Day 4 Reflection

We are coming into the home stretch. You guys have been so paitent with all the technical glitches we've had. Unfortunately, it's part of the price we pay for technology and you just have to learn to be flexible and paitient or you'll drive yourself crazy. Don't let it keep you from using it with your students, just make sure you plan for more time than you think it will take.

I've seen you working on some great projects and I"m excited to have the chance tomorrow to hear what everyone has been up to. I don't know about you but I usally get more ideas from other teachers at classes like this than from anywhere else.

Tomorrow morning you'll have the first half hour to get settled and finish up some projects and then at 8:3oam we'll be hearning from School Data Solutions about a new program that we'll be using in the district in the next few months. I think you'll like it. We'll have some final work time in the morning and you'll need to get ready to share something that you've learned, gotten excited about or created this week. We'll be having a BBQ and playing some games at lunch. There will be fabulous prizes involved so you don't want to miss it. After lunch we'll do our sharing and see we are at time-wise.

Apparently, I miscalculated the clock hours. I have a call into Pam Hopkins to see what we can do about it but it shoud have been 35 instead of 30 for the whole week. We've been pretty much finishing up every day at 3:30 instead of 4:00 so we could make up the other 3 hours by trying to share in the morning and finishing up with lunch. If she ok's the additional clock hours we'll need to be here until at least 3:30 -4:00 tomorrow.

That's your question of the day: Which would you prefer? Stick with 30 clock hours and be done after lunch tomorrow or go for 35 clock hours and stay until 3:30ish?

Day 3 Reflection

I know some of your eyes are starting to glaze over by now! Like I've said before I wanted to expose you to a number of different technologies so that you would know what's out there. Don't try to do everything!!! Pick one thing and give it a go with your students or just create something you use as a presentation tool or as demonstration. I'm hoping that you'll at least retain the knowledge that there are other possibilites out there when you are ready.

I'll keep the wiki posted all year so you have access to the links and I'll even try to add things as I find them. Feel free to pass on the wiki address to anyone in the district that might want access to the links. They'll have to join but I'll try and check in regularly to confirm them.

Our theme today was Innovation. Don't be afraid to think out of the box with technology. A lot of the tools we looked at today can be used across the curriculum with a little imagination. Hopefully, we can continue to share new links and lessons with each other to help give us new ideas.

Tomorrow: Go straight to the room you are assigned to for your Elective in the morning. If you have a flip camera and can bring it to the Video class tomorrow that would be great but not necessary.

Today's question: What tool that we looked at today are you most likely to use with your students? What makes it attractive to you? What are you thinking about doing with it?

Day 2 Reflection

Today's theme was collaboration. We looked at some Personal Learning Networks like Twitter and we've looked at Blogs and Wikis as ways to communicate with each other.

Google has a lot of collaborative tools to offer - like GoogleDocs, which we didn't get to today but would be worth exploring as a way for your grade levels or subject areas to collaborate with each other.

We barely scratched the surface today of what Google has to offer. We looked at Google Scholar and Reader as a way to focus your information gathering and you can also find customizable search engines, teacher tools, lesson plans and they are always adding new features. Google is especially attuned to teacher's needs so check out www.google.com/educator often to find new lesson plans, ideas and tools for the classroom.

Today's question is...how can we use technology more often in our classrooms to collaborate with our students or have students collaborate with each other? What technology tools might you use to have students collaborate with each other?

Day 1 Reflection

Thank you all for being so patient with technology this morning. I through a lot at you at once but I think you'll get the hang of it. Luckily, we've worked out a few bugs today and things should go more smoothly the rest of the week.

Please try to be here at 8am tomorrow but come straight to your room and get logged in and settled. We may actually consolidate people into rooms 202 and 204 to make it easier on the presenters but I'll check with them in the morning and let you know. We'll do a drawing for 6 fabulous prizes in the morning at 8:15am!

Your homework for tomorrow is to go home and think about what you are teaching this year and what units would lend themselves to SMART Board lessons. My goal is for you to come out of this week with actual lessons that you have ready to use the first few weeks of school and lists of great links to get you through at least the rest of the quarter. Try some new things this week while you have lots of supportive people around to help you out!

Here's your reflection Question for today: Let's think about ethical internet use...who's responsibility is it to teach internet safety and ethical use? What grade level should we start at? How helpful would it be to have a list of "Internet Savy Skills" that we expect students to have? Do you have any questions or thoughts you want to have passed on to Justin?

Reflections on Technology

Welcome to the Blog for the Summer Institute of Technology in Snohomish School District 2010. Each day by 3:00pm I'll post a question here that I'd like you to reflect on and respond to. If you have time, look through and comment on your colleagues comments.