Technology in Education: Notes from the Closet

For the majority of this week I am out of the building.   Tuesday I'll participate in the development of CPS' REACH Performance Task technology assessments for grades 1, 4 and 7. These assessments, given in the beginning and ending of the school year help to measure student growth and are used as part of teacher evaluations.  Read more about REACH here . The rest of the week I'll be attending the ICE 2013 Conference .  This conference brings together educators interested in educational technology throughout Illinois.  ICE is a great organization and runs a great conference (and yes, I'm on the conference planning committee too!).  I'll be presenting on Thursday.  My Prezi will be placed below after the conference.  Look for conference notes and details next week!

Image source:  http://schools.stlucie.k12.fl.us/oak/2013/01/27/survey/ Survey Says..... This week our voice will be heard!  Students have been asked to give their opinion for a couple of different projects this week (and part of last week and next week).  Here is the lowdown: May Community Academy Culture Survey Mr. Hetrick, our Dean of Students has asked that staff members and students take a school culture survey.  Almost all of the classrooms in grades 2-8 have participated.  If you have not done so yet you can get to the survey here .  If you are not a May school member please don't take the survey!  I'll report out the findings in a future blog post. My Voice-My Vote Survey Seventh graders in room 303 continue to work on their T.E.A.M . project with Krista .  Last week four of the students worked together to create a video that explained their infographic.  After viewing the video students were asked to take the same survey they took in the fall

Prior to being placed in the computer lab this year I spent the previous 4 years helping teachers find ways to integrate technology into their classrooms.  Sometimes educators that are "new" to technology integration are looking for fun, simple projects to get their students  (and themselves) excited about the possibilities of technology integration.  Below is a document that I created for my faculty three years ago.  Many, if not most of these sites are still current or have made great improvements since then. 20 Ways to Web 2.0 Your Classroom During Black History Month by nmzumpano

Recently I came across a resource through my PLN (Professional Learning Network) on Twitter  that gave me an idea for Black History Month.  If you are an educator and you are not on Twitter we need to talk! Using a resource shared by  James Gubbons   that was originally created by  Tony Vincent  I decided to introduce QR Codes to the  4th grade students .  We talked about what a "quote" was and referenced some  famous quotes . I brought the iPads in and displayed some of the mystery quotes from Tony's website around the room. The students worked in pairs to scan the QR codes to find missing words from famous quotes.  For today's purposes I only used quotes from African Americans.   The students then created their very own quotes, with "mystery" missing parts just like the ones we scanned.  I demonstrated how to create a QR code using QRStuff.com and created a step by step guide for the students to assist them. QR Code Creation Step by Step Di

Happy 3rd Quarter!  We are already half way through the 2012-2013 school year! It's a Microsoft Love Fest this week!  Our kindergarten students continue to build skills through fun educational websites (see past posts for specific websites).  Students in first grade were exposed to Microsoft Word for the first time in technology lab this week.  They absolutely loved it!  Using Insight I am able to show my computer screen on each student's monitor.  With the little ones I explain to them that its like watching a tv screen. Insight allows to me to demonstrate how to launch the program, type, change my font, font color, font size and add images.  Students were excited to know that next week I will save their masterpieces and print them for classroom display.  Teachers were excited to know that they can now focus on classroom projects that involve typing. Second through sixth grade students are now creating Power Point presentations based on the New Year's reflection