Open House

We had our Power to Learn Open House today. Because the 8th grade students were on a field trip, we had the opportunity to borrow their laptops, so we had tons of technology! With 24 computers and 8 ipods, every student had either a computer or an ipod at all times. Clearly, the students were actively engaged!

Our assignments today will lead into the book clubs that we're beginning next week. Because the books relate to civil rights, and because Monday is M.L.K. Day, today's assignments allowed students the opportunity to explore the historical background of this time period. Additionally, their writing assignments required the students to formulate opinions about "the way things were" in comparison to "the way things are today."

After explaining the assignment to the students, they referred back to the ActivBoard for instructions when they forgot what to do or when they got confused. I encouraged the students to choose what they wanted to do first, work on the ipods or the computers. It was actually pretty funny (and amazing!) to see the students who used both the ipods and computers at the same time. Multi-taskers!

The students who were using the computers responded to two blog posts on our Ning network. Both blog prompts related to civil rights. In fact, the students responded to M.L.K.'s "I Have a Dream" in one of their responses.

Because students are using our class Ning to write their responses, we discussed the importance of different types of writing and the importance of identifying the audience. For instance, we agreed that it's okay to use all lowercase letters or abbreviations when sending a message to a friend or when writing on another student's wall. However, we also agreed that students must use proper capitalization, spelling, and punctuation when typing assignments for class. For the most part, the students did pretty well with this.

The students used the ipods to watch two videos, M.L.K.'s video of "I Have a Dream" and the music video "A Dream" by Will.I.Am. While watching these videos, students were responsible for annotating their thoughts and examples of figurative language in "I Have a Dream." Students made excellent connections between the music video and the speech.

Students were actively engaged, and, therefore, there were no classroom management issues. Honestly, the students were perfect. Even my most challenging class worked silently all period, only whispering to help other students. This was definitely a pleasant surprise! If only we could do this every day... Our rotations usually work well, but nothing can compare to having extra computers in class. Today was amazing!

New Year!

On top of what was previously mentioned in regards to the 8th grade team, I have found that students enjoy being on the laptops for ANYTHING, even if it is something as simple as typing a paper instead of writing it by hand. With so many students who do not have computer access at home, this gives them a great opportunity to learn more about technology.

I have still found that one of my biggest problems rests in the fact that there is a significant number of students who never turned in permission slips (whether it be for e-mail or the social networking), but as stated before, I think this will go much smoother when we are able to start handing out permission slips at the beginning of the school year. Though I can say that some students became quickly motivated to turn in permission slips after having seen what other students were doing with things like the Ning.

As we get a steady grasp on the technology and all of its potential, we continue to come up with more and more ideas to integrate it into our classrooms. The 8th grade students will be completing a web scavenger hunt over the Civil War. This gives students the opportunity to both learn about the war and enhance their web navigation skills. We are also using audio books once again on the iPod Touches. Some students prefer to read to themselves, but the audio books have really helped engage students, as well as keep them at a steady pace. I definitely see it as being beneficial.

As a reading lab teacher, I have also found websites that are beneficial to providing practice over TAKS objectives for my students. It makes the drills much more exciting for them, and the students are always happy to have the technology out.

We are always thinking up (or discovering) new ways to integrate the technology, and the more we learn about it, the smoother the process becomes.