Technology Medley

You will soon see a new technology word wall in the computer labs at both of my schools. Each word is either the name of a web site, a program, or a technology term that you and/or your students might find interesting. Each word also includes a link to a site with further information about that particular topic. The VoiceThread below contains each of the words along with links for you to explore as you have the time and interest.

Back in the summer, some discussion arose in Twitter and Plurk about the idea of a technology ABC poster (I’m sorry, I can’t remember exactly who started the discussion to give credit.  If it was you, leave me a comment please).   Through those discussions, Tina Coffey and I came up with the idea of a Technology Word Wall and started adding items to the list that our teachers might use.  If you think of other terms that should be added to our word wall, please leave a comment. If you’re interested, you can also view or print the slides from here.

The Salem ITRTs are happy to announce our new web site located here:

http://salem.k12.va.us/itrt.

It’s far from complete, but please take a look at the Elementary section and then click on Links. Here you will find numerous links for your students to use in almost every subject. We will be adding to these throughout the year, so please let me know if there is a specific site you’d like to have added.

The Teachers Corner will eventually have teacher links that are presently housed on each school’s site. Support Materials include links to handouts that we have used in previous workshops as well as a few online tutorials. We hope to continue to add to these materials as time allows. Our ultimate goal is to provide a resource that you can use to enhance your use of technology in your instruction.

The Links pages are actually bringing in links from Delicious. You can check out our account here. If you click on one of the links pages and only see headers, you probably have an older version of Internet Explorer on your computer and we need to get you updated. You’ll be able to see the links though if you just refresh the page.

I hope you find this helpful!

Our school division will be holding a virtual Assessment FOR Learning fair in March. According to our superintendent, Dr. Alan Seibert, Assessment FOR Learning is really just about good instruction, where students are actively engaged, and are provided with opportunities to use feedback from the teacher to learn even more.

Teachers have been working in teams with others in their grade levels or content areas to gather materials and think about how best to share the strategies they use every day to help their students grow and learn. Since the fair will be virtual (completely online) we will have an archive of best practices used throughout the school division that teachers can revisit and search as long as desired. We may even want to add ideas to the list of resources in the future.

So, how are we going to present these ideas? That’s completely up to the teachers! However, I will be working with the other ITRTs to create a web presence for the projects. I’ll also create folders on the G drive where you can save your pictures and documents as you create them. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Take lots of pictures, both of your students working and of their actual work (unless the work is already digital)
• If you have a Word document with lots of explanations and graphics, we can save it as a pdf to put online.
• Create a PowerPoint with your pictures and explanations.
• Create a PhotoStory with narration or text explanations.
• If you’re planning to use graphs in your display, why not create some in Graph Club?
• If you’re working with older students, use MaxCount or Excel to create the graphs.
• Use VoiceThread to display photographs and either narrate the pictures yourself or let the students explain what they are doing
• Create a class wiki on a specific unit
• Create a simple web page displaying pictures and information about your topic
• Have someone video your class in action
• Have students create a podcast from a script they have written about what they’ve learned.
• If you’re using timelines, don’t forget about TimeLiner.

Any of these suggestions can be used online, and many of the projects will most likely have more than one component. Since I’ve been given the responsibility for creating this virtual fair, I’ll be talking with the teachers in each of my schools within the next couple of weeks. I’m excited about the opportunity to work with you and help you share your wonderful projects!

I am sometimes asked what my job as an ITRT involves. In a nutshell, I’m here to assist the teachers use the available technology within their curriculum. I love this short video that Tina shared on her blog several months ago. It’s a very accurate portrayal of our responsibilities.