Edel 3250 Service Learning Project

Crissa Whiting & Ashley McDonald

EDEL 3250:004

Our school is located in Springville which is in Nebo School District. This school is a Title 1 school. There is a total of 611 students and 306 of them get free lunch. In our 6th grade classroom there was 27 students. Out of the 27 students there were 10 Hispanics and the rest were Caucasian. Our cooperating teacher was Mrs. Peck.
We feel that our relationship with our cooperating teacher was really great. She trusted us enough to allow us to take over many of the tasks during the day while we were there. We were able to gain a great experience from field, and we feel like we have learned so much more by going to the elementary school and applying what we have learned this semester in class.
Our cooperating teacher felt that our digital story went very well, and that the children really enjoyed the technology piece. She felt that it gave them a new experience. Mrs. Peck thought it was really great that we used the digital story because it gave the students a great visual aid which helps them learn and comprehend so much more. She also felt that the students participated so much more because it was something that they enjoyed learning and watching.
Our cooperating teacher was very thrilled with the way the lesson ended up. She told us that because it was a new experience for the children that she felt that they would be able to remember what they learned a lot better. Mrs. Peck also felt that the student participation increased in this lesson because the students were intrigued. We feel that from this lesson our teacher really gained the appreciation for technology, and how much it can really add to a lesson. She strongly believes in visual aids for her lessons so she was glad to see how many visual aids we actually used for the students.
We feel that the training session went very well. Mrs. Peck said that she was so glad to be able to learn something new about technology. We feel that is was so nice to be able to teach our cooperating teacher about PhotoStory 3 because now she will have more technology tools to choose from in the future. Our cooperating teacher was very intrigued throughout the whole training session, and she was taking notes the whole time. This helped us realize that she really was interested in learning about new technology skills. This is in turn made us feel very happy that we could broaden her technology skills/tools.
We felt that this was a great opportunity to share our knowledge of technology with our cooperating teacher, Mrs. Peck. Mrs. Peck and the school for that matter did not use or have a lot of technology in the classrooms. When we used technology in our lesson we felt like our students responded really well to the technology being used. We were happy to share our knowledge of digital stories with Mrs. Peck because it is a great and easy tool to know how to use. We also hope by teaching our teacher about digital stories that she will use them in her classroom more to have a change in teaching more often.
Mrs. Peck gained knowledge of how to create a digital story. She learned about PhotoStory 3 which is an awesome FREE tool for anyone to use. She also learned a new way of technology and how to integrate it into her future lessons.
We now have a better knowledge of how to create a digital story and how to use PhotoStory 3. We learned better by teaching some one else and we were more then happy to share our knowledge that we gained. It was also nice to share our knowledge because it showed Mrs. Peck how much effort we put into the digital story and how much we enjoy using technology to teach.
We feel like this service learning opportunity was worth it because we gained a stronger knowledge of digital stories and how to create one. It was also worth it because Mrs. Peck now has a new way to teach her class and future classes. Where our future students are becoming more and more involved with technology it helps to show our students that we are in tune with technology and enjoy it’s benefits as well.