Retired Tech Specialist Thoughts and Projects

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

School's Out--School's In

Today is just the second day of "summer vacation" for our PESD students. For teachers it is a different story. There are several professional development activities going on in the district--some of them have already begun. Our office is providing a "Technology Boot Camp" for teachers. It's always interesting to work with adult learners.

To provide our teachers with information about the Camp, a Boot Camp blog has been created at this url: http://techcamp08.blogspot.com.

Friday, March 28, 2008

Have you heard a tall tale lately?

I know a good place to read some really great tall tales. Ms. Dhaliwal's students at Emerson Elementary School wrote tall tales. Now they are using SMART Notebook to illustrate their stories. I'm looking forward to printing and reading all of their stories. The little bits and pieces that I have seen so far show that they have good writing skills and very vivid imaginations. SMART Notebook is a great tool for this type of lesson. The graphic resources and tools give kids lots of options to be creative with their stories.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Catastrophic Events

What does a scientist do with all of their research data??? The sixth grade scientists in Andrea Shores class at Dunbar Elementary are presenting their information to the class using the SMART Board and SMART Notebook. After completing their research, each team is reporting on a specific event. Their reports include photos and video clips.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Life Cycle of a Butterfly

In Mrs. Eckhardt's 2nd grade class, the students are using Microsoft Power Point to illustrate the life cycle of a butterfly. They started the project by watching as their butterflies developed in the classroom. Then they used the Internet to find pictures to illustrate their life cycle Power Point presentations. They found some really great web sites with butterfly art and information including the ones listed below:

http://butterflywebsite.com/clipart/constructtable.cfm

http://www.webstarwest.com/Butterfly/index.html

http://bsi.montana.edu/web/kidsbutterfly/

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/butterfly/

http://www.webweaver.nu/clipart/insects-butterfly.shtml

Rulers and Measurement

Last week students in Ms. Dhaliwal's class at Emerson Elementary started learning how to use rulers and other measuring tools. They took rulers and yard sticks and measured everything in and out of the classroom. To integrate technology into the lesson, we used the laptop computers and a SMART Board to practice. The students opened a SMART Notebook file from flash drives and proceeded to measure the objects on the screen using a ruler that can be manipulated to measure how tall and how wide each object is.

When they are finished measuring and recording each object, they will go to the following URL's to practice in a game like format:

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

50 Computer Activities from Scholastic

While searching for lesson materials today, I spent some time on the Scholastic web site. I found that Scholastic provides 50 quick, compelling one-session activities that can be used to incorporate interactive learning and technology into lesson plans. Each activity requires no prep and can be completed in 15-30 minutes. You can find these activities at: http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/clf/index.htm.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

PESD Classroom and Technology Blogs