This has been our first official first "full" month of school. My students love the smartboard. Everyday when I say we are going to use it, they cheer! It is also helping me keep the students engaged, which has been a challenge this year. We have used the smartboard everyday for math,grammar, and many days in reading.
We just finished Theme 1 and I am going to have my students blog about their favorite story in the the Theme, so watch for updates on my blog.
Sara
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Technology Successes
This month has been a month of implementing technology for me in my classroom! I have used the clickers in a couple different ways, such as giving math quizzes, tickets-out-the-door, and spelling tests. I have had the greatest success with using them for quizzes and tickets-out-the-door, but the spelling test was a bit rough in the beginning. Kelly came into my class to help me give my spelling test using the clickers. We were about half way done with the spelling test, and we had already spent 25 minutes on it! Needless to say, not a good use of class time! However, we then started timing how long it took the students to type in a word, and the whole class got there time down to about 45 seconds, which was a huge improvement. It showed me that I had to be willing to give up the time in the very beginning to train the students in order to implement these clickers in various ways. My students love completing their spelling tests in this way and always ask when they can do their test now. Fifth graders asking to do a spelling test? Unheard of!
Kelly also came into my class to help me record my class doing their Storytown Reader's Theater using the webcam. This was awesome! I had the class divided into four groups, and each group had their opportunity to perform. What they didn't know was that we were only recording pieces of their performance. We taped the first fourth of the play performed by the first group, the second fourth performed by the second group, the third fourth performed by the third group, and the last fourth performed by the last group. Each section was then imported to make a movie, I made a quick title and credit page, and showed the movie to my class. They loved it and wanted to watch it over and over! Definately going to do this every time!
Kelly also came into my class to help me record my class doing their Storytown Reader's Theater using the webcam. This was awesome! I had the class divided into four groups, and each group had their opportunity to perform. What they didn't know was that we were only recording pieces of their performance. We taped the first fourth of the play performed by the first group, the second fourth performed by the second group, the third fourth performed by the third group, and the last fourth performed by the last group. Each section was then imported to make a movie, I made a quick title and credit page, and showed the movie to my class. They loved it and wanted to watch it over and over! Definately going to do this every time!
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Smartboard Center Up and Running......kinda. :)
So the past few weeks have been some intense teaching and reteaching and reteaching, did I mention, reteaching of my literacy centers. I really do enjoy setting up and watching my students be active and independent in centers. It also means that I get quality time in small reading groups! I really wanted the Smartboard to be a consistent center this year. It was a scary task as the enthusiasm of the students can quickly turn into frustration and chaos! With the patient help of my student teacher, we were able to fail and succeed 3 or 4 or 10 times in setting up this center but I think we've finally got it! Using a list of names for each center team (this minimizes the fighting over whose turn it is) and a very kid-friendly word building lesson (provided by an amazing teacher who posted her Smartboard lessons on the Resource page), the students can now independently learn their spelling words in a MUCH more engaging and fun way than paper and pencil! They love it and so do I!
I am now in search of a 2nd Smartboard activity to use in this center. I would like to design a lesson for sight words. However, the current ones I have found (while amazing) are not as effective in actually teaching the words because the kids aren't hearing the word if they don't know it. So my next task is figuring out how to put some audio on the sight words! To be continued........
Hope everyone is enjoying their Smartboard experiences and some fresh fall air!
Jenny
I am now in search of a 2nd Smartboard activity to use in this center. I would like to design a lesson for sight words. However, the current ones I have found (while amazing) are not as effective in actually teaching the words because the kids aren't hearing the word if they don't know it. So my next task is figuring out how to put some audio on the sight words! To be continued........
Hope everyone is enjoying their Smartboard experiences and some fresh fall air!
Jenny
September Blog/Taking More Steps
Now that we are closing in on the end of September, I reflected upon the additional steps I have made in technology this month. I am anxious for my kids to fianlly try out my wiki space that inlcuded the Theme 1 assignment, where the children will post a paragraph after reading three biographical web pages on people who have made achievements in our world. I am going to implement this into a center during my reading block. I know it will take a while, because only one child is allowed on the wiki page at once. We will see how it goes!
Additionally, I talked to my enthusaistic mentor this month, Emily Taylor. We have decided to use Photo Story to illustrate and narrate our first major writing assignment, a narrative essay. We decided that we would share them in a Literary Celebration. My class will also be posting on Emily's blog as well to comment on their writing.
I am continuing to use the smart board in my literacy block, and even more so in Math. Pulling up graph paper and showing children how to draw Multiplication models to demonstrate an equation and product really helps the children understand multiplication and square numbers. I also used the Launch Number program as a center in math last week. The children loved the independence of working on the smart board.
Additionally, I talked to my enthusaistic mentor this month, Emily Taylor. We have decided to use Photo Story to illustrate and narrate our first major writing assignment, a narrative essay. We decided that we would share them in a Literary Celebration. My class will also be posting on Emily's blog as well to comment on their writing.
I am continuing to use the smart board in my literacy block, and even more so in Math. Pulling up graph paper and showing children how to draw Multiplication models to demonstrate an equation and product really helps the children understand multiplication and square numbers. I also used the Launch Number program as a center in math last week. The children loved the independence of working on the smart board.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
White Boards are Engaging!
I am so thrilled with my recent purchase of whiteboards! That's right, I broke down and purchased a class set of whiteboards because the kids were getting bored with me showing them how to make upper-case and lower-case letters for a solid ten minutes! With my new system, the kids eagerly watch me model how to write a particular letter while the sit next to their individual whiteboard and pounce on the opportunity to create their own letters! The kids are having a great time practicing how to write each letter and I am excited because they happily write and erase each letter! I can't think of a better purchase for the newly created writing block!
