Technology in Education: Notes from the Closet

This year I changed schools and was lucky enough to join Coonley's staff as a technology coach. Coonley is a great school doing many wonderful things with its students.  Parents can see these but what about everyone else?  Coonley didn't have a Twitter feed when I arrived.  I started an account and have been encouraging teachers, parents and students to join the conversation.  The first week of school had a different Twitter prompt a day.  Now individual classrooms are posting work samples and many people are jumping on board.  I'm hoping to eventually reach the point where we can have "Twitter Takeovers" where classrooms can lead the discussion for the week on our account. For those who are still new to Twitter and need a little guidance I created a Twitter User Guide.  It isn't just for newbies- it contains 4 sections for those ranging from "what-is-Twitter" to "How-can-I-take-it-to-the-next-level".  Please follow us on Twitter! @Coonl...

Original Post (see my updated post here ) I’m always on the lookout for great sites to use with students, especially the little ones.  Our students have never had “formal” technology classes and the kindergarten students had never even entered the lab.  Finding sites that are age appropriate and educational can be challenging.  “ Teach Your Monster to Read ” is a site I stumbled upon one day here .  This site, based out of the U.K. teaches beginning readers about sound and letter matching as well as blending sounds together to form words.  It uses the context of monsters going on an adventure to different magical islands (eight islands in all).  On each island there are four mini lessons that works on accuracy and speed of letter recognition. Students must complete the game sequentially.  When logged off the next time they log back in the program remembers where they were previously so they don’t have to start over.  One of the best feat...

I spend a lot of time trolling through my PLN on Twitter.  Sometimes I’m looking to keep up with current technology trends.  Sometimes I’m looking for resources I can use with my elementary and post-secondary students.  Other times I might be looking for motivation to go for a run or just trolling for fun.  Recently I saw a tweet that caught my eye.  I was instantly curious.  I love analytics, and I’m still enjoying Facebook somewhat.  Further catching my attention was the fact that this application was done using WolframAlpha .  I’ve got twins in 6 th grade; WolframAlpha is a reputable site that is a staple in my house when the kids need math help that I can’t complete or explain off the top of my head. WolframAlpha is a “ computational knowledge ” engine (that means it computes answers and provides knowledge), and is  not a search engine.  It differs from Google. Google searches for pages or links with answers that m...

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. Q...