Technology in Education: Notes from the Closet

L ast year our 3rd grade gifted teacher was looking for a way to use technology in his social studies curriculum. His project on researching regions of the United States lent itself to the multimedia program Thinglink . First students would research and gather information on the geography, economy and history of each region being studied. They would then use this information to display on their Thinglinks.    We created a graphic organizer as a way to help students organize their thoughts and research. Third graders still need guidance in taking notes so we created a more detailed graphic organizer this year which allowed them to enter their notes directly onto it.  By doing so we helped with the structure of the paragraphs they would be asked to complete.      After research and Thinglinks were complete students were asked to create a 5 page website: home page, credits, Thinglink, regions and dream vacation. Again, we constructed a graphic or...

This year a new class for our students was technology.  In previous years students had never had a dedicated technology "prep"; they would enter with their teacher and do assignments the teacher had requested. Our little ones loved coming to technology!  We would often start lessons that involved learning how to use Microsoft Word and eventually PowerPoint. Examples of some of their work can be found here ,  here , and  here . Preparation periods for teachers were 60 minutes this year.  Students did a great job with the assignments but I also wanted them to have some "downtime" in lab, albeit appropriate downtime.  To aid in this I created papers with websites that the students were allowed to explore.  Some are free, some required me to set up accounts.  Each was introduced one at a time and built up throughout lab.  Below are the papers.  You'll notice that many contain the same sites throughout the three grades but all three are emb...