Integrating Technology into my classroom

Instead of reviewing a state standard, I decided to reflect upon a few ways in which I can integrate technology into the classroom in which I work. I work with first and second grade special education students in a self contained classroom. We do lots of fun activities with them, yet we do not use the computer and different technologies very often. We have access to NetBooks in school, yet have had trouble thinking of ways to bring them into the classroom.

Today we were working with our students on composing stories about imaginary planets in imaginary galaxies. We had the students first fill out a graphic organizer with information about what they saw, smelled, heard, and felt on the planet. They worked on paper and this would have been a great opportunity to have them work on Inspiration. They could have organized more ideas about the sensory information using Inspiration, which could have helped a few of our students who had difficulties visualizing their maps. Their information would have been much more organized and their writing execution much more precise and accurate then with the forms we created for them.