#iCONNECT Tech Tips
Friday, November 14, 2014 #EHSRedDevils
Doin' It For Themselves
The teachers at Elkmont High School, even those not yet a part of the Digital Passport Initiative, are enthusiastic about integrating these devices into their classrooms as a natural part of the curriculum.
Judson Meadows, Middle Grades Social Studies teacher & basketball coach at Elkmont High School, has embraced BYOD in his classroom. This week he created a formative assessment quiz that grades itself using Google Forms and Flubaroo. Voila...simple, easy, success!
Tina McMunn, 3rd grade DPI teacher, discovered Soft Schools, a website filled with a dizzying array of games, quizzes, worksheet and more for grades Kindergarten through Middle Grades. Ms. McMunn also search the Internet and found great supporting videos and lesson ideas for their unit on Poetry via LearnZillion. Her kids used LearnZillion to read and analyze the poems "The Fog" by Carl Sandburg and Who Has Seen the Wind?
Anita Bates, 4th grade DPI teacher, started her unit on the American Revolutionary War by challenging her students to create a Google Presentation based on their own research using the Alabama Virtual Library and other research sources like Kid Rex. Without the Instructional Technology Facilitator in the classroom, the kidshad no problem jumping right into the project, as they had learned these skills earlier in the school year.
Atina English, 3rd grade DPI teacher, has tackled using Google Classroom head on with her students. Ms. English is doing an incredible job mastering this new technology and her students see using their MacBook Airs and Google Classroom as a natural part of their everyday classroom experience.
Luann Adams, 4th grade DPI teachers, has incorporated the MacBooks and Google into her daily morning bell ringer to get students started for the day. Ms. Adams has also worked hard to get her students organized with Google Drive folders and using the calendar to keep track of important dates.
Rebecca Turner, Special Education Inclusion Assistant, worked with Ms. Robertson and two students to discover how to change desktop icons on our MacBook Airs. We simply typed into a new search tab, "how to change desktop icons on MacBook Air". This is the site we found and used to change our desktop icons: http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT2493. It was super easy after we did it a few time.
Food Chains Using Google Draw
Peer Teaching
5th Grade Project Based Learning Presentation
The idea for a Project Based Learning unit was devised last school year and was solidified by Elkmont High School's amazing 5th grade teachers, Ms. Bailey, Ms. Holt & Ms. Hardiman, at a three day professional development training about Project Based Learning in Talladega, AL.
The PBL Summary read as follows: The students will research and propose an idea for an empty lot in Elkmont, AL downtown area. Students will work together to decide what might be the best addition to our new businesses and downtown atmosphere.
Students began the year with a field trip to downtown Elkmont to look at the businesses, building, geographic features, forms of advertising, etc. in preparation for their project. A tremendous amount of math went into this project as students had to account for the physical size of their businesses, which required them to have a working knowledge of area and perimiter.
Teamwork, collaboration, and compromise was the response from each group when ask what they learned the most about from having worked on this project.
The project included a wide variety of school staff including the Instructional Technology Facilitator, Librarians, Art Teacher and more.
Elkmont High School is proud of the effort our 5th grade unit has put into this project. The results have been phenomenal and a wonderful learning and growth opportunity for our students.
Cool Tech Source for English Language Learners (ELL) & Their Teachers
Student Voice & Choice
Student dove into writing their stories and for about 30 minutes you could have heard a pin drop and they were so focused on their task. After the first 30 minutes, Ms. Bates and Ms. Robertson had students peer review the story of the friend sitting to the right of them. Students took about ten minutes to review their neighbors story and write constructive comments. Next, students spoke with each other about the comments that were written. Lastly, students went back to their own stories and began implementing the comments suggested.
This story writing activity will continue throughout the next several weeks as students learn the revision process in writing. Upon its conclusion, student's stories will be published on Limestone County School District's DPI website and will be available for other students around the world to read.
Hour of Code is Coming to Elkmont!
Computers are everywhere, but fewer schools teach computer science than 10 years ago. Girls and minorities are severely underrepresented. Good news is, we’re on our way to change this.
In one week last year, 15 million students tried computer science! Computer science was on homepages of Google, MSN, Yahoo! and Disney. President Obama, Shakira and Ashton Kutcher all kicked off the Hour of Code with videos. Over 100 partners came together to support this movement.
Now the Hour of Code movement is aiming for 100 million students.
That’s why every one of the 3rd and 4th grade DPI (Digital Passport Initiative) students at Elkmont High School are joining in on the largest learning event in history: The Hour of Code, during Dec. 8-12. BYOD students in grades 5-12 are encouraged to participate as well.