Betty’s Instructional Technology Blog

Our Technology Action Team meeting will be discussing a variety of topics this month:

Tech Updates

• * We have begun a few blogging projects recently. We will review our current blogs hosted by Edublog Campus. There are three main blogs projects happening right now. The first is Writer’s Notebook, a blog that will contain staff and student experiences with this literacy strategy. The second is a project being done with fourth and fifth grade teachers across the district. The fifth grade teachers are responding to the novels they are reading in lit circles using blogs and Voicethread. Two fourth grade teachers will begin a project responding to the novel Sarah, Plain and Tall. The third project involves students creating podcasts and embedding them in their class blogs. Finally, we are looking to create an additional blog about mathematics which will contain sample problems and solutions to various math problems using Voicethread. This will be modeled after a project called Mathcast, by the makers of Math Playground.
• * Voicethread was recently purchased by our district. It is a wonderful collaborative tool that allows several people to comment on a document saved on the Internet. We have been embedding voicethreads in our blogs and using them as stand alone resources.
• * Galloway recently purchased licenses to upgrade toKidspiration 3. This new version has several additional features including a built in dictionary and Thesaurus, a math fiew that contains wonderful manipulatives, and a searchable graphics library.

Tech Standards Status

• * We will review our scope and sequence to see where we are in meeting the technology standards.
• * We will reinforce that all lessons need to be saved in the proper folder on our shared X drive (GT Common) and catalogued in our database.

Next Steps

• * We will continue to discuss assessment of the technology standards. We will focus on how we will implement the NJTAP-In rubric in 8th grade and how we will continue to store student work related to assessment of the tech standards.

How do we begin? Maybe we should start by giving each child a blog and have the teacher keep track of the posts in an aggregator like netvibes. I’ll try to get some volunteers to see how it goes and if it works, we’ll share it with the rest of the staff.

This is my first post. I recently attended a phenomenal workshop at Kean University that introduced me to the concept of the Read/Write web. I came home so excited and ready to introduce my K-8 district to this wonderful new world.

When I returned to work, I was inundated with school life – answering emails, working with teachers and students, and solving various technology problems. So, Web 2.0 was put on the “back burner.”

Over the holiday break, I had the opportunity to take some time to watch a great introductory workshop offered by Atomic Learning on Web 2.0. Again, my Interest was piqued. I also had the opportunity to read Will Richardson’s book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and other Web Tools for Classrooms. (my favorite Christmas present next to my ipod touch) I was hooked.

My New Year’s Resolution is to begin entering this new world. The biggest challenge I see at the moment is where to begin. I have read so much. (although I know I have barely scratched the surface) I now have a netvibes account and have checked it each day to continue to learn more. I am hoping to use this blog to share ideas for using these tools with students in my district. I will begin with 5th and 6th graders. I am looking for ideas.

I plan to offer workshops to 5th and 6th grade teachers at the end of this month helping them to integrate technology into the curriculum and implement our NJ Technology Standards. I hope to use this blog as a tool to share ideas, successes, and frustrations.