Technology in the classroom

This past week I was able to go to my TE 401 placement for the first time. I was really excited about going there, meeting my CT, and beginning to build relationships with my students. The teacher explained to me how she uses the song "You've got a friend in me" from Toy Story to teach students to be nice to one another and be friendly with each other. She uses a boom box or typical CD player to play the song so the whole class can hear instead of using the computer. She also has centers in here classroom where she has students grouped in 3 or 4 by color and students work on different things at different stations. She also has leaders for the group, which one of their jobs is controlling the tape recorders that are used at a couple stations. I was really surprised to still see tape recorders being used in a classroom. I haven't seen those used since I was back in 1st or 2nd grade. They had the large blue headphones too that I remember using. There is also a station were students use a computer, which is refreshing to see that students are learning to use and experiencing a more modern piece of technology. The classroom also had an ELMO, which is becoming very common in many classrooms today. It is basically a projector, but you don't have to transfer everything to transparencies. There is a camera that projects whatever you put in front of it, whether it is a picture book, a worksheet, or just a small object that would be hard to see in the back of the classroom. I am very interested in this piece of technology because of how often I am seeing it in classrooms and how useful it can be, not only in an elementary school setting, but also in a college setting (we use the ELMO all the time in our classes). So the classroom I am going to be in this year already shows signs of many types of technology being used by the students. Both 'old school' and modern pieces of technology are used and I am interested to see what other technologies and programs are going to be used as the year progresses.

A type of technology that we have been learning about in class that I am interested to see use in a classroom is blogging. From the very post post I said that I always wanted to start a blog and I've come to find that they are really easy to use and it's nice just typing out your ideas, thoughts, and experiences, which makes it easier to remember them and share them with others. I feel like blogging could be a really helpful tool for teachers and parents to communicate better. As a teacher I could just quickly type out some interesting things that happened in class that day, remind parents of upcoming tests and assignments their children need to accomplish and even write up announcements and tips to help their children grow as learners. This require for every parent to have some type of access to a computer or the internet and not every family has this luxury.
This could also be a way for students to do a 'quick write' either at home or during the school day where they could write something according to a prompt designed by the teacher or just a way for students to work on different English skills, such as opening sentences and when to start a new paragraph. I do feel that blogging cannot be started at too young of an age though because it is important for younger students to learn how to physically write things down and practice writing their letters and sentences before having them type everything out. It is important for students to learn how to write letters and sentences and not just rely on computers to do the physical writing for you. I've come to find that there can be both pros and cons to blogging for students and teachers, which makes me want  to observe and learn more about how teachers are using it in their classrooms.