3/14/09

I haven't had much time to Knock down these walls as we just finished Parent/Teacher Conferences. Having 31 students in my class causes a great deal of prep. work plus hours of conferencing. I had three no-shows, so I've had to make them up. One came to school; another I went to his home; the third parent is out of town, so I'll try to see her next week. On top of Parent/Teacher Conferencing we have our state testing, CSAPs.

I did find some wonderful sites put out to TAKS that were science vodcasts that were brief reviews/overviews of a different topics like magnets, animals, etc. I used them with my students as a fun way to review for the science testing. A teacher, Dr. Loopy, and his cast of characters teach the concepts in a fun way. My students loved the videos, plus they think I'm actually kind of normal now after watching that group teach. :-)

My students are finally using the wiki site routinely. I check the changes made for a few minutes each day. So far we've only had one glitch, found the culprit, took care of business, and moved on. I'm really pleased with the number of stories being published. I'm frustrated with the level of comments however. Somehow I am going to have to find time to demonstrate effective commenting. Right now I mostly see a bunch of adjectives and exclamation points!

I had been emailing with a teacher in New Orleans to see about having Skype buddies. She seemed motivated at first, but then the realization that it was another activity to fit in, no matter how great it was, set in and she backed out. I'm having a similar discussion with another teacher from Georgia. We hope to have a Skype "Meet and Greet" some time in April. Then, hopefully, out students can pair up and start evaluating each others' written pieces on wikis and Skype to discuss them. We hope to get this up and running before the end of the year. Keep your fingers crossed.

2/4/09

February is here and it is time to get ready for our 1950s Valentine's Party. That is about as far removed from using technology in schools as can be, you would think. However, I am going to need to set up the digital projector, hook it to the speaker system, hook it to the DVD player, and have it ready to show the "Honeymooner" videos. Every year, the parents who join us and I have a good laugh while the students in the room are just horrified at what we used to watch!

As for Knocking down these walls, I continue to try to push the envelope. I have been trying to use my laptop at school because on it I have TeacherTube downloader and YouTube downloader. I can download the videos I want to use with my students so when I show them, we don't have all of the streaming issues that cause students to lose interest, become inattentive and then misbehave. For a while, that worked well until the district engineer made it so my laptop wasn't allowed on the system because it has Vista. Ugh!

Back to the drawing board.