Tech Projects at Dunbar

Third and sixth grade students at Dunbar are learning with technology. In Mrs. Shores 6th grade class, students are working on the "Dunbar Dragon News" newsletter. The students gather the news, interview staff and students, and take photos. They use MS Publisher to format their newsletter. This is the 4th year that Dunbar students have published the "Dunbar Dragon News."

Some of the sixth grade students are creating an instructional video on how to do algebra problems.

When the projects are complete, they will be published to Mrs. Shores' class blog at this URL: http://msshores.blogspot.com/

The third grade students are learning technology skills using "EasyTech." The students work through the instruction and practice and get an on-line certificate when they complete each lesson. These students will continue to work on their academic and technology skills using "EasyTech."

SMART Notebook Geography Projects

For the past month, Mr. Acedo's class at Garfield School has been working on a geography project using the SMART Notebook software from SMART Technologies. The students selected a state and spent time in the library doing research. After seeing a demonstration of how to put the project together on the SMART Board, the students used laptop computers and SMART Notebook to create their presentations. Mr. Acedo will display the color printed projects in his classroom. As you can see from the photos, the students worked hard to complete their projects.

Blog Showcase

We've introduced blogging to our collegues and to PESD students. Blogspot (the Google blogging tool) seems to be a popular tool--probably because it's easy to use and fairly powerful. Here is a showcase of some of the blogs created by PESD staff and students:

http://pesdtechnostuff.blogspot.com/
http://pesdtechnology.blogspot.com/
http://mracedosclass.blogspot.com/
http://msshores.blogspot.com/
http://www.mrquicksclass.blogspot.com/
http://msfranksclass.blogspot.com/
http://whatsupmrroper.blogspot.com/
http://bethunenews.blogspot.com/
http://bethunemediacenter.blogspot.com/

If you are interested in creating your own blog, contact a member of the Instructional Technology team.

Here's a Great Science Resource

The current issue of "edutopia," the magazine published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation (www.edutopia.org), has a great article about a science resource called "Little Shop of Physics." Housed at the University of Colorado in Fort Collins, Colorado, the crew travels to schools to "help them do science." The complete article can be found at http://www.edutopia.org/classroom-science-little-shop-physics.

The Little Shop web site can be found at http://littleshop.physics.colostate.edu/.

The George Lucas Educational Foundation is a good source of information and resources relating to educational issues. Check it out at www.glef.org.

Keyboarding Instruction with EasyTech

Second grade students at Emerson Elementary School are learning to keyboard using Easy Tech from Learning.com. Each student has their own log in and password. Their teachers, Mrs. Eckhardt and Mrs. Gillis, assign each lesson and go over the basics of starting up the computers and logging on to the web site with the students. Students listen to the instructions and practice the skills with their teachers monitoring their activities. At the end of the lesson, they get to race the Kangaroo. When they successfully complete the lesson, they get an on-line certificate and their score is recorded in the teacher's gradebook.

The movie above shows the students as they begin their keyboarding activity. Notice how many of them are keeping their fingers in place on home row.