Fran Mauney

This week was one of those weeks when I was proud to be a teacher and part of this profession!  Teaching poetry to first graders during Literacy Week by using the Smartboard and the Flip camera energized me. Teaching fifth grade students, during their Arts Day, to make movies using Movie Maker inspired me. Demonstrating the use of Activexpressions to third graders while they reviewed for their Civil War test motivated me, and showcasing excellent teaching strategies to student teachers validated why I became a teacher over 27 years ago.

I was honored to showcase one of our Title 1 schools that has raised the bar for technology integration to a higher level. Dr. George Lipscomb, from Furman University, brought his Technology Integration class over to Hollis Academy to see real life examples of technology integration in the classroom. They were able to observe two lessons which actively involved all students, engaged the learners, and set high achievement goals for students by using technology.  Students from a third grade single gender classroom performed a Reader’s Theatre play as a news team from the Civil War.  Students rehearsed their parts, then the teacher filmed them using the Flip Video Camera.  While he worked with the small groups, others were doing SSR, and others were on the computers working on Compass Odyssey and Fast Forword. He later made a movie using Movie Maker and shared it with his class and others on Teacher Tube. The fifth grade class was reviewing for their science test.  In preparation for the class, the teacher used her Flip Video camera to videotape two students  at a time reading the review questions. She inserted each video clip into an ActivInspire Flipchart on the Promethean Board, and the students used their Activexpressions to answer these questions. She reviewed the results at the end of the test, exported them into Excel and the class decided if they were ready for the test or if they needed to review more. They were able to analyze the data and make an accurate decision based on their results.

This has inspired me to make a Scope and Sequence chart for the new ISTE standards and I need your help.  I have created an online brainstorming wall at www.wallwisher.com.  Could you add some project ideas that correlate to the ISTE standards by visiting :http://wallwisher.com/wall/isteproject ? I think you will find this website extremely helpful as you brainstorm ideas with others.

One last thought, the Winter Olympics begin soon, so here are some websites you might enjoy using with your classes as you plan lessons that can be integrated with your standards.

Websites

http://www.first-school.ws/activities/firststeps/olympics.htm

http://www.teach-nology.com/teachers/lesson_plans/physical_ed/olympic/

http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/winter_olympics.htm

http://www.pelinks4u.org/articles/darden/sportsmanship.htm

Enjoy teaching next week!

Fran Mauney

1.  Exercise More:  Have you tried the Wii Fit or Wii Fit Plus?  It’s an amazing (and fun) tool that measures your BMI, creates a Mii, and tracks your weight and progress as you exercise. There are tons of games that and activities for Yoga, Strength Training, Aerobics, Balance, and Fit Plus games. Brain research supports movement to enhance learning.  Challenge your right and left sides of your brain by performing exercises from the book “Brain Gym” by Paul Dennison with your students. Visit his website: www.braingym.com. Try the Lazy Eights or Cross Crawl to see if your students can cross the midlines of their bodies.  This will help you see if the right and left sides of the brain have strong bridges built to transfer information easily to each other.

2.  Eat Healthier:  Visit websites that provide recipes that are good for you.  Join the free community healthy living program called Activate Upstate. Activate Upstate’s Kickoff Rally 2010 is Jan. 19, 4:30-7 p.m. Carolina First Center, Pleasantburg Drive, Greenville.
For more information visit www.activategreenville.org or call: 864-242-1111.  You will receive free recipes and healthy eating tips each week via email when you sign up.

3. Relax and Read:  Have you heard of the Kindle by Amazon?  Watch the video on this website and you will be amazed. This is the wave of the future.  No more buying books that sit on your shelf and collect dust.  Your books are automatically downloaded onto your Kindle wireless reading device after you shop at the Kindle store.  Wherever you are – at home, in the car, on the beach, you can access the Kindle store and buy books for much cheaper than you would at a book store. Most books run around $6-$10.  When you buy a book, it is auto-delivered wirelessly in less than one minute. There are more than 400,000 books, newspapers, magazines, and blogs available and they have free book samples.  Also, you can download and read the first chapters of a book for free to see if you would like to purchase it.

4. De-Clutter:  Would you like to get rid of the piles of books that you’ve collected over the years?  You can donate your books to the local library, shelters, churches, or sell them back at used book stores.  Or you could sell them online using Amazon.com or Half.com.  My son spent $700 last semester buying his college textbooks at the campus book store.  This year he used Amazon. com and Half.com and his books were only $200.  This inspired me to sell some of our books and I sold 3 in one day.  (After paying to have the books mailed, going to the post office and buying the padded envelopes, I only made $5.00!) but they are off my shelf and I’m a little richer!

