Second Week,
Another familiar feeling during projects. Frustration.
What have we done?
The two projects from last week update: Nothing happening. For different reasons.
2nd Grade
The teachers and students are gathering ideas and working on it. I really have no input until their work is done. Then I will do the photographs and talk about how their ideas will show up in a professionally produced poster. So this is just waiting. I was at their planning meeting today and they sound like things are fine, they are just not in a hurry.
5th Grade
We are having a lot of trouble with scheduling. But I am scheduled for next week to present a lesson on research using a website that talks a lot about pioneer life in the early 1800s. This means I have work to do, but it is not really collaborative work. Because of our time constraints, I am happy to be contributing at all :)
Grateful for:
Two Kindergarten teachers have classroom blogs and each one has received positive feedback from a parent on them! Both parents say they love using the blog with their kindergartener as a tool for communication. Instead of, "What did you do at school today?" "Nothing." They can say, "I see you were practicing counting to see how many students are in your class? Let's practice!" Both teachers are very positive and say now that the blog is set up it takes very little time to update. Success!
A second grade teacher wanted me to figure out how to set up a blog so she can pose a Challenge Question when they are learning content. She will have a special set of books in the room on a subject, say, animals, whatever they are studying. She gets these from the library or from our area resources. Then each day she will pose a Challenge Question on the blog. During literacy workshop the students can utilize the books to research the question, and write what they have learned in the comments section of the blog. These comments do not show up until they are accepted by the teacher. At the end of the day the teacher goes over the research, the comments, and posts them while talking about the question with the whole class. Great way to get authentic writing into the classroom! And I set it up for her today. Will post again about this after she has used it. But very hopeful.
Another teacher, a 5th grade Special Needs teacher also wanted a blog. She wanted one set up like this: I set up a class website on Weebly.com and added blogs for each of her students. She wants to (again) ask a question on the website, the students will then have time during the day to post, like a journal, about the question. There will be a little higher learning curve because the posting has a few more steps to it than commenting, but I am confident they will get it. Will re-post after she has used it, but very hopeful.
The above blogs are exciting, I think. Both teachers do the same tasks already, using paper (and journals) and pencil. Using the blogs makes the tasks more authentic for the students, preparing them for communicating in our connected world today.
So I see a great value to this blog of mine now. I was so frustrated on Monday, thinking that nothing was happening and I didn't know how to be helpful. That feeling persisted on Tuesday, but the reality was quite different. Teachers are asking me for help, and I have been helpful in a couple of instances.
Yay blogs!
Possibilities and problems implementing technology in a K-5 school.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
First week
A kindergarten teacher and myself have committed to posting our blogs on Wednesdays. This Wednesday I am home sick and will post it by myself (sorry Nicole!). Wednesdays work well because school started on Thursday so I have a week in already.
What have we done? This trimester I work with the 2nd and 5th grade teachers on technology projects.
First up, 2nd grade. Our big project is for the three 2nd grade classes to have the students gather and write what our Lowell Positive Behavior Expectations look like. For example, what does it look like when we are safely walking in the hallways? The students figure out what everything looks like, then we take pictures of what they have decided, add some words maybe, as a little reminder, and publish posters (professional looking posters from the print shop) that will be hung up all around the school. We met as teachers to divide the responsibilities, and had a first meeting with students to explain what they are doing. That's all! My plan after we do the posters is to use the posters as a storyboard and have the students make a video of the expectations also. I am a big video fan, and believe that if pictures are more helpful that just words to show how to do something, then videos are even MORE helpful because they show the whole process. We will see. The videos would be great review to show after winter and spring break.
5th grade. We have a program called Read Write Gold put on all of our computers in the computer lab. This program is helpful to special needs students doing research and writing. It will read text in web pages and PDFs, highlight and organize text, and do lots of other helpful things for research. I will be teaching the students to use this program as part of helping them do research. The teachers and I met and decided to have the students research either the Winnebago Tribe or early 19th century Iowa life as a precursor to their annual trip to Ft Atkinson, a fort in Iowa that re-enacts life during 1840's. This sounds like a great idea. My problems so far have been it is very general. I want some specific topics that I can use as an example to show how to use the program, and I want to be able to give the students more specific topics to study. I expect this will gain more focus as the teachers and I talk about it.
