Let Us Put YOU on the Map!

We have become fascinated by the growing number of red dots on our ClusterMap.

ClustrMaps is the widget you can always find on the right side of this webpage. Go ahead and look for it- double click it and see the details too. It shows locations in the world where someone is checking out this blog. I know who and where a few of the dots are because we are collaborating on projects - more news on those projects as they progress.

By our calculations, we are averaging 4-5 new locations in the world each week!

We need more projects to help our students learn more about their geographic world (and not just to prepare them for any eventual question on a game show – or a pageant….). This is where you come in to the picture – literally.

If you are reading this outside of Fort Mill or Tega Cay, SC, please drop us a line - we would love to hear from you. We want to put YOU on the map! Our classroom has a world map on the wall, and it will grow as our ClusterMap grows. If you are inside Fort Mill/Tega Cay - drop on into our technology lab. We would love to hear from you too.

-JoNelle Gardner, Technology Teacher/Specialist gardnerj@fort-mill.k12.sc.us

Inservice Day - My "Day Off" with "No Students"

Parents: While your child stayed home and played like they were supposed to, teachers had an Inservice Day. What is that exactly? Usually meetings. Today was different. Thanks to our pricipal we had a choice of where we wanted to visit. Below is a blog post from another education blog that I maintain. If I have any techie-type parents, you may want to help out in the technology lab this year. It's not what it used to be! Please read on...

We had an inservice day today - teachers actually visited schools of their choice. This was not your typical day of meetings that may-or-may-not be geared toward your needs of professional development. I jumped at the chance to find a school/teacher experienced in integrating web 2.0 tools in their curriculum. Although a tad over my elementary level, I found an excellent resource not too far away from home in Mr. Chris Craft. Many of us who have researched international collaboration projects have seen much of his work and read his blog http://www.crucialthought.com/

Chris Craft (love the name) came highly recommended and it was all true and then some. I got to see him in his element and I must say - his students adore and respect him. All of his sixth graders came in calmly with smiles and stayed that way the entire time. What wonderful classroom spirit. He loves them and they know it. He respects their identities and their uniqueness and they know that too. After all of the techno-talk I absorbed, I was struck most by his manner about his students and one quote in particular. "I teach children how they want to be taught," he told me. Think about that some more.

What about the techie talk? I learned more about Moodle, PBwiki, Gcast, WordPress, and Google Earth. New for me are great video resources from Dan Meyer at http://blog.mrmeyer.com/, www.trymango.com for self-paced Spanish lessons, www.livemocha.com , WiziQ for a virtual classroom, and bluehost. So many tools...and it is not summer break.

We talked about EdTech 2007 - SC's technology conference October 24-26. We are both presenting. My presentation is "We Vote for Movie Making! Motivate your students using cameras and Classroom Performance System (CPS). " I submitted this before I jumped on the Web 2.0 trail, so now I'll tweak it more to include some.

One of Chistopher Craft's (this how his name is listed on the site) presentation is about presentation design - how cool is that? Another is about Google Earth - yeah! The third is presenting his research "Games and Simulations, is there a place in k12 education? " What a fountain of information he so generously shares.

What a jam-packed Professional Development day for me! What did you do on your last inservice day?

Programming in Elementary with Scratch!

Scratch is programming for students! Who wants to learn programming with fun animations and sounds? Elementary students can do it with Scratch- and it's free from M.I.T. We will introduce programming in Scratch with 5th graders.

How will learning programming help our children? Students learn valuable problem solving and logic skills; communicating understandings and ideas helps students builds writing and speaking skills;and teaming with others builds collaboration and cooperation life skills and much more.

You can learn about Scratch too...download Scratch and let us know what you think! email JoNelle Gardner, Technology Specialist gardnerj@fort-mill.k12.sc.us
see examples in this video

We Have Made it to Wikispaces!

Students in fourth and fifth grade Technology classes now have their own secure wiki webpage. Wikispaces is a special website where students have a secure place to learn and share. Members only in this cyberspace - only our teachers, students and their parents may enter. Teachers monitor the site daily. We are incorporating safety and etiquette rules that we have learned to create the first pages. Soon each student will have a mystery partner in our school to build our first Technology/Social Studies project on Native Americans. We are working together to prepare for a project with 4th grade students in other states. This collaborative project will also help our students build character education and communication skills in Language Arts in our new world of ever changing technology.

What is a wiki? Watch this brief video on Wikis in Plain English

SALUTE to Dr SEUSS

Ask a group of students, "Who has a favorite Dr Seuss book?" and hear, "MEEEEEE!" Many of my 2nd and 3rd grade Technology classes have joined Technospud's nation-wide web project- Salute to Dr Seuss. Classes are choosing a variety of ways to share they favorite Dr Seuss books with others. Students are taking turns reading pages for a video. Some students prefer to let Queenie, a stuffed animal giraffe, be their on camera stand-in while they provide the narration.
Macinzi, a second grader says that her favorite part of the project is to be on the video! She even helped me write this:)

Be a Friend - Be Nice & Be Safe

Another way to view friends? Much has been said of the way we view the word "friends" now. Our students have "real-life friends" and some now have "internet friends". Some of these friends are both. Can we always tell the difference? Learn all that you can to help guide children in their sometimes murky internet decisions. We want our children to be respectful, mind their manners, have fun and be safe.

Fun ways to learn internet etiquette and safety are here. We want our students to learn good manners and stay safe with their "real-life friends" as well as their "internet friends". For years, our students have loved learning with Disney's SurfSwell Island - and you should see it on the SMARTBoard...cool! There is also a special section for PARENTS.

Older students enjoy earning their license to navigate the internet at PBS kids Get Your Web Licence . Our fourth graders learn more about privacy issues, policies, and passwords. 5th graders renew their license here. All students print out their OFFICIAL PBS KIDS WEB LICENCE to keep. Please ask about these at home and visit the site together to reinforce etiquette and safety.

Internet Safety

In technology classes we are learning how to keep safe on the internet. This is important even if you do not have or use the internet at home. Our district filters help and so does educating us all about keeping CyberSmart. Parents, your students may sometimes come home with a paper from Technology Class. Please go over the information with your family. Learn ways to keep your computer and your family safer.
More information: StaySafeOnline GetNetWise