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!