Calculator fail

This week in my kindergarten class our math lesson was about the calculator and how to use its basic functions.This lesson is one of my favorites because many of my students have never seen a calculator prior that moment. One child even exclaimed, "wow its like an iPad!"

Flashback to 1994 when I was about 6 years old and at Radio Shack with my parents. I spotted the coolest electronic in the store: a teal calculator with colorful buttons that even allowed you to play addition and subtraction games! I was in love with it! I asked Santa for it for Christmas and everything. When Christmas morning came around I opened many gifts, and I am sure I was happy to have new things, but the calculator was not there. After everything had been opened my dad pointed to one last gift wedged way behind the tree with my name on it. I ripped open the paper and found my beloved calculator. I was the happiest child in that moment.

Flash forward to 2015 in math class, I demonstrated how to turn it on/off and how to solve addition and subtraction problems. The students returned to their seats ready to try out their calculators on some tough problems I has created. After a few minutes one child came up to me proclaiming that her calculator did not work. I asked her to demonstrate 2 + 2 =. She touched the 2 and nothing appeared, she touched the + and nothing appeared, she touched the other 2 and nothing appeared and looked at me with a "see I told you it was broken" look. It took me a moment to keep from laughing. She was not pushing the calculator buttons she was touching them. This child lives in the touch screen generation and did not realize she needed to physically push the buttons down in order to use the calculator correctly.

The more I thought about this I couldn't decide; Is my math lesson outdated? Should students be taught how to use the calculator app instead of an actual calculator? Do students have too much access to touch technology or is this just the future for learning?

Learning How to Blog

Hello!

This week has been a huge learning curve for me as I began building my Personal Learning Network (PLN). This week's activities included:

• setting up a Twitter account... follow me at @acollepardi
• joining Feedly.com and began following education, educational leadership, and educational technology feeds
• learning how to link my Feedly account to my blog... see link at the bottom of my blog
• learning how to follow all my classmates blogs 
• downloading the podcast app and subscribing to educational, kindergarten technology, and educational leadership podcasts 

Needless to say, I have learned so much already. From learning just how to use these different programs to reading and exploring the content available- there is so much out there! I am very excited for this class and all the things I will learn about technology and how I can use it more in the classroom. 

Hope everyone has a great week and stay tuned as I learn how to be a tech-savvy leader! 

Here we go...

Hi classmates!

-Angie Collepardi