Technology in Education: Notes from the Closet

Last year prior to science fair one of our middle school science teachers asked me to come in and speak to the classes about plagiarism. We had a great talk and the students were engaged with the Prezi and study guide ( see the original post here ).  This year, another teacher asked me to come in and  do a refresher.  Being that I was going to be addressing the same topic with the same kids and the same content I thought it might be time to try out a new tool (even coaches are still learning how to use new tools!).  My tool of choice was Nearpod . Near-what? Nearpod allows for interactive presentations that are sent directly to student devices; instead of students watching you in front of the classroom in front of a screen this is the one time you won't have to yell at your students for looking at their Chromebooks/iPads/laptops instead of at you! This also gave me the ability to control the presentation from my iPad while walking around weaving in and out of student groups.

Each year as students head back to school they set goals for themselves; ' get good grades' , ' listen to the teacher' , ' become better at sports' are some popular ones we here.  Teachers in first grade, second grade and third grade took these goals a step further; they had students record them. Teachers began by having students write three goals for the new year.  When this step was complete I came in. Using the app Audioboom I recorded each student reading their goals.  Audioboom stores the audio recording on their site, and generously creates a QR code linking to it.  I printed each and teachers found creative ways to display them (see pics below).  These goals were then placed in classrooms for Open House.  Our parents loved them, and the students got a kick out of them as well. The hope is that we will come back to this activity in June and rerecord reflection statements about meeting/not meeting our goals.  It will be fun to compare writing styles, re

I'm not sure how I failed to post this sooner!  Last year Coonley classrooms contributed to our 6 Word Memoirs slideshow where each student created a memoir on their own slide.  Here's their masterpiece! Direct link:  https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1tGs0NNGWnfbUAPIn2zOzkvyD2S4ExzYfYfBt8cvoz-4/edit?usp=sharing Last year's can be found here:  http://zumpanotechlab.blogspot.com/2015/06/one-year-told-in-six-words.html