TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION

Over the past couple of months I’ve worked with several teachers on projects focusing on collaboration, creativity, and communication using web 2.0 tools.

Mrs. Ray’s interactive, collaborative cookbook project allows students to hone their narrative skills by sharing family stories and recipes. For this we have used PBWiki. Unfortunately, we decided to keep the wiki cookbook private and only Mrs. Ray and her students have the password. You won’t be able to get past the log-in screen, and I’m respecting their privacy by not posting a screen shot here.

Mrs. Edwards students created TV commercials using iMovie. The results are posted on YouTube for everyone to see, rate, and comment.

I have started using the IShowU application to create brief instructional videos for teachers. The videos are posted to my school blog.

I am very excited about my conference schedule this year. In February I’ll be presenting at EdTech in Ashland with several teachers from the middle school and high school. We will be highlighting real-life, already-implemented lesson plans that develop many 21st Century Skills. At the end of June, John Hendron and I will travel to San Antonio for NECC. There we are conducting a session on effective staff development and a workshop on Google Sketch-up. John will also have his own conference where he will discuss his newly published book.

I will be teaching a variety of courses throughout the year to interested teachers to help them meet their annual technology goals. I will post updates periodically as to the number of teachers who attend and the feedback I receive after the classes.

The schedule is posted on our Wiki.

On October 15 I’ll be teaching my second after-school class for teachers-Promethean Level 4, Part 1. There will be 16 teachers in attendance. We will work on advanced classroom techniques using the Promethean ActiVotes and ActivSlate. On the same day the online course for Internet Safety opens. I have modified the course used by John Hendron last year. We are using the Moodle Content Management System. This is a screen shot of what the course looks like.

On September 25th I collaborated to teach a lesson using the Promethean ActivBoard, ActiVotes, ActivSlate, and InspireData software for data analysis. I worked with a 6th grade science teacher to analyze the data collected in a previously-executed experiment. We produced graphic representations of the data collected by all the teams that conducted the experiment to compare their results and draw conclusions. We predicted the conclusions using the ActiVotes to collect hypothetical data prior to analysis. Both the Promethean and InspireData were new to the science teacher and to me.

Homecoming court voting is a messy event each year. I tried to simplify the process by using computers and InspireData. The students liked it and the results were back in just a few hours. Here are pictures of the students voting in the lunchroom.

I have implemented the use of Google Calendars to manage cart usage and appointments with me. I update the calendar as needed throughout the day. Teachers have access to the information on the GHS website. John Hendron helped me by inserting the HTML code into the school website.

I participated in three days of Apple training with consultant Paul Suh. He covered topics such as network structure and connectivity, correcting problems using Terminal command line, as well as common problems that may occur with Mac OS-X.

I’ve started using the GCPS Wiki to post brief tutorials for teachers. The first handout I created is on subscribing to RSS feeds using Safari.