k5Tech » 1

Kindergartners and Laptops

mbrown — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:07:30 +0000

This year, we have two teachers working collaboratively with their Kindergarten classes. This enables them to provide more flexibility in grouping and differentiation. They wanted to keep the group together for their tech integration activities, but the labs could not accommodate such a large group.

What a perfect use for our mobile labs! We have 2 “computer dads” who come in and roll the carts in, get the laptops set up and logged in (later in the year the students will be logging in themselves and opening the application for the session).

The teachers love having the laptops in the rooms!They can introduce the activity on their projector and large screen. They can divide the group into two rooms, enabling the teachers and helpers to circulate and get to the students as they need help, because there is more space.

We are excited to see how our technology skills grow in kindergarten using the mobile laptops. Check back for more reports on what these kids are doing.

Taking pictures with our Macs

mbrown — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 19:17:57 +0000

After a quick hour and half drive from Austin to SA, we arrived at Janice’s room, she is watching the UStream from the Bloggers Cafe.

We all decided to learn how to take photos with our macs..It’s so easy, just open PhotoBooth from our Applications folder in our Mac Hard Drive, aim and click the red button to shoot the photo.

Here are the results

Janice

Debbie

Linda

Margie (me)

Too much fun!!

Heading out to register, meet others and eat…

Off to NECC

mbrown — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:01:12 +0000

Just fixin’ to get in the car and pick up Debbie and Linda, 2 CTCs from our district, and drive on down the road to NECC.

I read Janice’s Texas Malahini blog, and love the idea of taking pictures with our Macs!!

Our district will be adding Macs to the PCs the students are using, in order to develop versatility and an understanding of both platforms. Not to mention the multi media things that macs do so much easier than pcs.

So each of the CTCs received macbooks a month ago. I will be taking mine to NECC for blogging, photo ops and whatever else arises.

My conference planner is packed with several sessions for each time slot (lots of yellow triangles with exclamation points in them)…I know from past experience that the BYOL and Model Lessons fill up quickly, so I have alternative choices for those times.

Looking forward to lots of learning..

Headin’ out the door

K5Tech Podcasts

mbrown — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:05:59 +0000

Today I am in an exciting workshop presented by Janice Friesen and Debbie Smith on podcasting. We have learned to create podcasts and post them. We are working on pcs (not macs)..so we are having to do some fancy footwork, but it is working.

We got a nice treat for attending! All of us received an Olympus Digital Voice recorder to use in our podcasting endeavors. They are very cool, they have a usb plug built in and just plug right in to any usb port on any pc.

So, I have created a Podcasting blog separate from this one, but the link to our Podcast site will be on the right in my Blogroll.

And here’s the link to my K5Tech Podcasts page

The Art Teacher From the Black Lagoon

mbrown — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 21:31:19 +0000

At the beginning of school, we read The Teacher from the Black Lagoonby Mike Thaler. The children enjoyed the book so much that we also read The Nurse from the Black Lagoon, The Principal from the Black Lagoon, The Librarian from the Black Lagoon, The Lunch Lady from the Black Lagoon and The Gym Teacher from the Black Lagoon. We even found out that there is The Music Teacher from the Black Lagoon. But there is not an Art Teacher from the Black Lagoon. So we decided to write our own. We hope you enjoy our book

Can you believe we wrote an email to the author Mike Thaler and he wrote us back?! Here’s what he said:

Dear Kelly,

Great job! I hope you made a copy for your school

library. All the books are available from Don Callen

at 1-866-324-8426. The newest is “The Vice

Principal”. Keep the kids writing.

Mike

art-teacher-shortened.wmv

Mrs. Roquemore’s Readers Theater I Bet I Can ibetican.wav

Creating Google Maps with 5th Graders

mbrown — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 12:23:09 +0000

Well.. we (Valley View 5th Grade Students, Nancy Darling, 5th grade teacher, and I) did it. It took a little longer than we planned, but the end product is a Google Earth map with detail or marker boxes about the world’s biomes, created by these 5th graders.

We all learned quite a bit in the process. Nancy and I learned what to add and leave out next year.

The students, judging from the refelctions they emailed to us using their ePals accounts learned quite a bit also. The information they gave us on what they learned, liked, and didn’t like will be helpful in plans for next year.

I’ll be doing a presententation on the nuts and bolts of this project at TCEA during the Tuesday TATN (Technology Applications Teacher Network) session at 1:30 called Google Maps-A 5th Grader Can Do This!

During our time in this project, I was often struck with what a middle or high school student could do with these tools.

Here is the link to the wiki that has our Biomes Research Wiki and the link to our Biomes KMZ file.

http://vve5biomes.pbwiki.com/FrontPage