I realize I should have written about this much earlier, but with the end of the year coming upon us faster than we can expect, this is the first chance I’ve had to sit down and spend some time with this blog in quite awhile. During the second week of April, Matt and I attended a technology fair in downtown Grand Rapids. Professors from Grand Valley had many different booths, so much so that we actually missed the keynote speaker.
To get down to business, I actually found this fair to be quite interesting. I say “actually” because I came into the fair with negative expectations; I’m not a huge fan of tech-y kind of conferences. Not that there is anything wrong with technology or the people that thoroughly enjoy it- I’m just not one of those people. However, I really enjoyed myself at this technology fair. All of the information we received was very helpful and could prove useful as as begin my teacher assisting at Grandville Middle school this fall and eventually in my student teaching as well. Much of the technology will be very helpful to me as a volleyball coach as well.
On to the specifics. Matt and I visited quite a few booths, but one of the most memorable tables to me was the booth with the clicker. This booth was run by one of the professors in the Geology department (Peter Wampler) where I have been able (or forced) to spend much of my time here at Grand Valley. Matt and I took a quiz on plate tectonics using the clickers, which allowed the professor to give quizzes on a big screen in class. This tool would be excellent for reviewing for tests, as each student can see what answers they submitted and whether those answers were right or wrong. I’m happy to say I did fairly well on the quiz…you can ask Matt how he did yourselves. 
Next, we visited a booth presented by the people of Physical Education. This booth was chiefly interesting to me in terms of coaching. The woman we spoke with had great ideas about utilizing heartrate monitors in practices to increase athlete productivity. She gave great examples about increasing meet times for cross country and gave us ideas as to how to use those monitors and different drills to use for our volleyball teams when we become coaches. In addition, she also stressed the importance of using PDA’s in a classroom or a coaching setting.
Yet another booth we visited was the one involving Interactive Whiteboard/Powerpoint technology. This booth was my favorite (no offense, Prof. Rozema). This station showed Matt and I the ins and outs of using a whiteboard in combination with powerpoint instead of taking typical classroom notes. This program allows the teacher to write notes on a powerpoint and save them for later, as well as make new notes and share them with students. I thought this was a FANTASTIC idea! I really want one for my classroom in the future. I called my Mom after talking with the representative from this booth, and she said that the high school she teaches at is purchasing two of these whiteboards, so maybe I’ll get lucky enough to have one of my own when I am hired for a teaching job somewhere in the United States in the next year or so!
The last booth we visited was the Second Life booth set up by our own Professor Rozema. I have to admit, I’m not much of a “Sims’ type person, but the information and the idea of having another whole world for your students to enter into and learn about their texts in sort of an escaping manner is a wonderful idea. I can see how students that are really into video games would absolutely love this software. I’d like to see a Second Life World done on the Great Gatsby.
