Nibs from Nancy

Churchland Primary has selected a  deserving member of their educational team to represent them for a distinguished award.  This award is aspired by many, and held by a few.  Congratulations to you, LaKeshia Ames, Teacher of the Year at Churchland Primary for the 2009-2010 School Year!    The school’s choice was a great one!   Best wishes to you as you move to the next level.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could take your kids back in time to teach them about history, or to faraway places to explore the diversity of peoples and land, or travel inside the human body to see how it functions? You can, with a Virtual Field Trip!   Portsmouth TRTs are providing a full slate of offerings for teachers, including Virtual Field Trips. During my Tech Tuesday’s  session on  Virtual Field Trips, participants will explore the use of Virtual Field Trips as a way to provide sound educational experiences that promote positive cognitive and affective gains, while overcoming boundaries imposed by time, space and budget crunches. Teachers learn how to design, develop and implement effective Virtual Field Trips for instructional purposes. Participants are introduced to the basics about virtual field trips, templates, and various online resources and tools. Participant’s tailor-make a virtual field trip that is designed for use by their students to meet an instructional objective in a specific content area. Virtual Field Trips are fun, exciting and can be customized to support various content curricula.  Sounds like the makings of a great teaching resource/tool.  I wonder…how could this be used to support an activity in your class?

There are various stages  or levels of technology integration , and not all folks are at the same spot on the continuum.  Based on personal observations, it would appear that skills, knowledge and TUDES appear to play a significant role in the level of  technology integration in the classroom. I was playing around with Voicethread as a way to help folks see what technology integration looks like in the classroom.  I kinda like the idea of using technology to get folks to bump up their skill set to integrate technology.  This voice thread was put together in just a few minutes:  http://voicethread.com/share/949183/

Calling all  Portsmouth, Virginia classroom teachers…You have a support group available to assist you with technology integration.  Portsmouth Public Schools Technology Resource Teachers, or TRT’s, assist with the integration of technology to improve teaching and learning.    Check out this podcast to learn a little about what they do:   UseYourTRT  (FYI….This  podcast was recorded with a handheld digital voice recorder, which may be available for use in your classroom.  Contact your TRT to learn ways to integrate this technology.)

Digital storytelling is an awesome way for students to learn content..any content!  I have been advocating the use of digital storytelling as a way for students to become actively engaged and genuinely excited about learning.  It’s a way to reach students, tap into creativity, support multiple intelligences,  improve comprehension, encourage retention and much, much more. 
From what I have read and experienced first hand, people are natural born storytellers.  After all, storytelling has been part of mankind, relating history, tradition, culture, facts and opinions. Why not tap into that ability and use it to teach content areas? 

Today, I am working with Lead Science Teachers in Portsmouth to encourage them to use digital storytelling as a way for students to learn science topics. Using images taken with digital cameras,  or downloaded images from DE streaming, and an easy little program from Microsoft called PhotoStory 3, even the novice can tell their story.  Plan your project, take pictures, import into PhotoStory 3, jazz it up with transitions, text, sound, motion, etc., save as a .wmv, share with class, and reap the rewards.  It is such a powerful way to teach. 

This past month, Churchland Primary’s second grade teacher, Roxanne Richardson, has been spreading her wings to give this idea a shot.  Her class grew radish seeds as a way to observe stages of a plant life cycle.  You know the project….  Germinate  seeds in baggies, grow in a dixie cup, measure, record data…  Real easy.  But this year, the classroom activity was kicked up a notch.  Technology was introduced as a way to capture what was happening along the way.  Pictures were taken at various stages of plant growth showing change over time, and pictures were taken as students  presented their data to the class.  At the conclusion of the activity, a little movie was created, telling the digital story about how their plants grew and developed.  The students experienced the changes first hand, and then the digital media helped them to re-experience it again in a sequential, organized fashion.  Easy to do. Great to use.  Really nice for review, don’t you think? And of course, who doesn’t like seeing their mug up on the big screen?   How powerful is that? 

I can see digital storytelling being used to teach all kinds of topics in science like life cycles, biomes, seasons, weather,  force & motion, demonstrations, labs, ..the possibilites are only limited by your imagination.   Digital storytelling is a truly awesome, powerful teaching tool.  How could you use digital storytelling to help students learn various science topics?

