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Teacher interview:
I interviewed Tracy Miller, she has been teaching for 22 years. She currently teaches 3rd grade at Terra Verde Discovery School in Norman. It's a very small private school with only one class per grade, 1-5, with a class limit of 16 students, her class has 12 students this year. They focus on both social and academic curriculum and emphasize outdoor experiences.
Each classroom has a smart board, projector, and iPad loaded with apps with funds available for more, some of the younger classes have purchased an Osmo to go along with the iPad. Each teacher is given a Dell laptop to use in class and at home. Terra Verde is in the process of adding a middle school for grades 6-8 that will have a laptop/google chrome lab and eventually one to one technology. The middle school students will be expected to use technology to complete assignments such as research, word processing, and interactive assignments. 
Tracy uses xtramath.org and spellingcity.com for math and spelling practice andfluency respectively. She also has online subscriptions to BrainPop and Mystery Science. On the iPad she uses math app, Kids Discovery apps, and Burpee garden planer for the plants they have planted this spring. She enjoys using the technology to enhance her lessons and emphasize her content using PowerPoint,  videos, diagrams etc. 

I would like to address upfront that I interviewed my father, Dan Heath. I understand that this is likely frowned upon considering the point of this assignment–however, that being said, my father is a digital media and video production teacher, and thus is the ideal teacher for this particular interview. 

First, I asked Mr. Heath about the technology he currently has available. His class currently has seven HP laptops, two iPad 2's, two Canon video cameras, various lights/microphones/sound recording equipment, a green screen, Adobe Premium Pro for video editing, an LCD projector, and nine older Nikon digital cameras that operate with varied success. Given that the title of the class is literally "Digital Media and Video Production," Dan said that the technology he has available is essential to the class's existence. 

I then asked Dan how he obtains the equipment. Very little of it is actually purchased by the school. Mr. Heath is a member of CTE, or the Career Tech Education program, through which submits requests for grant money. Before he joined this program, he was limited to applying to local grants. 

He informed me that the importance of the class is the first-hand experience the kids receive. Many of his students are interested in pursuing careers in digital media production, and this class gives them access and hands-on experience with much of the same equipment and programs they will encounter in those future careers. Furthermore, kids not interested in that area of further study still benefit by improving their digital media literacy in a rapidly evolving world that is becoming more and more digital media savvy everyday. "This class will hopefully make them more informed consumers and more skilled employees in the workforce," Dan said. 

If he had any needs, it would be increased support and recognition of the importance of his class from his administration. Digital media literacy is a skill set that is becoming more and more essential, and not enough low-income kids have access to the technology necessary to grow in this area. 

After interviewing Mrs. Sanchez I learned that I may be placed in a classroom where I am not given the amount of technology that I would like to have. It will be difficult to make lesson plans using technology when there are not enough for every student to have their own. So then as a teacher, you will have to plan ahead and work with other teachers in order to schedule time in the computer lab for lessons that you want to intergrate technology. I also learned that Mrs. Sanchez is not as familiar with technology as i am or my potential co workers. That is one advantage of being a future educator is that i have grown up using technology so i will not be as intimidated to use technology with my students. I have learned that there will be challenged no matter what the circumstances are, but I will have to do my best to work around those challenges. 

Jennifer Harding, an 11th and 12th grade English teacher in Oklahoma City, discussed with me the implications of technology in her classroom: a room that is being borrowed from a church because the school did not have enough room.

"Right now we don't have much. We don't even have our own building, but when our new school is finished and we make the move there, possibilities will open up for the kids."
Ms. Harding makes use of the technology available to her. She shows videos and presentations to her students using a projector on a white board. She uses a speaker that she can connect to her iPhone for audio readings, interviews, and relevant music. 

"I want them to interact with the material in a variety of ways, and technology can open the door to that. But it is frustrating when the main source of technology that they all have is cell phones. I have almost given up on the battle of cell phones, so next year I won't let them out have them in class. I'm saying, 'no more.'"
During Ms. Harding's 5 years of teaching, cell phones have been a constant issue. At first, she wanted to be lenient, thinking that if she allowed cell phones they would not seem like such an inaccessible object, and therefore would not distract the students from their work as often. However, this proved to be wrong. When given the chance, Ms. Harding's students were using their cell phones for anything other than classroom related activities.   

She would like for technology not to work against her in the classroom. She is here to establish an environment of learning, not of social media. Her students were given little Chromebook computers in some of their classes, but they do not use them for English class. Ms. Harding does like the idea of incorporating the Kindle Fire into her classroom. This would allow her students to use technology while reading, downloading books they would enjoy, and collecting ideas and sources for research papers. She would also like to have a way to monitor the way that technology is being used in her classroom, so anything that is brought in would need to have some kind of teacher controls. Overall, Ms. Harding likes things like paperback books that don't "light up and distract" her students, but she is optimistic about future technological endeavors in her classroom. 

