Technology in Education: Notes from the Closet

As students learn about history teachers often test knowledge through discussions and quizzes.  How about using technology tools to demonstrate what they've learned?  This year in Ms. Malhiot's classroom students became very comfortable using PicCollage and Audioboom to demonstrate learning.  Following are some great examples of their knowledge of the American Revolution.  Look closely at the PicCollages...students embedded themselves in various scenes! Follow Ms. Malhiot's Class on Twitter listen to ‘Declaration of Independence’ on audioBoom listen to ‘The Constitution of 1787’ on audioBoom listen to ‘the battle of sarrotoga’ on audioBoom listen to ‘Benedict Arnold’ on audioBoom listen to ‘NEW the french and indian war’ on audioBoom listen to ‘patrick henry’ on audioBoom listen to ‘samuel adams’ on audioBoom

Last year I taught students how to give each other strong feedback using Today's Meet.  The full post can be found here .  This year I had the opportunity to do the same lesson but with a new school and a new set of fifth graders.  The lesson series with this class came out of a conversation with the teacher, Ms. Foreman about student projects. She was looking for ideas for book reviews.  Lucky for me she is enthusiastic and open to any suggestion involving technology. I introduced Ms. Foreman to Audioboom .  Having just provided the teachers with a professional development session on using QR codes in the classroom we decided to create audio recordings of student book reviews.  The beauty of using Audioboom is that it automatically generates a QR code linking to that specific audio file.  While the recordings were taking place the class was also working in PicCollage .  I showed them the basics of how to use the program and some were already f...

Here at Coonley students follow a simple code of conduct:   be responsible, be respectful and be safe . Sounds simple, right?  As adults we all know what this means but for students sometimes it takes a bit more detail.  In 4th grade Ms. Malhiot's class decided to dig deeper. Setting the Stage Still getting to know each other,  Ms. Malhiot's students discussed their various learning styles.  As the picture suggests this class is "off the chart" (pun intended!) when it comes to being visual learners.  Having that knowledge helps the teacher determine what types of activities students might respond to best. Even though the Cougar Code is displayed in the classroom Ms. Malhiot decided to take the concept and give students a chance to visually represent it.  This not only reinforces the notion that this is an important set of rules but gives students specific examples of what someone might mean when they walk in and say "Be Responsible!", "B...