JoNelle's Blog (18)

Elementary Technology Teachers teach how-to.... and integrate technologies. We must spend time teaching how to use software and hardware so that students can apply tech skills in other areas. In our struggle of encouraging everyone to integrate SMARTBoards and other IWBs, I find that we do not have many of the tech How-To... lessons for the IWBs. SmartBoard and Promethean lessons for curriculum topics are springing up all over, but we still cannot ignore the basic technology knowledge needs.… Continue

Cross post from my other blog :Scratch@MIT Conference



We just returned from presenting at the Scratch@MIT conference at MIT in Boson. If you are not familiar with Scratch, it is a new programming tool developed at MIT. Students imagine, create, and share games, animations and more. This past year we used the software in my fifth grade elementary technology classes. Also, students formed a club to continue to learn more ways to program using Scratch. I did not realize how important… Continue

"Get your cat to teach reading," my email to the district office read. I had previously received a picture of a cat, Steve McQueen, via email and in return I made a video clip. The animated video is of Stevie the Cat reciting a poem about....cats. This clip is making the rounds in classrooms and sparking many ideas of how to motivate students.



How did the digital… Continue

Podcasting can improve your child’s reading and writing skills. It’s true. The steps of the Super 3 plan / do / review to create good podcasts require many skills. Students communicate with peers, think through ideas, write (or type), talk, record, evaluate, and edit-edit-edit. Their favorite part seems to be the challenge of making a satisfying recording. Students repeatedly listen and record and build fluency skills with each… Continue

We have first hand experience with the many faces of authentic audience with Skype and ooVoo. Research projects have brought about audiences in our classroom, down the hallway, up the highways, and across the oceans. Student classwork is seen by many more eyes than just their teacher (with a red pen). Their research,writing and voices are being shared with partners, other classes, on the web, and through video conferences. Let me explain. Students are researching and using web 2.0…

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I forgot to mention in yesterday's post about Twitter. Chris Craft loves it, so I thought I may give it another whirl. This summer I briefly checked it out, but got sidetracked..... He gave me a few pointers so I'll look in here and see what others have said and done with it. I'm not sure what happens when you add someone to follow. Hope you don't mind if I follow you!

We had an inservice day today - teachers actually visited schools of their choice. This was not your typical day of meetings that may-or-may-not be geared toward your needs of professional development. I jumped at the chance to find a school/teacher experienced in integrating web 2.0 tools in their curriculum. Although a tad over my elementary level, I found an excellent resource not too far away from home in Mr. Chris Craft. Many of us who…

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Scratch is a free download from MIT where students can create stories, games and animations! Elementary students learn programming skills. Teachers can integrate this tool with language arts, science, social studies and even meet many new NETS-S. I would love for my students to learn Scratch with your students to communicate their understandings and collaborate on…

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A HOT topic where I am is integrating technology! HOT in many ways...including COOL and controversial. I just read a forum asking how to get teachers to join us in our exciting endeavors of integrating. I began a reply and ....so much of the past week's frustration came out and in the end I thought I resolved myself to live and let live. More on that in a minute. I cut and pasted my reply here…

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Students in my fourth and fifth grade Integrated Technology classes now have their own secure wiki webpage at wikispaces! Students have a secure place to learn and share. For now, members only in this cyberspace - only our teachers, students and their parents may enter. We monitor the site daily and I am already finding that students writing in their spaces at home too!. Students are incorporating safety and etiquette rules that they have learned to create the first pages. Soon each…

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We had just flown through the plans for the semester- I had so many web 2.0 tools to tell them about. Blogging, podcasting, wikis (showed them the great video) and Skyping with the web cam. My students were lining up to leave the technology lab on their first technology class since returning to school. We heard the now familiar noise over my sound system - my students pointed to the invitaion displayed on the SMARTBoard: ACCEPT or DECLINE the call. I hesitated- I had never seen this…

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Great timing? It seems the best time to introduce new tools to overworked teachers is when we receive difficult news. I've spent a good deal of time learning how to use web 2.0 tools this summer and have been wanting to introduce these tools to teachers at my school. With the beginning of school being so hectic and so many other things to learn to do, it just didn't seem to be good time. Then we got the news...soon we would not be able to keep our Front Page class websites. Many of us have…

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I am putting the finishing touches on displays for promoting a few ideas I have : Digi.raffe and iSURFFers. I want a student-designed mascot for my classroom. My students all know what it has to be - a giraffe. Digi.raffe is its name for lots of reasons, so I wonder what stories students will come up with on their own. Hmmm- another project-"How Digi.raffe Got its Name". ( I don't know if it is male or female:)

For my students - their new name…

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So I've been tagged by Susan who says this could be an excellent getting to know you exercise in a collaborative project between different classes/schools. So here we go.

Here are the rules:

Post these rules before you give your facts.

List 8 random facts about yourself.

At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them.

Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know…

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Thanks to generous people in CR20 I am gathering resources and learning about robotics. http://mindstorms.lego.com/ http://www.stager.org/lego Robotics Resources for Educators Using Programmable LEGO Materials I also found (on Jen Wagner's blog) a fun little site to create and save characters. I'll use the one shown…

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What a day - I wanted to put another video on dotsub, but I also wanted to convert a powerpoint to a video. In between getting sidetracked, I downloaded a program (Bytescout PPT to video free preview found on cnet) to convert my PowerPoint on PowerPoint to video, but I was not happy with the results for the particular presentation I had in mind. Actually the converter has so many options, I have more…

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I read a forum about student networking and I shared the same concerns of safety, logistics, and collecting friends. It reminded me of a similar problem with a favorite science website – Ology…

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http://classblogmeister.com/

http://www.wikispaces.com/…

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