I am currently conduction my field experience at Norman high school, so I interviewed the language arts teacher. I asked questions about technology in her classroom, and I was shocked by her responses.

The Norman high teacher stated that there are so many people using the servers that its impossible for all of them to work. She indicates that it is incredibly frustrating that the servers are slow or freeze whenever students have to use technology in the classroom, she says that it wastes a lot of time just waiting for the servers to work back up again.  

The class is provided with a Smartboard, that she uses daily to keep students on task with their work. The teacher is usually the only one using the Smartboard. Whenever students are working on a research paper, the teacher borrows a cart from the librarian, and then they are provided with Apple notebooks for their papers if the educator allows them to work on their papers in class. 

The teacher stated that she tries to minimize the amount of technology she uses in class because there are a lot of problems that come with it, such as, the servers are slow/down, students do not remember their passwords, students are helpless because they are not used to using technology in an academic way. And interestingly, whenever they do use the computers to type their essays, the students do not take the time to fix their errors, when spellchecking signals that the words are wrong. She also states that all of her students are on different levels of technology, so it takes a lot of class time just to get the basics done. 

She indicates that it is all staff members job to help students with technology. She says she feels that everyone is just leaving it to the English department. She states that all teachers can help. She concludes her statements by, "students need to be exposed to it in other classes too."

As a future teacher, I believe it is important for the entire school to come together and show students how to use technology academically. Educators should not only leave it to English teachers to fix the problem, but all teachers also need and should expose students to technology in the classroom, it will be a life skill that will be useful for them. 

I talked to my mom about this who is a teacher in Texas. She teaches at a very low socioeconomic status school that has very poor funding. She has an old SMARTboard, a computer, and a projector. She says she uses her SMARTboard a lot and really likes it. She wishes that her school had a one to one iPad program because she does not have many technological  resources in the classroom. She uses her SMARTboard during stations and let's her kids play games on it and they adore it. It is like a treat for them to play on the SMARTboard. She says she prefers to write on the regular whiteboard though because it is easier to read for the kids and usually runs smoother. 

Mrs. Tyghter has been and always will be my favorite teacher of all time. She teaches all different kinds of social studies at Glades Middle School in Miramar, FL. She is one of the most engaging and empowering teachers I have ever had and that is because she finds ways to keep class interesting. 

While interviewing her over FaceTime, she told me that her classroom has changed a lot since I have been there. She has decided more group work instead of rows as she used to do. She realized that giving middle school students a place to interact and collaborate is important and beneficial in their social growth. Also, she has recently been blessed with new MacBook Pros for every student, so while they sit in groups they can learn from one another. On this note, she uses MacBooks Pros for almost everything in class. Students take notes on it, do projects, make movies, use interactive maps, and have a pen pal all the way across the world. 

As far as access to technology, she is allowed to download most apps on her own discretion, but if they cost money, she has to fill out a form to get approved to download it on every computer if it has a good reason behind it. She finds is frustrating, though, because sometimes it can take them weeks to approve it. Now, she just works very ahead of time so if she does need a certain program for a project, she has it in time to match her syllabus. Also, the school has an IT department, so if anything goes wrong, she just gives them a call and they are there to fix it right away. Although, she has been realizing how many of her problems have been fixed by students. 

In order to prepare the teachers, the school had a full-day workshop on how to use technology to their best advantage. She had no idea how to use most of it before this, and now she considers herself a pro. This has also helped her in her personal life with having kids who are so up to date with modern technology. She loves it because it has made grading assignments, editing them, and even interacting with her students so much better. Sometimes she will run into a problem of her students being too distracted by the technology but they behave pretty well and responsibly with it for the most part. 

It was so refreshing to know that everything we learn is happening in the real world. She told me that she had her students create a song in GarageBand for a project, which made me incredibly happy to be learning it during this class! Her class has never used iPads, but she does think that the MacBook is an iPad plus more, so she is okay with it. The elementary in the school district does have an iPad program, so some of her students' younger siblings use them so they are pretty familiar with them. She is overall very happy and finds so many unique ways to integrate it with their coursework. 

I interviewed Hayley Henderson from Moore Public Schools. 

