Fantas"TIC" Technology

Electricity of Learning

2009-01-24T22:23:00.000-08:00

I am a huge fan of the Promethean boards and their impact on education. We finally finished the rollout of boards in every classroom in our building this year and what can I say...WOW! You can just feel the "electricity of learning" as you walk through the halls. The students are truly engaged with every lesson, and I can't help teachers fast enough. It is an awesome experience to be a part of this process. I have a training on Tuesday and Thursday of this week with our 3rd, 4th and 5th grade teachers, and I can't wait. If you haven't had a chance to check-out the Promethean board or it's resources, you are missing out. If you want to see it for yourself, you can go to www.prometheanplanet.com.

Ipods in Education

2008-10-29T19:27:00.000-07:00

Today's learners can multi-task better than any other generation before them. It is up to us, as educators, to find unique ways to encourage them to learn, and take learning "where they are." The more I think about the uses of Ipods in Education, the more I am fascinated by this kind of technology. I currently am implementing an Ipod initiative in my K-5 building (750 students) to utilize Ipods in our Reading and Math Improvement classes. It has only just begun, and I can already see how engaged and excited the kids are to use them daily. Visit our "work in progress" K-5 Wiki to find out how we are using Flashcards in education. Even though this type of technology fosters lower-level thinking skills, it will allow the teachers involved to spend more time on higher-level thinking skills in the classroom, and less time on the remedial "fact practice" of yesteryear. Let me know what you think of the flashcards and if you can use them in your classroom.

Character Education Blog/Video

2008-10-28T18:16:00.000-07:00

Our school district led an initiative last year to develop a Character Education Program for K-12. They developed monthly character trait resources, as well as a formal way to nominate/reward students who demonstrate these traits, and called it the "Maize Way." At our K-5 building (750 students), we decided to take it a step further, and develop an acting troupe of 5th graders who would put on a skit for the entire student body during our PLC assemblies, which are held bi-monthly. The first month we opened it up to one of our classrooms, there were only 7 kids out of 25 interested. This month, 19 out of 25 were interested. WOW! What were we going to do with so many kids, since we only had enough acting parts for 7? Well, we did the normal and assigned some students as stage crew, but still had 10 kids left over. In this day and age of preparing students for 21st Century Skills, we decided to have some kids take pictures, conduct a bulleying survey, produce a video, and create a blog to educate our community and other schools in our district on the impact we are having on developing these critical character traits. You will find our blog here: http://www.characteratmce.wordpress.com. Please take a minute to stop by and leave a comment for the students.

Voicethread on NING

2008-10-26T19:48:00.000-07:00

Just got an invitation to the Voicethread Ning, and it looks like it will be a great addition for Education. If you use Voicethread in your classroom, you can find great resources and connect with others who are using this technology in their own classrooms. Click on the link to find out more. http://voicethread.ning.com/

Differentiated Instruction

2008-10-22T18:21:00.000-07:00

Google "Things to Do"

2008-10-20T23:15:00.001-07:00

Was reading a post from Jenny Luca,
about "Things to Do" with Google, and I have to say it was a great resource of an already incredible website. This link will give you 52 things you can currently do in Google, with a video to show you how to do each. Thanks Jenny for your post.

New Polling Website

2008-10-13T21:25:00.000-07:00

In a Web 2.0 class I am teaching, we ran across this little polling widget from Vizu, located at http://www.vizu.com/index.html. When you create a new poll, you can customize, save and embed them into your Blog, Wiki or Website. It will even allow you to track the votes geographically. I had an idea to see how many people we can get to vote on the use of Twitter within the month. Vote on the Vizu Poll below and send the link to as many people as you can. In 1 month I will update the results on Twitter. Let's see how powerful and reaching Twitter is and the main purpose for using it in today's society.

Online Surveys & Market Research