Ruth’s Ruckus2

Here’s another gem I got from Al Beamon.  This Animal Habitat TechQuest was created by a a teacher in  Fairfax County so it is aligned with the SOL.  If you use the activity, be sure to make alternate arrangements for the quiz.  the online version of the quiz emails results directly to Mr. Rossen.

My personal learning network has lots of different sources.  A TRT in Kentucky shared a link to an online booklet on how teachers could help children of military cope with the changes surrounding deployment. Given our population, i thought this would be great to share with you all: An educator’s guide to working with military kids

Whew!! I’m trying to clean out my inbox.  The email upgrade has made life very different for many of us.  If you need help with the new interface, let me know or you could take the OWA 2007 class that is being offered in the Tech Tuesday lineup.

So anyway, I’m cleaning up my email and I ran across some info on a great site. The  Virginia Trekkers are a group of Instructional Technology Resource Teachers  who are creating resources for elementary students.  The vodcasts and interactives are primarily targeted towards social studies, but where there is an cross over with other core areas, they make sure to get that in as well.  Check out the site…there is something for everyone K-6.

So during my SL adventure tonite, someone made a reference to Wordle.  I learned about this application earlier this year, but never posted about it (that I could remember). I think using this application would be a cool way to teach students about Main Idea.  The application make a word cloud from your text.  Words that occur with more frequency are larger in the cloud.  Like a tag cloud.  I think this might be a great application to help students learn about summarization too.  So I took my post about Warlick and turned it into a wordle:

My annual reflection and video montage is due today.  You can find it here: http://ed.voicethread.com/share/151393/

So second grade went to the farm.  I’m not quite sure which SOL they were focused on as I found a couple that they covered.  The great thing about it is that Ms. Kurrus planned ahead and reserved my Hamilton cameras to take with them.  We met the day before the trip to square away some details about the project.  I decided to use the three step integration process that I showed the teachers in January.  I took some time to teach the class about the cameras and was pleasantly surprised that most of their questions served to clarify their responsibilities.  The students took the cameras to the farm and took some really good pictures.  Not only did they document their activites while at the farm, they took great pictures of their process.  Don’t take my word for it take a look:

I couldn’t have done a better job of documenting their trip myself…those cameras are pretty amazing too…

Last week it seemed like everyone was working on plants.  One of my first grade teachers, Ms. Marks, asked me to add some plant interactives to the Victory Portaportal.  The second grade went to the farm and looked at plants and the fourth grade was charting the growth of some seds they planted a few weeks ago.  I thought Mrs. Petry’s use of the Promethean board for student graphing was cool and I wanted to share her kids’ work with you.

Good work Mrs. Petry!

It’s the school motto at Brighton, but I’ve been on the periphery most of the year.  Today I was able to make a significant contribution.  Our third grade special education teacher has been looking for some activities for her grade level assesment students to complete as evidence that they have mastered specific SOL.  I got wind of the request yesterday and was able to leave some activities in her folder for the students to complete.  Of course I did not realize at the time that I had used a program that she was not familiar with, so I spent some time in the lab today with her and her students leading them through the activities…it feels great to be a part of the team.

You know how sometimes you’ll try something new and it really works well, so you try it again and then it slowly becomes your new “thing”?  Well, the new “thing” in first grade at Brighton is to use technology in Math.  This is how it works…Mrs. Taxson (my Promethean board power user) will ask for an idea on using KidPix with her class for math the SOL of the week.  After we come up with an idea, she’ll ask for help with getting the task completed.  Her kids use KidPix for creative writing/drawing independantly, so our goal for her class is to get the students to do more structured activities using templates.  We’ll demonstrate to the class on Wednesday using the Promethean board and on Thursday the students will go into the lab and do the activity.  So this week we worked on number sentences.  We used a template from the KidPix Deluxe 4 book.  The kids had fun.  Those who were done first became peer helpers!

Then there’s Mrs. Smith.  Mrs. Smith’s goal for this year is to have her students use Kidspiration for writing.  We have a long way to go.  The students are just learning Kidspiration and we’ve used it in different ways.  They need more exposure before we get to writing and outlining.  So after Mrs. Taxson hits me up for some time, Mrs. Smith usually asks for some as well.  They do group planning, so it’s the same SOL, but given their goals and technology experience, it looks totally different in each class.  So yesterday in Mrs. Smith’s class we used my wireless keyboard to practice a number sentences exercise in Tammy Worcester’s math book.

 Today we took the kids into the lab and worked on the same activity individually.  Between these two teachers, I teach 4 lessons a week.  Mrs. Gamble likes to join in every so often.  When she does it’s an additional lesson that is completely different, because she like powerpoint!!  I miss Mrs. Perry-Wallace, but I’m glad she’s still out on maternity leave.  I couldn’t handle all four in this grade group.

I wasn’t sure about starting an MCPS Users group at Brighton…even though I knew it was a good idea.  I know you guys are awfully busy, but without periodic checks we’ll never get all of the MCPS folks in the building to finish the portfolios.  Things will get left to the last minute and then Brighton won’t be eligible for additional equipment.  I was pleasantly surprised to have 7 of the 11 MCPS teachers show up.  Here’s a reminder that the group is open to every teacher in the building.  You’ll be able to do anything that we discuss with a data projector borrowed from the library.  Any other equipment we’ll discuss will be available for checkout also – either from me or from the library.

So this month our topics were – the portfolios and wireless keyboards.  Personally, I love my wireless keyboard set.  It’s a little different from the one the MCPS teachers have.  I’ve got a mouse.  I love using the set with my K and 1 classes so I can slip in a little bit of basic computing.  Everyone agreed to come back next month with additional ideas for using the wireless keyboard.  We talked a little bit about the strategies suggested in this article http://ferl.qia.org.uk/display.cfm?resid=8950&printable=1 .  I also had some handouts about the strategies suggested – interactive text boxes in PowerPoint and fill in/drop down boxes in word.  The article also talks about using the comment feature in word…I’ve never used that instructionally myself, so I hope someone asks about it, so I’ll have an excuse to try it.  

I’m a bit behind in my professional reading, but imagine my surprise when I read Sheryl
Nussbaum Beach’s latest post on professional learning communities at http://21stcenturylearning.typepad.com/blog/2007/10/professional-le.html .  This kind of group (the MCPS group) is a hallmark of effective professional development!! So I guess it was the right move.  I look forward to next month’s meeting.  Hope to see more of you there. 

You folks at Victory, don’t worry.  I’ll be starting a similar group for you in the second semester (once the construction is over and we have all of our equipment).