Mr. Collins's Technology Updates

Technology in the Elementary Classroom

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NCTIES Final Remarks March 6, 2010

Wow, what a couple of days. I knew there was a lot of stuff out there technology-wise, but  I didn’t realize how many people are really into it with their students everyday. I know I wrote about some of the things I learned on Thursday, but now that I have had some time to let things sink in I’ll go back to the beginning and start with the session I sat in on. You can find out more through the NCTIES wiki page.

First session was about iPod Touches in the classroom. This session was called “Advanced Technology: Using the iPod Touch in the 3-8 Classroom” and was run by second-year teacher Craig Lawson from Cape Fear Middle School. I knew the iTouch would be a powerful tool if I could get my hands on one, now I know I have to get my hands on not just one, but a whole class set. Check out his website, iPod Games for Learning, for many of his grea ideas. He told us about many of the applications that he uses including Math Drills, Word Fu, the Sims and many others. I had never considered the Sims to be a learning game. I couldn’t believe the possibilities for writing that this game held. He had his students develop characters that were completely opposite from themselves. Boys had to be girls, they had to choose a different race, if they were rather lazy they had to extra busy, if they were shy they had to be outgoing and had to develop their character based on these requirements. In 5th grade in Wake County one of our literacy objectives has to do with character development, what a powerful tool to accomplish this. For more great ideas from Craig Lawson check out his website or follow him on Twitter (midlawsondle).

Second session of the day was with Gail Lovely. This session was called “Books Are Not Dead … Use Technology to Enliven Your Literacy Program”. You can check out Gail’s website or check out her presentations at NCTIES. She began by quoting an article from the National Association of Independent Schools, “Yet textbooks typically fail to provide the most basic conditions for readerly engagement. They are great vehicles for generating corporate profits, but poor ones for creating readers. They fail young readers on four dimensions of reading – authorship, form, venue, and duration.” Gail’s whole presentation focused on going beyond the textbook and adding Web 2.0 tools to everyday lessons. Her first site was Storynory, a great site for audio stories. I haven’t had a lot of time to explore yet, but it definitely looks like one that would be worth the time, especially since I have a struggling reader in my class. The next site was Field Support, a site where Legends and Folktales are located on a map in their country of origin. Notice how the United States doesn’t have any. Her next focus was Google Lit Trips, if you haven’t seen this site and teach higher education, you need to check this out. It plots the story on Google Earth and the students can take a look at the places in the story. It includes photos and historic documents that may be in the story. Stories such as Johnny Tremain, The Grapes of Wrath, and My Brother Sam Is Dead are included in this site. I have browsed the story selection here but have not had a chance to give it a try yet. I have had a literature circle read My Brother Sam is Dead but did not remember the LitTrip, maybe I will have another group read it in the fourth quarter and go through the LitTrip with the book. Her next site was through Scholastic and is called Myths Brainstorming Machine. In 5th grade we read myths but we don’t typically write them. However, with this site we might try it next year. Another site she gave us was StoryLine by the Screen Actor’s Guild. This site contains streaming video of SAG members (ie James Earl Jones, etc.) reading children’s books. Right now there are 22 stories on this site and according to Gail Lovely they are continuing to add new stories quite often. Another tool she gave us was quite interesting. This one came from Scholastic as well and is called Word Wizard. This site will help students to create dictionaries or the teacher can create a dictionary for different areas of study or novel studies. These were the ones I thought were the best, however there were tons of other sites in Gail’s presentation, you can explore those on your own through Gail Lovely At NCTIES. Gail also presented on Friday but I was unable to attend the second session, however her presentation can be found through the previous link as well.

