posted by Dorie on Aug 7
Imagine walking into a classroom filled with students working on laptops. Each student is researching a topic of their choice to present to the class. Other students walk by and say, “Wow, I wish I was in that classroom.” Imagine students so excited about learning, they say, “Teacher, see what I found. Do we have to stop?” Raised hands abound during lessons; students all wanting to be next to take part in the lesson and show what they know. This is the Technology Integrated Classroom.
I believe that students should be engaged in learning. While there are many ways to engage the learner, such as experiments, singing, movement, interactive writing, I believe that technology is one of the most effective ways to engage the learner. Students are already using technology at home. Technology is a part of our everyday lives. One of the available technologies is the Internet. The Internet is changing the face of education and the world. We can harness the power of the Internet to bring the world to our students. Teaching about Greece? Get on Google Earth and show them through satellite imagery the location of Greece. Search for pictures and video about Greece. Connect with a classroom in Greece to compare similarities and differences between their country and yours. There are so many possibilities out there. We are limiting our students if we do not use the available technologies. If we want our students to keep up with the world we must teach them to be 21st Century Learners.
I believe that it is important to show our students that they can be Lifelong Learners. I, myself, continue to look for ideas to enhance my teaching to promote student achievement and understanding almost everyday. We can all learn something new everyday.
I believe that students should be taught to be problem solvers and thus able to make connections from the classroom to the real world. We need to make learning relevant to the learner. By making learning relevant, knowledge is gained, and students are able to make connections. Then, students are able to see the big picture.
posted by Dorie on Aug 6
Here are some Web 2.o tools that have recently been presented to me.
http://www.polleverywhere.com/
Live Audience Polling-you text message, twitter or use the web to answer the poll.
http://www.ask500people.com/
Public Opinion Polls for the day. Make sure you monitor the page. For younger grades, you might want to just show the map.
http://www.picnik.com/
Photo editing, online
http://blabberize.com/
Make a picture talk.
http://www.voki.com/
Get your own speaking avatar.
I think I will definitely try out voki.com this year. Just have to make the connection.
posted by Dorie on Aug 4
What? Twitter for Professional Development? Now, you’ve heard everything right? I am not kidding. This last March I signed up for twitter. Four days later, I found my Personal Learning Network Karl Fisch’s description of a PLN. Through, Mr.Tweet, I found my PLN. I found lots of people interested in Technology and Education. I was in heaven!! Through Twitter you can follow a person and see what they post about and they can choose to follow you. Educators that love technology were tweeting (talking) about their favorite websites, tools, blogs, upcoming professional development and happenings in education or their classroom. Soon after learning about how to use twitter, I attended a conference virtually in Virginia, went on a safari in Africa, and attended a meeting of educators through Elluminate on Edtechtalk. I was definitely hooked on twitter. I have learned a lot through other educator’s posting their thoughts. I invite you to try it out. Make sure that you follow people that share your interests.
Not only is twitter for professional development, but also for your students. This year my students will be tweeting with other second grade classrooms about their studies. Here is a slide share I found, Twenty-Five Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom. I hope you get some ideas from it.
posted by Dorie on Aug 3
Today, I attended the SMART Regional User Conference held in Katy, TX. There were many sessions offered by SMART users for novice and intermediate users. I attended a K-2 LA session, a K-3 Elementary session and an advanced user session. In the first session, the presenter had used the Lesson Activity Tool Kit to create many lessons geared toward language arts. Here are some examples that she gave us: a word family sort using vortex, graph words (real/nonsense words), and a word match (concentration). I really liked that you were able to put the directions. The tool kit activities are very easy to use. I will be definitely pointing out this tool to my school this year.
The SMART Exchange http://exchange.smarttech.com/ is a valuable resource for teachers. You can ask questions to other users, download lessons, upload lessons, and generally find out information about SMART’s tools. I highly recommend visiting this site. You do have to sign up to become a user.
Lastly, in my advanced user class, the presenter was actually a SMART employee. Her name is Sarah Acord. Here is her site to her delicious links that you might want to check out. http://delicious.com/sacord Here I am going to mention some of SMART notebook’s capabilities that I learned about. She mentioned that there are video’s on you tube about the notebook software. The magic pen is a cool tool that allows you to spotlight and zoom. The smart recorder allows you to record your desktop area, window, or area. You can use the Smart video player to play video from a url and pause the video so that you are able to write on top of the video and then continue. Keepvid.com is a site that helps you grab youtube videos and save to your computer. There is much more I could talk about. In the SMART Exchange/TXuser section they will be updating the section with the notebook presentation that she used. I highly recommend searching for it. Enjoy the learning!