1.What are your experiences for using technology in the classroom?
·I’ve used many types of technology in the classroom. The two schools I’ve worked in had different technology available. I've used chrome books, clickers, Mobis (portable writing pad), and some type of interactive white board (right now I have a Smartboard)
2. How to principals/superintendents react to your use of technology?
·My principals have been very supportive of my use of technology and even encourage it. They want me to do anything and everything I can to keep my students' attention and learn to the best of their abilities.
3. What are your best experiences with technology in the classroom?  
·My best experience has been with chrome books. In my student teaching, we had class sets of Chrome books so every student had one on one experience with them. They really helped to change their perspective on assignments. It gave really easy access to research and Google classroom (my personal favorite).
4. What are some not so good experiences that you have had with technology?
·When I haven’t been properly trained on a piece of technology is when its the most difficult to use. I'm not the best at teaching myself so if no one has told me what to do, Im pretty lost. My interactive white board and Mobi were that way when I first started last year in Norman.
5. Are there any rules to what you can use technology on in the classroom?
·There are no rules that I am aware of. Right now I’m limited as to the amount of times I can have access to the computer lab or I’m at the mercy of being on the check out list for classroom sets of laptops but besides that, we have pretty free reign over what we do in our classrooms.
6. What kinds of technology do you have access to?
·At my current school, we have laptop carts and clickers that we can check out if we need them. I have 2 desktops in my classroom that I let students do extra practice on when they finish their class work. I also have a rotating schedule with the other two fifth grade teachers on my team so every other week I have a 45 minute time period of access to the computer lab.
7. Do you like using technology in the classroom for the benefit of your students? ·Whenever I use technology it is always to the benefit of my students. I feel like having the technology gives a little change to the monotony that a school day can have. It holds their interest better especially since kids these days are very into anything that has a plug or battery.
8. Does your school train you on how to use technology?  
·I remember getting quite a bit of training at OU but available technology varies from district to district. I remember learning about smartboards at OU but that wasn’t what I had when I got my first teaching job. When I took the EIPT class with Dr. Cullen, we had mentors who were strong in technology but also very reputable in their field (whether it was early childhood, elementary, foreign lang, etc). My mentor ended up being who I student taught with and she helped me a lot during that semester and my first year with anything that I did not know already.  


Through this information I learned, I learned that technology can be a positive thing, but it can also be limited on the amount of access you have to it. It is really up the the schools to know how much access you will have in your classroom. Most people in schools are very much on board with teachers using technology and are very supportive of that. 

For this badge, I interviewed Irene Carstairs, a deputy head teacher at Amisfield Primary School in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. Even though this is a rural school with only 45 pupils in the whole school, they have good access to technology. All classrooms in the school have either a Smartboard or a Promethean board, and have access to laptops and netbooks. This technology is available to be used at any time. In Scotland, technology is issued by the local authority, however the school budget can be used to buy additional resources such as Education City and Accelerated Reading programs, which can provide extra support for children who may struggle in certain areas of study. These resources are innovative and fun for children to use and she believes they are very effective in contributing to children's learning. In addition, Ms Carstairs mentioned that the parent council may also contribute to extra technological resources. She also mentioned the training of using such technology in the classroom is offered very often and is of a very high standard, which she found very effective and helpful and has given her more confidence to use technology in the classroom. Due to the location of the school, connectivity problems can sometimes occur and become a difficulty in the classroom. However, the tech support system is excellent and always helpful. This support has led to Ms Carstairs being very confident in using technology in her classroom and she can see how this technology benefits the children’s learning. By interviewing Ms Carstairs, I have been given a lot more insight into technology and how this will impact my future career. As I will be teaching in Scotland, I now know that I will have the opportunity to receive excellent training for technology. I believe this will be very useful and allow me to incorporate this learned knowledge into the classroom to benefit the children in my future classroom. In my future classroom, I will be taking advantage of the availability of such resources and including the use of them in lessons in order to create fun and exciting learning experiences. On the whole, I believe the interview with Ms Carstairs was very effective as it gave me an in-depth perspective on technology in the classroom and the support given to ensure it is being used correctly to benefit the children's learning. I will definitely remember this useful information when I graduate and start teaching, as it is so important to use the technology that is available and how this impacts the children's learning.

I chose to interview a 2nd grade teacher who I know from personal experience, does a phenomenal job with the students in her class. When interviewing Ms. Paxton she stated that she most frequently uses the smart board, computer lab, and checks out iPads. She said that when she first began using the smart board she did not know how to use it to the fullest. Now she maximizes its capabilities with tons of smart board resources. For example, when her kids begin to get restless she will put on kids yoga and they stand in front of the board and repeat after the instructor. She said at the beginning of her teaching career she never thought she would use something like that. When she uses the computer lab she uses various systems depending on what she wants to accomplish. One thing she finds valuable is teaching students typing. This can help them in their future in almost any job they choose. She said she uses explain everything on the iPads along with kahoot. I think that is so cool that so many schools are using kahoot as a fun way to assess students. I saw another teacher using kahoot at Arthur Elementary. In conclusion, she said she enjoys using technology in the class and has a tech person she can ask for help from at her school. 

