Many Irons in the Fire

This semester has been great with all the collaborative projects

and fun things I've been trying. Right now it seems like I have a lot of irons in the fire. (photo courtesy of iansand at flickr).

I've wrapped up the Fall Project with Tita Martinez at Haskin Elementary. I'll let her tell you all about it. My students have completed their Monster stories, drawings, and recreations for my project with Esmunda Talamantes at Hanson. I've got a voicethread project going with Sara Zaleski and another just among the students I have for English Language. I'm building a multimedia database to accompany StoryTown stories for second grade for a Star teacher project. I'm as busy as ever but really having a good time. I'll post links later.

On another note. I encourage everyone to nominate the Global Learner Blog as the Best Group Blog for the 2009 Edublog Awards. Follow the rules here and make the nomination from your personal blog. You can see my nomination here.

My Technology Reflection

Thank you for all of the good reading. I haven't read/commented on many, but I plan to very soon. It's fun to see all of our hard work shared and celebrated. I wonder how how much I'd post if we didn't have our timeline? Hmmm.

This year I have taken a new approach with my students. With all the changes we have in our district (education in general) I had to choose the best and most usable technology tools for my class. Thus, I have chosen the SmartBoard. I have been creating weekly Notebook's with 45 pages each! Every page has it's objective and I'd say about 75% of the pages are interactive - some of them are just reminders to me on what we're working on next.

Our class blog has taken a step back. We tried to start strong, but it has not been a priority. Last week students completed their meteorologist forecasts. They are posted on our class website for all to have a listen. Upon completion of their forecasts, I think next year I may branch out and work on a voicethread. Who knows, by then there may be another new and exciting tech. tool!

Happy December!

Class Blog and VoiceThread

Well, can you tell it is the end of November? Suddenly we're all posting.
Both my team members and I have already posted about our joint project. I had not yet made a blog for my class this year, so first I had to quickly put one together. Now I can share that address and you can check out our VoiceThread. As Melissa and Michelle have posted, our next steps are to have our students comment on each others pictures and write doubles addition sentences.
http://kelloggclass09-10.blogspot.com/

I'm enjoying reading what all of you have been up to.
-Lisa

Atomic Learning Reflection

I used many flipcharts to teach my skeletal system unit this year. I downloaded them from Promethean planet and although I did not use all sections in them, I used the ones that were applicable to the unit the third grade was teaching. The flipcharts have many interactive sections in them and during reading groups, the students utilized these sections of the flipchart to aid in learning the names of the bones of the skeletal system. The following links are some of the flipcharts used from Promethean Planet: http://www.prometheanplanet.com/server.php?show=ConResource.234; http://www.prometheanplanet.com/server.php?show=ConResource.471

The interactive portions of these flipcharts were well received by the students and served as great practice for the students as they learned the names of the bones. I would also like to report that my NEP (non-English speaking child) has learned not only the common names for the bones in our body, but most scientific names also.

This was truly a successful learning experience for us all!

History at its Finest

The experience of using technology as a part of historical research has been an awesome achievement for the third grade students in Center, Colorado. My team member and I planned an activity that allowed our students to collaborate via the internet to complete a project on the history of the San Luis Valley.
We began our project by selecting teams using a "Selector Tool" spinner that is created by Kagan. The spinner we chose is on the computer and allows us to choose the number of participants and then have it randomly select teams. After teams were created, the students had to research their topic or area in the San Luis Valley. Our students accessed information via internet search engines, e-mailed information to other team members and collaboratively created murals based upon the information that they had obtained.
During the process, students took turns videotaping others as they used technology to complete their projects. (I will link some of these videos as soon as I figure it out. I will work hard to have them linked prior to or during the upcoming weekend. I will also link pictures of some of their completed murals.)
We continue to use the Promethean board on a daily basis and I look forward to having my accu-votes installed so we are able to access data on students. I utilized flipcharts on a daily basis to teach my entire skeletal system unit. We used aspects of these flipcharts as work stations and the interaction and enthusiam of the students created an extremely positive learning environment.
I am excited about furthing my personal experiences and my students learning experiences in the upcoming semester.

Atomic Lesson Reflection

So I will try this AGAIN!
Reflection ocean ecosystems lesson
I have been teaching this lesson in some way for four years. This however was the first time I did it using web cams to view the ocean ecosystems. Our last I.B. unit was on oceans and part of that requires the students to study the different ecosystems. I found a website http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/efc/cam_menu.aspx that has different web cams set up to view the exhibits at the aquarium. This was a fantastic way for the students to view the ecosystems. This was their first time to experience a web cam and they loved it. For so many students who have never been to the ocean it made an impact. It really was a simple lesson to set up and thankfully no glitches! I will definitely use this again next year. I just hope the aquarium has a few more ecosystem web cams set up. I closed the lesson by letting students share what they observed and any wonderings their observations led to. We also completed a Venn diagram on the Smart Board. Even though, students are well versed in Venn diagrams the use of the Smart Board upped the interest. So, I guess I can give my self a pat on the back for this one! ha!

Collaborative Project - Solving Math Problems

     Boy how time flies!  It seems like just yesterday we were meeting up in Denver planning this.  My student all worked hard coming up a problem they could type into the computer on classblogmeister for other people to solve.  They are all excited when we get a few minutes for them to go and check their blog to see if anyone has visited their problem.  We are learning how to do this together.
     Creating a classblogmeister blog was not real difficult but figuring out how to add students was where I had my biggest difficulty.  Once I figured that out things went rather smoothly.  My biggest challenge with my students is the ESL part.  I have an enormous number of ESL's so creating a usable problem was time consuming.  However, we got the job done.
     My students have been learning a whole lot about how blogs work and how they can be used in a great number of ways.  We have slowly been looking at my partners student problems they have posted for us to solve.  I have had issues with different kinds of sites being blocked by our school but hopefully we will get them resolved.   Emily's glogs still can't been seen but Laurie's students problems are viewable.  My students can't post yet to her students problems but that is being looked into also.
     We created a time line for our project and was glad it was not set in stone.  It has been modified several times due to the problem we have encountered.  I think my students have learned a lot about the use of technology and the quirks it sometimes has.  They have learned to be much more patient will dealing with issues.
     My blog is available for anybody to view.  My students are waiting for anybody to respond to their post.  You can follow this link: http://www.classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=287454 to go directly to my blog.  Please drop by and let us know what you think.  Once there you can check out my student problems by clicking on their problems title on the left hand side of the page.  Feel free to leave them a post as to how you like their problem.  Make sure you read the information at the top of my blog before you post a comment since I reserve the right to view and make changes to your post before it becomes public.
     Good Luck on the rest of the semester.  It gets tough from now until Winter (Christmas) Break.