I have been playing around with Plurk lately to see what this microblogging  community is all about.  I have been following discussions and  and making posts.  People have been very nice online and so far, it has been a positive experience.    I follow some folks that have similar demographics to myself , so I am at home with the conversations.   Plurk is pretty much like Twitter, with a few differences here and there.   Sometimes folks will share a link,  a question or comment.  They might share an up or down from their lives- sometimes job related, sometimes not.  Today, I finally found a little gem that was tossed out there.  Someone shared a link to a resource that I found interesting.  This is what I was hoping for…a little sharing, a  little banter , a little nugget  tossed in evey now and then.  Wanna check it out?  Go to:  http://www.plurk.com/Nimby/invite

TrackStar is an online resource to create and store an interactive, online lesson or activity, which is called a Track.   A track can be designed such that it is suitable for various grades and content areas.  That makes it perfect to teach Science, Language Arts,  History or other content.   It’s sort-of-like a scaled down web quest meets Porta Portal.   Well…sort of….     You can customize your Track specifically for your students.  This online track contains organized links that you have selected, along with your personal annotations.   Those annotations might be directions, questions, whatever ….   Perhaps you want students  to read an online article, participate in an online activity or use an online resource.  It’s up to you.  The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.  This can be used to complement what you are teaching in your classroom, and could be is used in the computer lab, centers or anywhere you have web access.  To get started, teachers can use an existing track that has already been  made by other educators, or can create their own Tracks.  TrackStar has a searchable database of Tracks which may be queried by subject, grade, theme or standard.   So…if you want to start with someone else’s track, it’s a snap. If you want to step up and create your own track, you will start by creating your own account at http://trackstar.4teachers.org/trackstar/.  Plan out your  instructional activity, collect your links, and make the track by entering  Web sites and annotations for the students.   Once the track is completed, students can be directed to the online track by giving them the track number.  So easy!  Give it a try!

 If you are a teacher in Portsmouth, I have some training resources posted on the NING.   See the most recent post about Trackstar.  http://ppslearningcommunity.ning.com/group/sciencerocks

Need resources to Honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.?  Of course you can Google it and get 323,000,000 hits.     I don’t know about you…but I don’t have time to wade through all that.  I need something good, and I need it now!  So…I like to check out  Discovery Education Streaming & Thinkfinity.  They are two wonderful places to locate high quality resources for all kinds of things to use in the classroom.  Both are easy to search, download, and share.  Various  teaching media and resources are available.  Whenever I am in need of some resources, I try to check these out to see what’s available.  Really helpful!    Just a reminder…you will need your DE streaming account to access & download.  (Forgot what that’s all about?  See your TRT)  Now…if you have all kinds of time on your hands that you are trying to kill…you can always start sifting through those 323,000,000 + sites. 

Have you ever tried to identify one program that you could use for a range of ages and  various disciplines….all kinds of contexts, and as a way to apply Marzano strategies?  It’s not quite as tough as you might think.  The best part is that  if you work in PPS, it’s already on the image of your school computer.   What are we talking about?  Kidspiration & Inspiration!  It’s not new and is something that is just begging to be used. Today, we will be conducting training sessions at Churchland Primary & Intermediate.  We will look at ways to use Kidspiration & Inspiration to apply Marzano Strategies to effectively introduce, practice or review content in the classroom.  You can use it in K classes, grade 6 or anything in between.  Use it in math, science, language arts, whatever!    Use it to brainstorm, create timelines, develop concept maps and more. Use it front-of-the room, small groups, whole groups, independently…  Your kids can use it.   Use it anywhere in the building!  It is fun, easy, and effective.  It might just be the thing you need to add that little extra oomph.  All teachers will be meeting with their TRT during their planning periods to check it out.  All training resources are being provided to the teachers via the Media drive on the school server.  Check it out!  There are lots of ready-made goodies up there for you!  It just might be the next best thing to “One size fits all.”

The Spirit of Christmas and the Spirit of community and generosity are alive and well at Churchland Primary.  I know, because I have seen.

In a article published by Michelle Obama for USA Today, the President’s wife begins her article saying that  “Embedded in our nation’s core values is a spirit of community, generosity and entrepreneurship — a can-do attitude that says no challenge is insurmountable. When so many people are struggling to make ends meet, we need everyone pulling together to solve our nation’s problems and to lift up our fellow Americans.”

  A problem that is near and dear to my heart is education. Teachers can make a huge difference in education when they apply those words written by Michelle Obama.   

On this last school day before our Winter break, I have seen the spirit of Christmas, and the spirit of community & generosity that Michelle Obama wrote about in her article.  I just returned from the classroom of Ms. Roxanne Richardson, second grade teacher at Churchland Primary, who gave copies of all her digital files to help fellow colleagues. These resources, now arranged in organized files on the Media drive at school, were generated over a period of three years.  This contribution represents a tremendous amount of time, energy and caring, and will serve as a valuable resource to other teachers that teach second grade now and in the future. Various types of SOL correlated, content resources & materials are included in these files, and will serve the Churchland Primary teachers and students well.  Thank you, Roxanne Richardson, for your keen sense of community and generosity.  Thank you for pulling in a direction that helps to solve a problem.   Thank you for sharing the Spirit of Christmas!