Empowering Students and Teachers

Looking at the many sessions to be presented, I wanted to attend all but; time did not permit so I finally decided to focus on sessions that dealt mainly with technology in the classroom; more specifically those relating to the utilizing of technology in the elementary school curriculum. From the sessions attended, I concluded that the overall theme of the conference was “Empowering Students and Teachers through the Utilization of Technology”

After attending the conference, which was both informative and interesting I was given the opportunity to present highlights from a few of the sessions to our faculty. “Online Tools for Literacy” is explained in more detail because it was used with some of second grade students. Listed below are sessions that I presented to our faculty:

There is more to Acrobat than the Reader!
Presented By: Ron Richard – Adobe Systems Inc.

Basically this was to introduce the latest version of Acrobat Reader and to highlight some of the many time saving features the program offers. It is an excellent tool for the following:

Combing or creating a document with a smooth transfer of files.
Changing print drivers, sending email and changing conversion settings.
Minimizing editing by collaborating in a word document. Sending the document to others, getting their input on the document, circulating and combine changes without others reading the edited notes.
Scanning directly into Acrobat by just capturing the image.
Incorporating photos, video, and large documents into a single file that can accessed on any platform including the web.

Digital cameras are wonderful leaning tools to simulate and motivate both students and teachers in the learning process.

Captures slow motion progression of plants (plant seeds and set the camera to collect photos each day)
Captures tides flowing in and out (spend a day at the seashore and collect pictures of the same spot at different dime intervals of the day) ( collect high tides and low tides, sand imprints) and other sea life
Captures mussels and other sea animals and their growth pattern (sand imprints of the animals)

As suggested by the presenter, the digital camera provides a sound basis for teachers and students to meet the National Educational Technology Standards. It is very simple to use.

Presented by: Gail Lovely, featured Speaker and the founder of Lovely and Associates.

All sites were designed to help educators integrate technology and curriculum. These are excellent time saving tools that are practical and user friendly. Some of the sites have rubrics already set up and all you would need to do is change a few words to customize the rubric for your particular subject/topic. The following websites are for elementary teachers:
Book information and lessons
http://eduscapes.com/ladders/step3.htm

The latter two links were used with a group of 2nd graders at our school; they were studying a unit on animals and we wanted to correlate science and literature. “Eduscapes” is subdivided into various components and we chose the one on “nature grids” which gives factual information on animals. The site offers a complete lesson plan which includes the following:

Teachers’ Pages – Providesan overview of the books that are included in this link. All titles included are interactive books. The overall section is designed to help students become confident and competent Internet users. The site was designed by teachers in the UK, but includes science objectives that are also suitable for early grades across the USA.

Thinking Questions –Questions are outlined in the teacher section and the same questions were used throughout the lesson with the whole class to “encourage and motivate a discussion on swans. Thinking questions were designed to incorporate six steps of the “Thinking Process”, 1) Knowledge, 2) Understanding, 3) Application, 4) Analysis, 5) Synthesis/Speculation and 6)Evaluation). Sample questions were given for each step. Example: Where do swans live, why do swans sit on their next? How are swans different to other birds? Why is a swan’s long neck a good feature? Etc. This section was very helpful to the teacher because questions - begins a thinking process which, which in turn helps to start a thought process in the readers mind; which therefore renders a purpose for reading. Hopefully, the questions will lead to comprehension of what was read.

Web Enquiry: All About Swans– This section was linked to our student computers. After students were seated at the computer they were asked to read over the detailed study questions (10) which gave each student a more specific purpose for reading (they were to find the answers to the questions listed on their computer screen). After students had silently read the questions, they proceeded to read The Swans, written by Sebastian Swan (this too was linked to student desktops). Students were prompted by the teacher to think about the study questions as they read the story. Once all students had read the study questions and read the story they were then directed to either reread the story, to reinforce their learning or just go directly to the home page and wait for further directions.

Literacy Links – the home page has seven books listed and students may highlight one of their choices. In this case students were directed to read The Swan Story written by Sebastian Swan. Before students began reading, they prompted to note a list of new words listed on the board and they would find them highlighted in the text on the computer. Oral directions were as follows: 1. Read the story, 2. click on any new words that you are not familiar with; (new words meanings are highlighted in green), then go back to the story and continue reading. If you finish reading early go back and reread until you are familiar with the new words and their meaning. After which, students were directed to return to the study questions which were then read orally for the whole class; students were randomly called on for the reply for each question. For questions not answered correctly, students were asked to click on the magnifying glass for the correct answer.

At the end of the question and answer session students appeared to be excited that they could readily reply to questions about swans and they appeared to like the class interaction. Students asked if they could go on to read another story from the home page. Of course time did not permit on this day but it was promised that “We will try some more at another time.” However, we did use this opportunity to get children reading some of the books from our library. We pulled a list of books that our library owned and displayed them, students eagerly checked out all of the books that were on display. There were non left. This activity provided each child an opportunity to read and find answers. This also motivated more discussion on the topic. Before beginning the lesson, we checked our library catalog to locate materials that we already had on the topic “swans” and related subjects (see attached list from our school) and those books were placed out for students to check out for further reading on the topic.

Now that these students know how to work this web page, we will most likely continue this kind of independent reading activity and provide time for students to read the other six books in this section. This lesson comes with many handy tips such as a world list, color photos, guided group reading and whole class shared reading activities; which works very well for a general group orientation and individual activities whereby students may progress at their own pace. The students performed well and more importantly, they were actively engaged in the activity.

This session stressed the importance of students using power point to make presentations.

Each student is able to produce a project, though it may not sophisticated, but each child will feel that he is able to produce something, because all students can use this equipment.
All students are actively engaged; you get them started and then allow them to use the program and be creative – but, still require them to stick to the topic assigned to them.

This session was presented by Patrick Crispen, one of the key speakers. I talked about this with our faculty because many of us feel bombarded with technology and at the same time we are not sure of how it can be fine tuned enough so that it really does save us time in the classroom. Mr. Crispen offers technology training the internet. Each tutorial session promises to bring us up to date and they are rated as quick and only one-hour. Some of our teachers said they were willing to try the sessions (hopefully they will share at grade level meetings).

The sessions are free for teachers and may be downloaded provided he (Patrick Crispen) is given credit and that no part of the program is used to make money. Listed below are a few titles that are good for elementary teachers and they may be accessed through http://www.netsquirrel.com/classroom/zip.html.

In conclusion, I found the conference to be very informative. However, in view of budgetary constraints and the request for more funding in the world of education, I am intrigued with a tidbit as stated by Patrick Crispen, (who is known as a technology guru); he indicated that research has not been able to validate the use of technology as being more beneficial for academic achievement! So far they have only been able to verify that “Children are more engaged by technology than paper based activities” (*).

*(The writer did not research this statement; but merely stated what was said by the presenter at one of the sessions of the conference).