Technology in MY classroom!

During this summer I had a position at in my hometown daycare called Back to Basics. By the title of the daycare it is easy to assume that technology was not a staple in the everyday instruction. As I began to fall in love with this daycare I started to think of more and more ways that I will change the way my classroom was run. One of those changes will be the integration of technology.
The owner of the Daycare opened an amazing opportunity for me when letting me have my own classroom at the age of 19. She gave me the ability to design the curriculum and classroom in any way I pleased and I found it so intriguing to have a blank slate. When I look back now I realize how little technology was actually in my preschool classroom. We had one computer in the room that I never even turned on during the day because there was no way to have every child involved in that little activity.
As my classes are starting to develop ideas of technology in the classroom I begin to put together many more possibilities for that classroom. Many of the students in my class had computers at home and were extremely familiar with them yet never had them in the actual classroom. One of the videos we recently watched for class made the statement that all students lives are revolving around technology, why aren’t our classes?
One of the biggest things I would want for my classroom when I started back up after graduating would be to get the students more familiar with computers and use them inside the classroom more often. One of the computer teachers from my elementary school was discussing how they were giving away the old computers from the lab because they got bran new ones so even an opportunity like that would get these kids attached to technology in a much easier way.
A point that I’d like to stress is one that my boss planted in my head the first week I was there. The only reason the daycare is called back to basics is because she did not want her daycare to go into technology overload where computers were doing more for the children then the teachers. She loves the idea of having the teachers on the ground interacting with the toddlers and the preschool teachers reading books out loud to the students. I agree with her idea and but I also believe that education can be enhanced by technology without being overtaken.
Something that I was introduced to this year was the world of audio books. I LOVE them! I had the children sitting in the circle on the carpet and a student would sit with the book and show his classmates one page at a time while the story was read to them. This empowers that student to share a story with his classmates and also focus on when the sound comes to turn the page. If that’s the only technology I have had in my classroom so far, I can’t wait to explore other areas.