Betty’s Instructional Technology Blog

This week, I will also be training second grade teachers about NJ’s Technology Standards. I will be reviewing ways to integrate the  standards into the curriculum. The following is a  link to my PowerPoint presentation. This presentation contains links to sample lessons and web site resources.

Teachers:

As an exit ticket, please make a comment to this blog. You may do one of the following:

1. Share something you learned
2. Express a concern or ask a question
3. Tell 1 idea you will try with your class.

This week, I will be training first grade teachers about NJ’s Technology Standards. I will be reviewing ways to integrate the  standards into the curriculum. The following is a  link to my PowerPoint presentation. This presentation contains links to sample lessons and web site resources.

Teachers:

As an exit ticket, please make a comment to this blog. You may do one of the following:

1. Share something you learned
2. Express a concern or ask a question
3. Tell 1 idea you will try with your class.

In my Web 2.0 workshop, the participants moved through stations using various software/web sites. As part of the station, they posted their ideas on how to use the software in their classrooms. Their ideas on using Voicethread are listed below: 

1. Providing examples for students to reference in order to perform mathematical operations. ex- converting fractions from mixed numbers to improper fractions

2. Paired with united streaming, this could be useful to match each video more closely with the curriculum.

3. Have students experiment to get comfortable with more advanced features.

4.  Make a station and /or use as review

5. This could be used with our Young Authors Project.  Students create short books that are illustarted.  The students could read their work and show off their books.  It could also be used as part of a poetry unit where students would write and illustrate poetry and read it to an audience.

6. Good for modeling how to proofread.

7. Good for modeling thought processes and logical thinking (Math/Problem Solving)

This is a sample of a Voicethread:

If you'd like to learn how to embed a Voicethread into edublogs, check out this You Tube Video:

In my Web 2.0 workshop, the participants moved through stations using various software/web sites. As part of the station, they posted their ideas on how to use the software in their classrooms. Their ideas on using Google Earth are listed below: 

1) Google Earth would definitely be an excellent resource to use for our Social Studies curriculum. It’s a wonderful way to have students take tours through Ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt!

2) This is a great resource to being students to historical sites, landmarks, or monuments.

3) Students can research travel distance from one designated point to another using math skills to convert to various units of measure.   Students could further calculate time needed to travel by foot, lessons in longitude and latitude, and other map skills.

4) We also found this resource to be a great way to search for the well-known tourist sites, picture galleries, and transporation within each country, plus lots of other options!

5) Provide images of various biomes studied within the science unit Environments.

6) Calculating distances to illustrate relative measurements and sizes.

7) Find places of interest ( Golden Gate Bridge, Washington Monument, etc) or locate Regions of the United States to go along with the Social Studies Curriculum.   

In my Web 2.0 workshop, the participants moved through stations using various software/web sites. As part of the station, they posted their ideas on how to use the software in their classrooms. Their ideas on using Audacity are listed below:  

1. For practicing vocabulary

2. For proofreading/editing when students are reading aloud they can hear it/see it and self-correct.

3. Pre-record core spelling words to practice/review for test

4.  Record more complex audio to use in conjunction with photo story

5.  To help teach fluency – letting students hear their own  voice to help promote fluency and inflection

6. keeping an audio record of the progression of the students’ reading levels

7. Could be used with Reader’s Theater

8. Could create audio books as a differentiated activity

In my Web 2.0 workshop, the participants moved through stations using various software/web sites. As part of the station, they posted their ideas on how to use the software in their classrooms. Their ideas on using Movie Maker are listed below:  

1. Students could create a finished product from their PhotoStory.

2. The Movie Maker program is an excellent resource and a little more advanced than Photostory.  Like Photostory, presentations can be enhanced to address the student’s learning needs and students can also create presentations of their own. 

3. Unitedstreaming video clips could be imported and muted and students could make their own voiceovers.

4. Students could use a video camera and tape themselves and edit the video demonstating a topic, pretending to be a historical figure, having a debate, etc.

In my Web 2.0 workshop, the participants moved through stations using various software/web sites. As part of the station, they posted their ideas on how to use the software in their classrooms. Their ideas on using Photostory are listed below:  

1. I might have students come in at the end of this year and use Photostory to create a tour of the library to use for orientation next year.

2. Will be used for an immigration project, where students will narrate as characters immigrating to America and discuss their hardships.

3. Use with presidential candidates to present their views on different issues. 

4.  We could use this throughout our social studies curriculum of ancient civilizations.  The students could create travel brochures for Egypt, Greece, or Rome.  Our Egyptian Museum project could be easily modified to fit this format.  Students select 5 artifacts from ancient Egypt that they would like to include in their museums.  They would add audio describing the artifact and explaining its importance to the ancient Egyptians.

5.  Students can present any report with pictures and sound.

6.  The 5th graders can use this for Virtual History.

7. Photostory is an excellent program that can be used to address students individual learning needs.  The combination of video with auditory features enhance the learning process.  Students can also research topics and develop personal Photostory presentations.

8. Students can use this to present different reports.  This is a very user friendly program.

The more I learn, the more I realize what I don’t know. I’ve been playing around with various Web 2.0 tools for almost a month now. I have been reading numerous blog entries and listening to podcasts every day. I am beginning the daunting task of sharing these tools with my district.

I taught a lesson to some 6th graders about podcasting. We are going to create a series of podcasts to showcase what they have been learning about the environment. I helped a pre-K teacher create her own blog to share resources with parents and colleagues. This week I have a wonderful opportunity to work with 5th and 6th grade teachers for a few hours to train them on ways to integrate the tech standards into the curriculum and use some of these Web 2.0 tools. There are so many ways I could go with this. As of this moment, the following is the agenda I’ve come up with:

1. Review tech standards and draft of grade level scope – Tech Standards Scope
2. Share current database of tech integrations lessons created by our district’s Technology Action Team
3. Show them how to create an iGoogle page to use some of the cool widgets that they can use for vocabulary, history, and math skills
4. Introduce them to this blog as a growing resource for lessons
5. Show them the newly created blogs for their grade level – 5th and 6th
6. Have them add a feed to these blogs to their iGoogle page
7. Show them ways Photostory can be used as a way for students to share what they have learned about a topic or share their own personal stories
8. Provide an overview of atomic learning to view lesson ideas and use as a tool to learn new software
9. Give time to explore, create, and share