We have passed the midyear point in the school year and although I missed most of the first four months of school I am thrilled by the technology-related learning I am seeing going on at the Elementary School. One big addition this year is that we now have four carts of laptops which means that there is one available for every four or five classes in a wing, with an additional one that seems to be used regularly by third and fourth grade classes in the blue wing. We were able to purchase one more projector and cart so now fifteen classrooms are sharing seven projectors.

Students in second grade are writing and editing in Clicker 5 in the lab. They love the fact that it reads their work back to them for editing and revision, and the teachers have made good use of online learning grids which serve as templates to support writing about the weather, frogs, Chinese New Year and other topics. Classes have learned to use Clicker Paint to illustrate poems and other pieces of writing for display in the hallways and online. Teachers have used the lab for Math practice and as an introduction to Math concepts. Two classes have created Voicethreads that can be viewed from their class web pages that display student work and voices. Several Quicktime movies of classroom presentations are also available on class pages. One class is about to join a daily weather recording activity on a blog started by first grade. We will be the NorthEast region class that is recording the weather for one week each month and comparing it with other regions. Students will record each other during the classroom morning meeting and then we can post their voices as podcasts on the blog.

In third grade students have been practicing addition and subtraction facts and doing some math problem-solving activities all year. Two teachers have class blogs, one has individual student blogs within the classblogmeister blog. The blogs are being used to communicate student work to parents, for students to comment to each other and we have plans to use them to communicate with other schools. In support of Science units classes have researched rocks and minerals, watched some movie clips from our Safari Montage collection and one class did Bugscope online in the fall. The Bugscope home page lists a Virtual Microscope interface that can be downloaded to view images of minerals and other items from their site. Most classes are using AppleWorks to write reports as well as creative writing assignments, adding images from the Internet or their own illustrations using a Paint box added to the wordprocessing page.

Fourth grade classes are using the iBook carts consistently for writing and students are becoming proficient at saving work to the class file server folder so they can continue work on any laptop or lab computer. One class had a Publishing Fair to share folk tales written in AppleWorks or EasyBook. Other classes have increased the volume and quality of student writing using conferencing on the iBooks to help students with  editing and revision. One class is currently working on putting an essay project online as a class Voicethread. All classes have introduced keyboarding and some students are finishing the lessons offered at BBC Dance Mat Typing. A big focus at the moment is teaching students to use our Internet resources and databases (primarily WorldBook Online & MARVEL) to support the process of inquiry. Once students have gathered information about a topic of interest, classes will be using different applications to prepare a report and some of these will be in a format that can be shared on the Internet when they are completed. All the fourth grade classes are using web pages and/or blogs to share student learning online and some are in formats that incorporate feedback or collaboration.

In all, I am thrilled by the work the teachers are doing to offer our elementary students access to technology tools that support creative expresssion of ideas and learning in a variety of formats. What I know if that new things will be happening in the coming months that I haven’t even envisioned yet. One thing that is making this possible (especially during my long absence) is the collaboration teachers have offered to each other and the shared learning that is going on between classrooms in all grades.

I first heard about “bugscope” in a GLEF video published in 2000 showing students at Clear View Charter School in California. More recently, I read that the live conferencing shown in that video wasn’t available, but an online chat with photos was free to schools who wanted to participate.  What a wonderful opportunity for students to connect their outdoor classroom, hands-on science to University level questioning and exploration. For more information about the history and current availability of the project go to this edutopia link. If you want to login as a guest to one of our future live class sessions email me at cathy.wolinsky@gmail.com. 

Click here to see the questions and photos from our session.