I am really interested in this subject of technology in education. Because of this I was compelled to ask more than one teacher their insight on technology in the classroom. I personally know the teachers I interviewed and chose to do a virtual interview. I value a teacher's time and I understand that meeting up with a teacher may be difficult and interrupt their planning for their students. I did not want to interfere with their time or planning. I made a google doc and typed a letter to the teachers I know. In the letter I explained that I am curious as to how technology is incorporated in their classroom. I listed a set of questions that I was particularly interested in. my letter was sent as follows; 
Dear Mrs. (Boyer, Kouba and Lord)  
I am writing today to see if you would be willing to participate in a virtual interview with me about technology in your classroom. I would love to talk to you about what kind of classroom you have! 
I would love to know what age/grade you teach, how many students you have, all the different types of technology in your classroom, what needs you may have concerning technology in your classroom and what support you have available to you for using technology in your classroom. 
If you would please take a moment to answer these questions for me I would greatly appreciate it. I am studying to be a teacher myself and I am curious as to what types of technology are in different districts and things of that nature. I am passionate about the use of technology in the modern classroom because I believe it is a tool to help reach those students in a way that they are comfortable learning! 
Thank you for your time! 
Christina Wilde Preservice Teacher Major focus: Spanish Certification area: Secondary University of Oklahoma Jeanine Rainbolt College of Education

They responded within a day or two and I learned so much from them. Mrs. Boyer is a first grade teacher in Texas. She has 21 students in her class. She told me about how they have clever touch screens and iPads available for students to check out. She stated she would love to have 2-4 student computers in her classroom. This surprised me but I learned that she wanted these because her school does not have a computer lab. Recently her district combined two schools together and they are trying their best to make it work. Currently the library is not even operational due to this massive change. She told me that the district is very slow at offering technolgy in the classroom but she is working with what she has. 

Mrs. Kouba has quite a different story with technology. She teaches 5th grade in Putnam City schools. She has 27 students in her class. Mrs. Kouba wrote a grant proposal about three years ago. She was awarded that grant and received a classroom set of iPads! She was also accepted into a AIT training class that gave her a Mac laptop. She has a project and desktop computer as well. She really likes the iPads. She uses them for classroom management, activities and assignments. She has concerns with the students rushing through some of their work just to get on their iPads. She has informed me of ways to write grants like she did and is sharing information on professional development courses on technology. 

Mrs. Lord teaches first grade in Mustang, Oklahoma. She has 22 students in her class. In her class she has 2 desktop computers, a smartboard, an Apple TV, and a front row speaker system. Her school has iPads for checkout however it is at a first come first serve basis. She says she would love to have her own iPad to use with her Apple TV so she didn't have to check out an iPad all the time as well as a class set for her students. She has a media director she can contact if she needs help as well as the district has a tech support she can call anytime. Mrs. Lord is passionate about technology and serves on the school technology committee that's meets once a month to discuss needs and help other teachers if needed. She states technology is crucial to her classroom and she has yet to go a day without it. 

I feel interviewing these teachers as well as two others has helped me as I learn to be a teacher in this state and country. I know now that there are such things as technology committees in certain districts and I plan to be in a district with one or implement the committee myself if there is not one in place. I learned so much about writing grants from Mrs. Kouba and I hope to keep her as a valued friend and fellow teacher so she may mentor me in areas where I need support such as grant proposals. I learned from Mrs. Boyer that there are many serious concerns with education in this country such as funding cuts that makes the classroom even more intricate  and may hinder the availability to resources. I plan to interview more teachers and gain more insight so I am well equipped when I enter my own classroom. 

As a future teacher interviewing about tech in the classrooms at my old school is invaluable. My mom and her friends gave me ideas of tools and ways to use them well in the classroom. Having more resources and connections gives you more ideas of how to innovate with the classroom and use technology positively. It also shows me who to ask for help if i have a problem. Most importantly however it shows me how tech is not always the answer. Especially when programs just throw tech at teachers and tell them to use them. Personalized tech is a must, sometimes tat means you have to use your own, and sometimes that means you need to work with your coworkers and administrators to be knowledgeable about what we want. Things like Donors choose can be invaluable in helping get the tech you actually want. 
This applies to me as a teacher because I will likely be participating in using my own technology or provided tech as well. I have also learned that your coworkers may be more of a resource to help use tech effectively than the IT people, becasue there often isnt enough IT people.