On Our Way

It has been a while since I last posted to our Blog. We are really getting our feet wet. In Math & Science, our students began working in Stations. We still have direct instruction in both our content areas and then students move to different stations to continue their work. At this time, our students are just working on one station per day to supplement their learning.They rotate to a new station each day. We have a research station, blogging, computer Math or Science games, as well as writing and reading and current events. Our goal is for them to do most of their work in small groups at stations and move away from whole group instruction. The most difficult part of this is the scheduling part. There just is not enough time in the day to get everything done. It takes time to teach the students how to use the technology and this cuts into our class instruction for Science. I feel that I am always running behind. As the students become more adept at using the technology, we can get caught up. It is all a mind-shift for us to change the way we teach. It is easier to say you want to be the guide on the side than it is to put into practice, especially when you are working with 6th-graders. They are still quite dependent.

We have started a class blog and the students have all posted to it at least once.There was some problems when we first tried to post and the students have had some difficulty with their g-mail accounts, but it is getting easier. I like being able to approve their comments before they actually post. This also allows me the opportunity to print our their posts and use the rubric to give them a grade and make comments on ways to improve.

Janet and I have attended the podcasting training and hope to get something going on that. We each want to create a couple before we try teaching this to the students. If we didn't have to teach or grade papers we would have all kinds of time to work on this. Such is life. I think we both feel that our vision is slowly coming into view. We still have a ways to go, but we are getting there.

Until next time...Happy Thanksgiving!

Kathleen

Janet's Perspective

We are finally getting in a good groove using our technology; of course there are always glitches that come along but we are working on those as they come along.

The kids are having better luck charging their itouches at home without using a computer; so many computers are set to automatically sync itouches and that was causing us many problems.

We have also restricted access to itunes and applications. For right now, that is helping us keep kids and their parents from downloading extra stuff.

We have had some complaints from teachers who monitor the lunchroom about the use of iTouches causing issues in the cafeteria. After consulting with the principal, we have decided we cannot control this.