Sunday, October 21, 2007

GLEF

So after looking through the Edutopia website I have decided that there is way too much information out there! My mind is racing with everything I have just read about in the technology integration section. From Hana lulu schools testing water and having their own TV show that is produced by elementary school students to students providing more research on the frogs that live in their area. I want to do it all with my students! I know it doesn't happen right away and I have to find something of my own to do but just reading about everything that is going on is inspiring me to go on a search for the main project I want to start with in my classroom as a technology teacher. I have always said I wanted to visit other schools and see what they are doing with technology, well this is allowing me to read and watch what others are doing. It is so inspiring as well as overwhelming to see where the technology is bringing our classrooms.

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Field Experience


So I decided to start writing about my field experiences with technology. Basically I am surrounded by technology in almost every aspect of my job at work. I am the technology coordinator, testing coordinator, and recently the data coordinator. I teach every grade in the school 2 times a week and at least 2 times a month I offer professional development for the teachers and using the technology that we have. I also provide the school with tech. support after school hours.
Today I had my first meeting for the data coordinators in the city. You see my school was chosen as part of a Teacher Incentive Grant for Charter Schools. It is called
PICCS I am on the Data team. This entails using our students test data to drive our instruction for each student to become successful. It is not just printing out the reports and looking at numbers, it involves answering the now what do I do of the “ok so I know what the students received on all of these tests…now what” We will be using a data management server called TetraData. This server will allow me to have all of the data available to me and I will choose how to manipulate this data and run reports. It seems like it is going to help a lot once we have everything in order.
Yesterday’s field experience involved a lot! My Wednesday schedule is packed with teaching pretty much all day. I taught at least one class in each grade yesterday. It was a tiring day. My students are not exposed to computers unless they are in our school so yesterday’s task was showing the 3rd – 5th graders how to save files to a writeable CD. It was very interesting to see that maybe 1 student knew how to do this. My kindergartener’s are working on their fine and gross motor skills now so they have been using
Starfall to reinforce their letter skills. The current first graders are lucky because they already know how to use the computer because of the previous year with me. These first graders are learning about weather through a Sunburst computer program. The second graders have started their computer groups. Within these groups I have students reinforcing their reading skills with either Reader Rabbit or Starfall, their science skills with a Sunburst science program or Weather Wiz Kids, using KidPix in order to foster their creative side while reinforcing the computer skills while my last group is working on a computer project. These groups switch every class in order to allow for all students to reinforce each skill. The computer project is a small group that will work with me, while the other groups are working very much independently. I sort of created guided computer groups or centers. This was something new I tried this year and it seems to be working quiet nicely.
After school I offered a professional development for the teachers. In this professional development I was able to show how to burn an exact copy of a CD for those teachers who needed it. I also walked them through installing and using an interactive math computer program.