5.  Make learning fun and exciting and enjoy the opportunities you have to shape the lives of your students! Add a little more technology to your lesson plans this year. Engage your students by using more interactive websites that foster learning in your classrooms. I put together a list of websites for you to use with your students this semester and I hope you will find it beneficial.   Here is the link to the websites for teachers:  Websites for Teachers  Make sure you open the Wonderful Winning Website document and click on the links.

6. Share your ideas: Remember to register to attend the Upstate Technology Conference this year on June 22 and 23 at Wade Hampton High School. Click here to share your ideas as a presenter.  We’d love to hear all the great things you are doing in your classrooms! If you’d like to be a participant click here.

Happy 2010, I hope it is a Technologically Fun Year!

by Tim Cushman

Many teachers across the district have successfully integrated the district’s WordPress blog platform to create a safe, digital space for students to engage in educational conversations with one another and the greater global community.  We find that students have become accustomed to interacting with an audience beyond their peer group outside of school with tools like social networking sites and gaming communities through consoles from Sony and Microsoft.  Blogging has become a natural activity for citizens of the “digital nation” (see http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/).

One of the advantages of a blog is that it can act as a digital portfolio for a classroom or individual students.  Sites like www.blurb.com, www.mypublisher.com, and www.lulu.com take online publishing a step further by turning a blog into a print book (http://www.blurb.com/create/book/blogbook).  For example, one school turned a school mural project into a picture book using blurb.com (see http://www.blurb.com/books/1030436).  Books from blurb.com range in size from 7″x7″ to 13″x11″ and lengths from 20 to 440 pages.  Prices start at $12.95 for a single copy.

A book based on a classroom blog could easily turn in to a class or school fund raiser while giving students a meaningful purpose for writing.

Teach for Greenville County Schools and don’t have a blog?  Setting one up is easy by following the print or video tutorials at http://www.greenville.k12.sc.us/gcsd/depts/ets/its/blogs.asp.  Blogging ideas and research is located at http://timcushman.com/presentations.html.  Be sure to carefully follow the steps for configuring the “moderation” settings when creating your blog.  This is a critical step in exercising control over the content that appears on your blog.

by Tim Van Heule
Distance Learning Coordinator

As we quickly approach the holiday break, it’s always important to consider some good housekeeping tips. I’m not referring to scrubbing floors or dusting, but rather about backing up important files and information on your computer.

I remember purchasing a 1GB flash drive for around $100 a few years back, that same flash drive today is around $6. With that same $100 today, I could purchase a 64GB flash drive. It really is amazing how quickly technology advances in such a short time. Memory has become cheap and disposable. With that in mind, let’s consider the importance of backing up all of the files and information you have on your computer.

Our lives have become digital. Lesson plans are done on the computer. Promethean Flipcharts and SMART Notebook files are created to help us teach and engage our students. We download and create images and videos to reinforce the learning that is occurring in the classroom. Too often though, we save all these files locally on our computer instead of the network.

“It won’t happen to me,” is a common thought when people hear about hard drives crashing. After all, the technology has improved while the cost has gone down, right? While this is true, and much of what is on that failed hard drive can be recovered, the lost “time” is never worth the risk of not backing up. How much time can it take, you may ask?

Recently, my hard drive failed. I hadn’t backed up recently, so the technician who helped me retrieved everything from the old hard drive. It took over two hours for all of the files to be copied from the old hard drive to a server. A replacement hard drive happened to be in the office that day already, so the time waiting for a replacement under warranty wasn’t applicable here, but it could take 1-2 business days for the replacement hard drive to arrive. Unless there is a technician at your site 24/7, he or she will need to come back out to the school to install the hard drive, reimage the computer, and install all of the updates – this could take all day. Of course, when all of this is complete, you still have to install any software that wasn’t part of the image that was put on your computer and tweak all of your settings back to the way you had them before. In two words or less, the best way I can describe it is, “not fun.”

The best way to avoid this ordeal is to save your most important files to the network and back up the files you save locally to the computer. Avoid the pitfalls of convincing yourself you’re too busy or that you don’t know how to do it. If you think you’re too busy now, wait until your hard drive fails and you have to wait for someone to bail you out! If you can save a file to your computer, you already have all of the skills to back up your files.

Here are some suggestions to back up your files. Schedule an appointment for yourself to back up your files on days you can easily remember, for example, pay-day. Save all of your files into one folder that is easy to find, for example, a folder on the desktop of your computer, that way it is easy to find and save a copy of. Always save the date with the name of folder you are backing up, for example – “Backup12162009″ – this is an easy way to let yourself know when the last time you actually backed up your files and information. The best suggestion is to ask for help if you need it. There are people in your school and in your district who can help you, take advantage of these resources!

Good luck with this endeavor and I hope you have a safe holiday season.