Again, what have we done?
Well, we are talking. That is more helpful than it may sound. Teachers always say we don't have enough time to process things, and we are right. I feel like the extra time I am being given this year will give me some process time, and even if the teachers and I don't talk every day, I can get information to them and get more immediate feedback when we talk face-to-face. And the projects have been introduced and begun, and it is only 5 days into school!
There have been some little things that I am very grateful for. Because I was up talking to one of the 5th grade teachers, she asked me an unrelated question about showing student work on her interactive whiteboard, and I was able to help her do that. She will now be using her IWB more and so will her students. I spent a half hour in a 5th grade classroom for math, and learned something about teaching that I hadn't tried before, and will try now. I have a great project that I will be planning and scheming for the kindergarten to do as a result of my conversations with the kindergarten teacher who wants to do a blog. And the whole 2nd grade is going to get instruction from the district about making a class webpage as a result of just spending time with them talking about it.
Feeling scared and excited simultaneously about this school year. This is a familiar feeling at the start of projects.
What have we done? This trimester I work with the 2nd and 5th grade teachers on technology projects.
First up, 2nd grade. Our big project is for the three 2nd grade classes to have the students gather and write what our Lowell Positive Behavior Expectations look like. For example, what does it look like when we are safely walking in the hallways? The students figure out what everything looks like, then we take pictures of what they have decided, add some words maybe, as a little reminder, and publish posters (professional looking posters from the print shop) that will be hung up all around the school. We met as teachers to divide the responsibilities, and had a first meeting with students to explain what they are doing. That's all! My plan after we do the posters is to use the posters as a storyboard and have the students make a video of the expectations also. I am a big video fan, and believe that if pictures are more helpful that just words to show how to do something, then videos are even MORE helpful because they show the whole process. We will see. The videos would be great review to show after winter and spring break.
5th grade. We have a program called Read Write Gold put on all of our computers in the computer lab. This program is helpful to special needs students doing research and writing. It will read text in web pages and PDFs, highlight and organize text, and do lots of other helpful things for research. I will be teaching the students to use this program as part of helping them do research. The teachers and I met and decided to have the students research either the Winnebago Tribe or early 19th century Iowa life as a precursor to their annual trip to Ft Atkinson, a fort in Iowa that re-enacts life during 1840's. This sounds like a great idea. My problems so far have been it is very general. I want some specific topics that I can use as an example to show how to use the program, and I want to be able to give the students more specific topics to study. I expect this will gain more focus as the teachers and I talk about it.
Again, what have we done?
Well, we are talking. That is more helpful than it may sound. Teachers always say we don't have enough time to process things, and we are right. I feel like the extra time I am being given this year will give me some process time, and even if the teachers and I don't talk every day, I can get information to them and get more immediate feedback when we talk face-to-face. And the projects have been introduced and begun, and it is only 5 days into school!
There have been some little things that I am very grateful for. Because I was up talking to one of the 5th grade teachers, she asked me an unrelated question about showing student work on her interactive whiteboard, and I was able to help her do that. She will now be using her IWB more and so will her students. I spent a half hour in a 5th grade classroom for math, and learned something about teaching that I hadn't tried before, and will try now. I have a great project that I will be planning and scheming for the kindergarten to do as a result of my conversations with the kindergarten teacher who wants to do a blog. And the whole 2nd grade is going to get instruction from the district about making a class webpage as a result of just spending time with them talking about it.
Feeling scared and excited simultaneously about this school year. This is a familiar feeling at the start of projects.
Why
My New Year does not start in January. It starts in August, when school starts. The Fall, yes, even August, feels new to me. I feel a blank page being turned and am excited to try new things.
This year I am piloting a new schedule in my K-5 school. Every trimester I will not have a fixed schedule of classes for two grades, and will collaborate with those grades to try out different technologies in their lessons. As you can see, this is pretty vague, which is the reason for this blog. I want to document for myself what exactly it is I am doing. Here goes!
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