During lunch Ron Clark spoke. If you have never had the chance to hear him speak, it’s quite a trip. He’s very energetic and has some great stories to tell. His main message was that we, as teachers need to do a better job of bringing learning to life for today’s kids or they won’t care about what we are trying to tell them. The old ways of teaching are just that, OLD! We can no longer stand in front of a class of students and expect that they pay attention. We have to try new things. We have to look at the things this generation is doing at home and try to bring as much of it into the classroom as we can. That pretty much brought my Thursday to a close. I attended part of a another session “10 Web 2.0 Tools to Engage Your Students on a SMARTBoard” but after three tools that I had already heard of and have stuck in my Diigo links, I decided to head out and check out the vendors. Lots of great technology is available, you just have to find the funds for it.

Friday was FANTASTIC! I have been on Twitter for about a year now but never really used it much. In the last six months I started connecting with educators and getting links and articles to read from them. Other than that, I didn’t really know anything about Twitter, so I attended a session with Emory Maiden (@evmainden on Twitter) all about how to use Twitter. Within the firs 15 minutes I had learned a ton of tips and tricks, although I still couldn’t figure out how people were getting their comments out so quickly. I had already taken the first steps on Twitter by associating myself with educators and anyone that I thought would help me get new ideas. However,  I didn’t know that I could have been sitting in sessions on Thursday with my Twitter open and follow everything that was going on just by using “#NCTIES” in my search. As if my head wasn’t already full, I could have been totally overloaded! As I looked around the room in this session and the other sessions I attended throughout the day on Friday I noticed people using something called TweetDeck. I just signed up for this application this morning. HOLY COW is about all I have to say! I would have been so much more on top of things had I known this existed before now. I’m sure there will be something new next year, but I will definitely be on TweetDeck next year for this conference! If you would like to check out all of the Tweets from NCTIES they can be found on TwapperKeeper, be careful there are THOUSANDS of them, lots of great info though. I think Emory summed up Twitter very well when he said, “Twitter is like a stream and you just dip your cup into it when you can. There is no need to get every little piece of information that comes through,” and when he quoted Kevin Honeycutt, “I’m smart but my network is brilliant.”

 After Emory Maiden I went to the Apple Showcase for a presentation by Apple Distinguished Educator Jessica Swearengin called “Why Didn’t They Teach Classes Like That When I Was In School?”. Since I don’t have a Mac, this course didn’t help me out a whole lot but it did give me a few ideas. The main thing was that if the kids are challenged, they will respond and will respond in big ways. Challenges need to be issued before you start teaching and each day the kids need to have time to work on their challenge. I don’t know how well this would work for my class since we only have 4 computers in my classroom. One day this will be the way I teach and that will happen when I either have iTouches for each student or a laptop for each student. With school budgets the way they are here in North Carolina, that may never happen. A lot can be accomplished when each student has access to a computer at all times.

Last I sat in with Hall Davidson from Discovery Education. His presentation was very scattered but he had a lot to say, unfortunately for those of us in his session he only had an hour. I would bet he could have spoke for 2 or 3 hours on his topic. He suggested, for those of us who do not have access to iTouches or computers for every kid, to let the kids bring in their technology once a week and let them turn it on for 30 minutes or so. What an opportunity this would be! They would have to report about what they learned, obviously, but it shakes things up a little and gives the kids a chance to explore on their own. After this session, and the previous session, I realized I ought to get a Mac at some point. It is just way easier to do many projects if you have a Mac, too bad on my salary I can’t afford the switch right now.

Overall, this being my first experience with NCTIES, I feel like I am on the right path to educating my students. I’m not there by a long shot, but I’m headed in the right direction. We need to be using as much interactive technology as we can fit into our curriculum and letting the kids do the exploring. Digital Natives are made, not born is such a true statement. These kids today are born into a digital age and if we don’t promote that in our classrooms and our homes, our children will be unable to participate in the world they will be leading. We have to keep pushing the envelope, we have to keep on our toes, we need to make technology available to every student every day. We are preparing a generation for a future that we can’t imagine and for jobs that haven’t been created.

“Why do we read things that are bound, shouldn’t education be boundless?” -Hall Davidson

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