Smart Board and Teaching

For my lesson on Smart Board I will teach a mini-lesson about Japan. This lesson will help fulfill NET Standard 1, because students will gain experience in operating technology systems and also learning proficiency in operating the Smart Board. The lesson will also help fulfill Standard 2, because it will help students develop a positive outlook on technology and the fun and creative ways one can use it to learn. This will also fulfill Standards 4 and 5, because students will learn by the teacher's example about responsible use of technology, and students will also learn about different formats they can use to communicate information.

My activity is a simple Smart Board presentation on Japan. I prepared by choosing the presentation I found off the internet and I added a few maps I got off of google.com to the presentation. Here is the lesson process:

1. Introduce topic by having at least four students come up and writing one thing they know about Japan.
2. Have class as a whole identify the Japanese flag.
3. Have students see if they can locate Japan on the map. If not, show them where it is.
4. Ask students to identify countries neighboring Japan, show them the labeled map if they cannot identify them.
5. Have students name bodies of water surrounded Japan. Show them the map.
6. Have students identify the capital of Japan.
Assessment: Learning will be assessed based on students ability to identify basic information about Japan that was covered during the lesson.

Reflection: I think the Smart Board is a good way to liven up the lessons and keep the students' attention. Perhaps in order to give students a positive attitude about education and other priorities of life it is important to make learning fun. I liked the fun games Katie had us play. Games like the one where we clicked on the lice would be useful as an anticipatory set. As a teacher I would more likely use the type of presentations similar to Chris' lesson and the lesson about the moon phases. Those ones contained a lot of matching and I think they would be good study tools. I have much to learn about the Smart Board. One of my goals for this class will be to become familiar with how the Smart Board works. Professor Sorenson said it takes a teacher about two years to become comfortable with the technology. I am glad that I have two years of student teaching/my practicum to prepare.