Monday, September 6, 2010
Great Webinars from Classroom 2.0 at LearnCentral.org
I wanted to give all my Global Learner colleagues a heads up to some great webinars on technology in education. These webinars (short learning seminars) are great interactive sessions on anything from where to get great online resources to the latest web 2.0 tools and emerging trends in 21st century learning. These live, interactive sessions from Live Classroom 2.0 are hosted by LearnCentral.org, a social learning network. The platform for these webinars is Elluminate which is a collaborative web conferencing tool that we should look into for our own web conferencing and future trainings.
Anyway, there are always good webinars there. Some of them for this week are:
Tues. 5:30 MST Supporting Differentiated Instruction and Technology Integration
Tues. 6:00 MST Interview with Charles Fadel (Cisco) on 21st Century Learning and STEM
Wed. 6:30 MST Ripple Conference with Cathy Moore: Action Mapping (visual approach to instructional design)
Wed. 7:30 MSTMath 2.0 Series (on the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives)
Thurs. 5:00 MST Edublogs Fine Focus - LIVE & PAPERLESS with GoogleDocs (a teacher shares how she uses google docs with her students)
Sat. 10:00 am MST Global Education Conference (Steve Hargadon, Lucy Gray, and Julie Lindsay talk about how to get involved in the upcoming [November] virtual conference)
Check out these and more in the calendar of events over at Classroom 2.0.
Cross posted to http://MrFisherGlobalLearner@blogspot.com
Anyway, there are always good webinars there. Some of them for this week are:
Tues. 5:30 MST Supporting Differentiated Instruction and Technology Integration
Tues. 6:00 MST Interview with Charles Fadel (Cisco) on 21st Century Learning and STEM
Wed. 6:30 MST Ripple Conference with Cathy Moore: Action Mapping (visual approach to instructional design)
Wed. 7:30 MSTMath 2.0 Series (on the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives)
Thurs. 5:00 MST Edublogs Fine Focus - LIVE & PAPERLESS with GoogleDocs (a teacher shares how she uses google docs with her students)
Sat. 10:00 am MST Global Education Conference (Steve Hargadon, Lucy Gray, and Julie Lindsay talk about how to get involved in the upcoming [November] virtual conference)
Check out these and more in the calendar of events over at Classroom 2.0.
Cross posted to http://MrFisherGlobalLearner@blogspot.com
Saturday, September 4, 2010
How the Internet is Making us Stupid
Okay I admit it I love a provocative title for a blog entry. But I must admit it wasn't mine. This one is the title of an article I ran across the other day How the Internet is Making us Stupid.
In short this article could probably be summarized as too much information leads to the loss of the ability to focus on deeper thought, and we the scientists are deeply concerned.
What amazes me is that any teacher that has used the web for classroom activities could have probably have saved the researchers a lot of money and time because we have all seen this firsthand. I remember when I first started running webquest activities, I would watch the students skim webpages so fast that they would miss the reason I wanted them to visit. When they couldn't find the answer to a question I had posed in the first few lines of the page, they were off to Google searching for the question directly. It was really frustrating trying to figure out a way to "Google Proof" my questions so that they would have to take some time and read through the sites I had given them to construct an answer (rather than copy it).
Now this post isn't just a vent session or a told you so post, but more of a reflection on and issue we as Global Learners need to be able to confront. We have to make the commitment to use technology in a way that will foster the deeper thought we hope our students develop. We have to make sure that our activities have a focus and target and are not just another way to waste time on the internet and look engaged. We have to use our developing skills to foster intellectual development, rather than to just reinforce mental "laziness".
The final paragraph of the article scares me somewhat so with that I will end my post as it speaks for itself
The ability to scan and browse is as important as the ability to read deeply and think attentively. What’s disturbing is that skimming is becoming our dominant mode of thought. Once a means to an end, a way to identify information for further study, it’s becoming an end in itself — our preferred method of both learning and analysis. Dazzled by the net’s treasures, we have been blind to the damage we may be doing to our intellectual lives and even our culture.
In short this article could probably be summarized as too much information leads to the loss of the ability to focus on deeper thought, and we the scientists are deeply concerned.
What amazes me is that any teacher that has used the web for classroom activities could have probably have saved the researchers a lot of money and time because we have all seen this firsthand. I remember when I first started running webquest activities, I would watch the students skim webpages so fast that they would miss the reason I wanted them to visit. When they couldn't find the answer to a question I had posed in the first few lines of the page, they were off to Google searching for the question directly. It was really frustrating trying to figure out a way to "Google Proof" my questions so that they would have to take some time and read through the sites I had given them to construct an answer (rather than copy it).
Now this post isn't just a vent session or a told you so post, but more of a reflection on and issue we as Global Learners need to be able to confront. We have to make the commitment to use technology in a way that will foster the deeper thought we hope our students develop. We have to make sure that our activities have a focus and target and are not just another way to waste time on the internet and look engaged. We have to use our developing skills to foster intellectual development, rather than to just reinforce mental "laziness".
The final paragraph of the article scares me somewhat so with that I will end my post as it speaks for itself
The ability to scan and browse is as important as the ability to read deeply and think attentively. What’s disturbing is that skimming is becoming our dominant mode of thought. Once a means to an end, a way to identify information for further study, it’s becoming an end in itself — our preferred method of both learning and analysis. Dazzled by the net’s treasures, we have been blind to the damage we may be doing to our intellectual lives and even our culture.
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