Merit Blog Sept 9, 2010

I feel my pace has slowed down. I still do not have my mac's connected to a printer. Their is a tech tag out for them. They still do now have the school log in interface on them. I still have not tried to make the microphones work this week. But I did make garage band work on my home computer and my lap top. Yea! I send an email to set up a time for my students to read to the K-1 class. So I am excited it is in process.

My Kids Blog is started. Each student was to make 4 entries by now. I can see they needed a better guide. I was asked by a parent how to use this so I want to make a film/presentation they can watch. I also started a blog on the book we are reading together as a class so the students can see what I want. Some students are doing great. Most are trying hard.

I started to film responses to the wordle. The final print out is quite small, just a regular size piece of paper. I would have liked a large poster of it. They do forget what my 5 P's are but I do point out in class when they are not performing to the correct standard. I have five interviews and want to put together a video. Maybe I can work on it on Saturday.

While teaching early man, I used Nova to show part of a film. The students were mesmerized by it. It used some of the same pictures from the book. I also prepared a Trackstar for each week of class. They each use a computer and view a web page to obtain information to the question. I have used only vague questions so they can just explore and write down one fact they find. Perhaps this is too open ended for them. I will try more concrete questions and have the last one be an exploration. This would be another short video clip I could make so parents can help their child at home.

In math class we filmed the presentations. I have some students I hope will edit and make a film on how to do the "where did you go over the summer" project.