cooperative teacher had also attended UVU four years prior, but her computer course was very basic and she said she had learned very little. I feel very fortunate to have had to opportunity to learn so much about technology over the past two semesters. Technology is such a benefit if used correctly in the classroom. It opens windows and minds to new ideas and gives everyone the tools to success.
Together our cooperative teacher and we were able to have a positive experience working in a classroom collaborating information with each other. As student teachers we gained the experience and were able to observe Miss Holt’s teaching style, and Miss Holt was able to observe the use of technology new to her used in the classroom to enrich our lesson. I felt we both gained knowledge from each other. It was a great experience for everyone.
During our field experience we were able to observe many areas involved in teaching. We were able to create interesting lessons, digital stories, and also use our interpersonal skills to help guide our students and help them learn and understand.
This was a great experience and totally worth the time and effort. We learned so much and enjoyed the chance to experience teaching first hand. We had many learning opportunities and experiences which helped us better understand and will continue to help us grow and develop into highly qualified teachers.


https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fETsgsoInYphPRXYoLjRAEJ2j_vzcP55Xitqlh_fdYQ/edit?hl=en