It's Great to be a Sixth Grade Student at Dunbar

Andrea Shore's sixth grade class is working on several really cool projects.

Ms. Tricia Captain, a producer at ABC 15 News works with the students to create the school/community newsletter.






John Kain works with the students to finish a video project.




Andrea Shores works with groups of students on an integrated social studies project.










What makes this unique is that all of these activities are happening at the same time.

Web Resources for PESD Teachers Using SMART Boards

Important links:

http://phoenixelem.az.schoolwebpages.com/education/district/district.php?sectionid=1
From the district web site, click on “Technology and Learning” > “Online Learning” > blue tab on the top of the page “Instructional Technology.”

On this page you will find links to a variety of resources including:

• Information from the Instructional team (Tom, Linda, John, Noreen, and Irene)
• Acceptable use information and documents
• Documents associated with the Social Studies Committee (Social Studies Backward Design Documents)
• Linda’s blog: http://pesdinstructionaltech.blogspot.com/
• John’s blog: http://pesdtechnology.blogspot.com/
• Noreen’s blog: http://pesdtechnostuff.blogspot.com/
• John’s wiki: http://pesdtech.wikispaces.com/Smartboard+FAQs (Here you will find a variety of resources including a troubleshooting guide for your classroom technology. Check out the links on the yellow menu bar. Here you will find additional material from the Social Studies Committee.)

Here are other helpful Internet resources

SMART Notebook Lessons:
http://education.smarttech.com/ste/en-US/Ed+Resource/Lesson+activities/Notebook+activities/
http://technology.usd259.org/resources/whiteboards/smartlessons.htm
http://teach.fcps.net/trt27/smart_board_lessons.htm
http://www.wsd1.org/southd/SMART_Board/
http://www.waukesha.k12.wi.us/WIT/SmartBoard/specificapps.htm
http://www.laramie1.k12.wy.us/smartboard/lessons.htm
http://www.elko.k12.nv.us/ecsdtc/SMART%20Boards.htm
http://owensville.k12.mo.us/~SMART_Lessons/Index.htm
http://www.albany.k12.or.us/departments/instruction/smartboardresourcepage.php

Social Studies:
http://www.socialstudiesclassroom.com/?gclid=CJvO_7e9uY8CFRFSagod2hagcw

Making Videos:
http://kidsvid.altec.org/

Project Based Learning:
http://pblchecklist.4teachers.org/

Fun Online Academic Skill Builders:
http://www.arcademicskillbuilders.com/
http://www.4kids.org/

Creating a Blog:
www.google.com (You must create a gmail account first. I don't recommend using your district e-mail account. Then you will be able to use all of the Google resources including blogspot and the video upload site.)

Academic Skill Builders
http://www.4teachers.org/

Social Studies Curriculum Writing Project

PESD teachers are working during intersession to:

• Develop big ideas for 5 Social Studies strands
• Develop essential questions for each strand
• Develop conceptual focus for each of three units for K-6 and 6 units for 7-8.

Along with the Social Studies work, teachers are exploring ways to integrate technology into instruction. One of the on-line tools they are exploring is Learning.com's Easy Tech program.

They will spend the next three days working on this project. The district has chosen to use the research-based framework "Understanding by Design" in partnership with http://www.afre.org/.

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.