Grade 4 Blogging

After the initial computer activity, grade 4 teachers spent the next several weeks creating their blogs. This was a strong focus for them during the month of September. The teachers have created posts, pages, uploaded videos to the portal and linked to them and done many other things. The teachers are working together to be sure their blogs have similar information. Once they are done, I am hoping they will begin to use blogging with their students.

Grade 2 Final Weather Project

While attending the Learning 2.008 conference in Shanghai, I had the opportunity to sit down with a couple of teachers and plan a final project for their weather unit. We decided to create a PhotoStory based on what they had learned in the unit. The teachers had the students select 4 - 5 weather words to focus on for their digital story. For the first lab session, we found 10 pictures for 10 different weather words and loaded the pictures into the portal for viewing. The students logged into the network and looked through the photo sections based on their weather words. It worked best when the kids had the weather words with them. The kids selected one picture from each of their words and downloaded it into a Weather Folder that we had created for them on the network. This session took about 30 - 40 minutes.

Grade 2 Mapping Activity

Second grade studies "My Cool School". The previous tech integrator created a treasure hunt in Neighborhood Map Machine. It took me a while to figure it out, but once I was able to edit the treasure hunt it became a very fun activity. The kids came to the lab and we reviewed how to log in. I went over the map and the parts of the map -- compass, traveling around, finding and reading a clue, following directions to get to all clues, streets surrounding the school, etc. With the second group, I definitely did a better job of preparing the students to successfully find the treasure. When kids finished, they were allowed to create a simple map of their own while they waited for others to finish. The kids enjoyed this activity and I would like to be able to extend this idea next year so the students can use this program in a meaningful way.

Kindergarten Math Center

I started working with one of the kindergarten teachers quite early in the year working with four students at a time in a computer math center. The teacher divided the kids into groups of 3 - 4 and they spent 10 minutes at each station. At the computer station we started with Hekko online math activities and the kids really enjoyed it. I signed up for an account and added each of the students and then helped them through the lessons. The first unit is on shapes and colors. The only really hard part was the reading of some of the shapes and colors. Earphones helped as the students were able to click on the ear to listen to the words. The second level is about numbers and counting. Students spent a few weeks on each level before progressing to the next level.

Kindergarten September Integration

We started slowly in kindergarten as the teachers needed more time to get their classroom routines working. A couple of the classrooms started with Kindergarten BrainPop. We really should have tried to do this earlier as it was a great introduction to kindergarten and also to using the computers. We watched the movie, talked about kindergarten, took the quiz together and then played the school supply matching game on the SmartBoard. The kids loved it. Once every student had a turn on the SmartBoard they began working on their own laptops. I showed them how to hold the mouse and talked about the difference between clicking and double clicking. Once the kids started playing the game, the teachers walked around the room and checked that the students knew how to hold the mouse and click properly. This lesson took about 30 minutes. We also showed the kids how to close a program by clicking on the X.

Grade 4 Introductory Activity

All grade four classes used Word for the first activity. We showed the students how to log in, talked about lab rules and then introduced basic word processing skills. The skills we practiced in this lesson were

• adding/editing text
• inserting/editing a picture
• adding/editing WordArt
• adding a page border
• saving a document to the network
• printing a document

Students created a “directory” where they had their name in WordArt, a picture below the name and text on the bottom. See introduction PowerPoint and sample directories.

This lesson worked best when we started with wordart and then typing on the first day and talked about formatting and adding photo on the second day.

Two teachers did a different intro activity where the students created an art piece and they added typing about themselves below the picture. We did this activity in the classrooms on the laptop and it worked fine.

Grade 2 KidPix Introduction

Many of the classes used KidPix for their first lesson. Some of the teachers had the students draw a picture of themselves and put their name on the drawing. We used this lesson to practice logging into the network, saving, and printing. We also talked about lab rules. The tools we used were simple tools — drawing tools, text tool, fill tool, color tool. At the end students saved their work. Mary chose to create a weather picture and the students exported these as jpg’s to put in a presentation.

See PowerPoint for beginning of year lesson.

Grade 2 Weather Introduction

Sept. Activity

This was a great activity and a fun way to start off the grade two science unit on weather and air. The teachers booked 1 hour 15 minute lab time and the kids were divided into groups of 5 or 6. There were three stations — technology, literacy, library. The students spent 25 minutes at each station and were introduced to weather in a variety of ways. The teacher was in the learning room with the smartboard doing a literacy element. The librarian was in the reading area doing a library element and we used either the laptop lab or the desktop lab. Some teachers chose just to do the tech portion of the intro and that worked well also.

We started with the brainpop jr. video on seasons and we answered the easy quiz questions and the the hard quiz questions on the smartboard. Then the kids opened my blog with the links to the sites for a Creating a Cloud activity and Dressing the Teddy Bear. We allowed 5 - 6 minutes for each of the two activities. The web sites for each are below. Then we closed with a summary of what we learned, what kinds of clouds we made, what weather is cold, etc.

Dress the Bear

Clouds

Technology Integration Ideas

This blog site will be a catalog of activities done in each of the grade levels to integrate technology into the kindergarten, second, and fourth grade classrooms. It will include classroom activities, resources, teacher training, questions, comments, and reflections on what is happening with technology integration.