Friday, May 28, 2010

New Stuff just keeps pouring in

Can you believe it is already summer vacation? This year ended so quickly; I definitely wasn't ready to see my kiddos go. Oh, well, now I can spend time searching out cool tech. ideas/resources to use with my new students next year.

I ended my year with some fun. I have a Promethean Board now, so I was excited to see how my students would interact with it. I'm still getting the hang of all of the advanced stuff you can do like interactive, individualized tests and such, but it made a great impact on my students already.

I don't know if I mentioned that we applied for a grant and received two digital document cameras to share in our intermediate wing. They were an immediate hit. They are easy to use and great for teachers - no more money or time spent on overhead. The problem is we all like them so much, it is difficult to share. :-)

Another neat new tech. activity I have started was inspired by "Civil War Sallie," a bear dressed up as a nurse from the Civil War era, who travels to schools learning/teaching about the Civil War. I decided to create Madame Curious. You can find her at madamecurious1@pbworks.com. I mail her to different scientists, and they blog and take pictures of her on her visits. Then, with my class, we read about her experiences. So far, we have only had her in nearby locations, but I hope to send her to John Hopkins this summer to learn about Zebra fish.

Finally, I have been experimenting with edistorm - a website that allows me to collaboratively plan with others. Right now, I've been using it to plan the handbook for my new Bureau of Education and Research class about internet projects. It is like being in the room with my colleagues and placing postits up on a whiteboard as we brainstorm. Hopefully using it for the preparation and organizing will make the writing stage go quickly.

All for now. I'm off to Costa Rica for two weeks in June. See ya