Technology in Education: Notes from the Closet

Welcome Back!  I hope everyone had a nice Fall Intersession break!  I did.  I traveled to Riviera Maya, Mexico.  The weather was really warm!  We saw lots of animals including quatis!  Here are a few pictures I took:   This week marks the first week of the 2nd Quarter.  This quarter fourth grade joins Technology Lab.  Welcome 4th grade!  Here's an introduction to the lab this year: Kindergarten: Although the kindergarten students still haven't grown tired of ABCYA.com and Starfall.com its time to add a new website to the mix.  This quarter we will add in ABCMouse.com where the students will get a chance to work on some basic skills.  ABCMouse is a website that is subscription based but is currently free to public schools.  Its curriculum contains 6 levels for preschool and kindergarten students.  We're excited to give it a try! 1st-2nd Grade: This week is Halloween!!  We'll continue to practice our Microsoft Word skills.  This week we'll foc

K-3rd Grades: We are approaching the end of the first quarter of technology lab! Kindergarten through third grade will continue working on the skills we've started this quarter. These include: ABCya.com to help us with our mouse skills Starfall.com to help us with our reading skills Studyladder.com to help us with math and literacy skills Letterbubbles.com to help us with our typing skills Kidbiz3000.com to help us (3rd grade) read and understand nonfiction text Finally, we continue working on our Microsoft Word cutting/pasting, font, and color change skills. This week we talked about pushing and pulling objects. Here's Catia's example: NET Standards Covered: 6a.  Understand and use technology systems 6b. Select and use applications effectively and productively 6d. Transfer current knowledge to learning new technologies 5th-8th Grades : This week is our Media Literacy test!  Students in these grades have spent the last 6 weeks lea

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K-3rd Grade : We are still working on our mouse skills this first quarter.  All primary grades have been introduced to LetterBubbles and are progressing.  Second grade seems to enjoy it the most!  A reminder that LetterBubbles seems to prefer the Chrome browser. In the meantime students are very comfortable navigating through ABCya and Starfall .  Some of the primary teachers have opened free StudyLadder accounts.  The students seem to really enjoy the site so I am encouraging more of the teachers to do the same. Third grade continues to begin their lab time by focusing on non-fiction text through KidBiz3000 .  Ms. Robinson has taken the time to set up Sumdog accounts for her class.  Sumdog is a math gaming site that allows students to play against their classmates!  This is the first time I've heard of the site so I'll be experiencing it right along with the students.  We also will continue to work on basic Microsoft Word skills in the primary grades.  Cutting and

Kindergarten-3rd Grade: As we continue practicing our mouse skills using ABCYA.com and Starfall.com  we will also keep practicing how to cut and paste objects and change the font , size , and color of our names in Microsoft Word.  Last week we used a "living and non-living things" template provided by the awesome author of this website .  This week we are brushing up on our lady bug addition and subtraction!  Here's an example: Students in various classrooms in grades 1-3 are beginning to work in Studyladder.com .  Studyladder allows teachers to set up free accounts for each of their students to practice math and literacy skills.  There are activities available for 10 subjects as well as resources for teachers including print materials and tutorials.  Student activity can be tracked for progress.  While I am providing guidance and time for Studyladder in lab, the teachers set up their own classroom accounts so they can monitor what skills their students are wor