Just 2 weeks left to another school year. Let’s see; looking back on this year I learned about the most about how to successful integrate technology into my classroom. That is IF I had a classroom. Being one of the Title I math teachers I was limited in what I was able to use and do each day. I was able to use the district’s math programs and resources that are on the computers. I was able to being using a class-blog at edublogs with some of my 3rd graders. I plan to expand that next year. Going to the MACUL conference this year with other teachers from my school was one of my highlights. The other (THANKS DISCOVERY!) was the trip to Philly to meet Capt’s. Andy, Sig, and Jonathon from Deadliest Catch.
Next year will bring an ITV lab to the building. I will be in charge of that and I am planing on a number of virtual field trips and one-to-one class connections with other schools. Until next time…..
Some of our students had an opportunity of a lifetime yesterday to be able to fly in aircraft for the first time.
This field trip is one part of our school wide Transportation project. This project was funded through a 3 year grant from the Convergence Education Foundation. I did not get to go this year but the first two years I did and I was lucky to fly in the helicopter like this years students. They were all lucky to fly in the copter because the clouds were too low to fly in the planes.
The city newspaper come out and took pictures and video. Check out the Flint Journal.
Had a session with most of the staff today about various topics: the DEN, blogs, online bookmarking (del.icio.us and ikeepbookmarks), etc.
I used a trial version of WebEx for the workshop. I set up the meeting and invited them all through our emails and we sat in the lab together. I want to do one where they are all in their own rooms or even after school at home.
The funny thing was, that even though they found the information I went over interesting and useful what they had the most fun with was the chat feature in WebEx. I had not heard that amount of laughing as a staff in one place at one time for a while. They even made a collective groan when we had to stop and I ended the WebEx meeting session. I’ll have to set up another one before the trial is over.
YEA! After weeks of problem solving and frustration Garfield’s weather station is now uploading real time weather data to the Weatherunderground site, when then sends the data to the Weather Exchange and people all over the world can see what the weather is at our school. This is much like the WeatherBug program but it is FREE. You can download a desktop weather station here from Ambient Weather. If all goes well (cross your fingers) the school’s data should be up on the web this weekend.
Now I can focus on how to use the software so we can do weather reports as a part of our student TV broadcast.
