Cheryl

Cheryl's Technology Page

__January 21, 2011__

Created an account on Wiki. Reviewed how Wiki can be used in the classroom. Practiced sending and receiving messages from other members of the Wiki. Learned how to create a new Wiki site. Marcia showed us where to go if we want to lock our page from others whom we don't want to edit our page. This would be helpful if you had students on your wiki and you didn't want them to edit any teacher notes.

Created a school fusion webpage. Navigated through the site, practiced adding assignments and announcements. Saved and deleted information. Edited profile.

__January 27, 2011__ Explored numerous Wiki sites from around the country. Began to create a Wiki for the GT kids to share information and knowledge about current projects.

__January 28, 2011__ Learned how to subscribe to free Wiki. Created a new Wiki for GT students for the purpose of sharing information about our new novel study, //Voyage of the Frog.// Completed assignments and announcements on Fusion for the week of January 31 - February 3. Explored tools and student resource pages for Fusion. Entered my classroom schedule on Fusion

__February 10, 2011__ I created my users for the Voyage of the Frog Novel Study. When I tried to find my members, I couldn't so I had to enter them all again but one at a time. I maneuvered through the site to familiarize myself with it. At this point, I don't know how iwill use Wiki with my class.

__March 4, 2011__ Marcia showed us some other resources we could use in the classroom including a site where kids can use pictures and write stories on the computer. Wordles.net is another cool site. Some of the things I've been doing in the classroom technology wise are: Using Wiki to communicate with the Venture kids.I'm working with the GT kids doing the novel study for Voyage of the Frog. I'm using the wiki to share information as I read through the book. Kids respond on specified days that we use the computers. They love it, but tend to get off task. We have been using the IPods every Monday and Wednesday to read during I&E. Kids are divided into groups reading either Indian in the Cupboard or Sammy Keyes and the Psycho KittyQueen.Reading on the IPods is challenging because kids can't find pages, the IPods aren't charged, etc. We will be reading from a paper back book before long just to make the whole novel study easier. I've been using the SmartBoard quite a bit for instruction and practice in both math and reading. Some of the sites I use are interactive like in geometry kids could draw lines, angles, plane figures, etc. Many times I type out a lesson, show it on the smartboard, and then kids can write and add features. When I finish the geometry instruction next week, I will do a review as a Jeopardy game. This was already created so I didn't need to spend time with it. I often instruct or review reading workbook pages fromt he smart board. I either create my own or find them already created on the Smart Exchange. Kids can interact and it takes the monotony out of completing workbook pages. I've used the smartboard for VCCV patterns, adjectives, connotation, prefixes/suffixes, nouns, verbs, etc. Today we spent 3 hours learning how students can download literature books on the myON web site. As soon as we get the student log-in passwords, they will be able to access the site and choose books to read on line at their own level. Unfortunately, the books are not categorized into Lexile levels so this could be a disadvantage. I can form reading groups and designate certain books for kids to choose, however. A drawback will be the availability of the computers. This might be a site for kids to access at home more than at school.