Terrific Technology Ideas to Use in the Classroom
or Media Center

Christina Badowski, New Mountain Hill Elementary, Fortson, GA

            From learning about the free software download of SketchUp to learning interesting new ways to use MovieMaker  (even with Kindergarteners), this year’s GAETC conference was full of wonderful surprises.  The conference is always chock-full of great ideas, but which will be the ones I will take back and use in my Media Center? Which ones will successfully help my students? Which ones will wow my teachers?

            My first great find was learning about Google SketchUp. In a session done by the First District ETTC staff from Augusta, I learned about drawing 3 dimensional objects using Google SketchUp.  This great FREE piece of software will do wonders for any geometry lesson.  As a teaching tool, SketchUp will greatly help students to learn about shapes as they rotate them 360 degrees, about dimension by showing them the skeleton lines of shapes and about parallel surfaces by highlighting them in a drawing.  You can add many details that will excite the students and enhance their drawings such as shadows, landscape features and textures for different building materials.  Since returning to my school, I have shown this to many of my teachers and students.   One of my students, who used SketchUp, won first place at our regional technology fair, and he is going to compete at the state level in March.  So just “google” Sketch Up 6 and look for the “free download” button to begin using this great piece of software.  Don’t forget to use the video tutorials.

            In a session about creative ways to use MovieMaker, I revised my whole concept of using this great FREE program. (MovieMaker is a free download if you upgrade to Windows XP. It already comes preloaded if buy a computer with XP.) I had previously only used it with upper elementary students; but in this workshop, I saw numerous ideas for using the program with all elementary aged students.  Instead of having students take video footage to use in the program, the teacher took digital pictures of the students and scanned in drawings the students made to import into the “movie.”  The pictures and drawings she imported were also a review of the Georgia Performance Standard she had just covered.  Now she had a “movie” that covered all the elements of the Standard and her kids were the stars and the narrators. Do you think they will forget that Standard?  Never.

            With a third grade class, another teacher used the same idea to scan in pictures the students drew of different landforms; but with these older students, she went a step farther.  She and the students imported pictures they found on the Internet that also illustrated these landforms. Again the students narrated their movie and now have a great review for their unit on landforms.  

            In the session on Exemplary Media Programs, I saw how one Media Specialist used the interactive white board (IWB) to make her lessons come alive in the Media Center.   As she described each lesson, she included how she integrated her IWB as a natural part of the lesson.  The students might be doing a story sequencing activity that included moving pictures into the correct order or putting character traits into the correct spot on a Venn diagram.  It was a great lesson for me in ways to use the IWB in my Media Center.

            Since returning to my school, I have done workshops for my teachers on some of these ideas and others that I garnered from my sessions at the 2006 GAETC conference.  I can’t wait to return for the conference in 2007 for some more great ideas.

Contact info:  Christina Badowski, Media Specialist, New Mountain Hill Elementary, 33 Mountain Hill Road, Fortson, GA

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