Spring Break & Breathing Earth

Well, I am enjoying a week off for Spring Break. The past few weeks at work have been crazy busy, but in a good way.

For today's blog post I wanted to share a website that I found interesting on twitter post I saw earlier today. It is called "Breathing Earth." I am linking you to a blog post that describes the site and you can visit the site from there. It is a great source for research in geographical studies for students. Check it out here: http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/03/breathing-earth-interactive-map.html.

Those who are on spring break..enjoy your week off!!

Susan

Do You Tweet?

Some of you reading this post are going to know exactly what I'm talking about and have been tweeting for a long time. However, some of you are going..tweeting?? Has she gone Cuckoo? A few posts back, I spoke of Web 2.0 tools and Twitter is one of those tools (www.twitter.com).

Twitter is another social networking site. Basically all it is--

is status updates, called "Tweets". I've seen a lot of people "Tweet" when they are on a trip or at a conference for their job or whatever. If you sign up on Twitter.com you can then download the Twitter application on Facebook and when you update through Twitter it updates your Twitter status as well as your Facebook status. I also just recently discovered Twitter for the Blackberry (Twitterberry). This way if I get an urge when I'm out and about at work I can now post a "Tweet."

Twitter is an excellent way for educators to share ideas and resources in a safe forum. Twitter is more of a professional social network, but people in all areas of work and entertainment use twitter to follow their favorite updaters! With Twitter, you sign up for an account and create a profile. You then find people to follow and people to follow you and share ideas through "tweets" or @replies!

Take a look and check it out!

Have a great evening!

Susan

Pictures from KidsFest

You read about the KidsFest adventures demonstrating the Wii and Wii Fit. Here are the infamous pictures!

Christie and Me playing baseball.

Tennis

Bowling

And now for the Hula Hooping



More Hula Hooping

KidsFest

On Saturday Bullitt County held its annual KidsFest. I had been there once before a few years ago and walked around with my nieces and nephews. This year I had the opportunity to work in our booth for Bullitt County Public Schools. We featured our technology department this year which I am always proud to "show off!" Ha, ha!! Am I a little biased there, sure!!

Anyway, I was so proud of all of our schools who participated whether by being there to present student technology projects or by sending in videos of student technology work to display. We had one elementary school who had an interactive presentation on Digital Citizenship. The STLP (Student Technology Leadership Program) from Cedar Grove had forumlated questions and visitors to the booth were able to correctly answer them to win a Hershey bar. This got our word on Digital Citizenship out to the parents and kids of our community.

Maryville Elementary school had some wonderful Windows Movie Maker projects where the kids took on the character of an American Historical figure and told about their life and times. Mt. Washington Middle School and Nichols Elementary also sent in some wonderful videos of their morning broadcast programs as well as other STLP projects in their buildings.

The highlight of the day, though, I think was the presentation by our PE teacher from Bullitt Lick Middle school that highlighted her use of the Wii and Wii fit in her PE classes. Ms. "Y" as she is known has read all the research and has made the Wii and Wii fit a wonderful asset to her teaching. With FMD students it has been a wonderful way to help teach motor skills and eye hand coordination. It has also been a wonderful incentive for the regular ed students for attendance and academic performance.

I even was able to get in on the action with the Wii. Since we were protecting the equipment we did not allow the general public to play with the Wii we were using so my co-workers and I became the demonstrators yesterday. If you end up seeing pictures or video of me on the Wii fit board hula hooping, please don't laugh. Chalk it up as an "educational demonstration!" And hey, I got my workout in!

It was a nice day! Looking forward to getting together with my sister and cousins today.

Have a wonderful evening!

Susan

Web 2.0

On Monday's post I used the term Web 2.0 and said I would further explain what I mean by that. Well, let's start by saying that if you are here on Blog Spot reading this you are participating in web 2.0!

By definition, Web 2.0 is a term that refers to a supposed second generation of Internet-based services. These usually include tools that let people collaborate and share information online, such as social networking sites, wikis, blogs, Nings, Message and Discussion Boards, podcasting, vodcasting, photo sharing/tagging etc. The list is almost endless. Another website that I visited recently explained it this way: Web 1.0 was mainly read only. People got on the web and read articles, found information they needed and that was about it. As the web has transitioned over the past few years in has gone into 2.0 which more collaborative. People not only read, but they interact with others. Even ones they may not know.

Teenagers, of course, have web 2.0 tools down to a right arm science. It is as if they have always had these tools at their finger tips and many of our younger ones actually have. We refer to these students as digital natives. They have never known life without web 2.0 tools such as social networking (MySpace, Face, Xanaga, Twitter).

As educators and even parents it is important to understand how your kids learn. They are learning in a very different way than we are used to. It is so important that teachers try their best to move with the transition and work toward teaching students to be good digital citizens in the Web 2.0 world. As the teachers guide their students to be good digital citizens, incorporating these tools into their instruction will definitely raise the interest level and learning outcomes of their students.

Have a wonderful evening!

Susan

Grants, Grants, and More Grants

It's that time of the school year. Budget time and everyone scrambling to apply for the many grants that are out on the horizon. The one part of my job that I am weakest at as I assist, advise, and train teachers to integrate technology into instruction is that of grant writing. There are two grants that I have been in the midst of in the recent weeks. One is for my actual job position itself and the other is for one of our elementary schools to obtain some money to equip their classrooms with projectors and interactive white boards.

As I said, grant writing or writing in general is not my strong suit. I guess that's why I'm a technology teacher and not an English teacher, huh? As you read my blog postings I'm sure you can see that my writing skills are not of the polished sort! Anyway it has been a neat experience to be involved in this grant writing experience. The one we are writing to keep our job position funded is a federal grant called Enhancing Education Through Technology. A fraction of our salary is paid through these funds. I helped write it two years ago and my 2 colleagues and myself are applying again for a renewal. With all the budget cuts looming these are much needed funds for our school district.

The process of writing these grants is tedious as you have to word things just so answer many questions that often seem redundant. We submitted the small grant for the elementary school I mention this afternoon. That was a nice feeling of accomplishment.

In our jobs we all have our weak points. I definitely do admit that my writing skills are that for me. What are your weak areas in your job/career/life?

Have a wonderful evening!

Susan

21st Century Skills

Hello everyone! I wanted to write about something today that is an everyday, bottom line task of my job. I wrote on my Facebook status one morning this week the following statement: "Susan is heading to work...teaching Excel to 4th graders and PPT to 3rd graders today!" I got lots of comments on that one that were both surprised and excited and saying how much things had changed. Yes, things have definitely changed. We have an entire new generation of students of whom third grade and below have completely been born and raised in the 21st century. Even those who were born in the 90's have almost been in a world that is completely automated, web based, or connected in some way or the other.

In the educational technology world, we refer to this as teaching students "21st Century Skills." Those who read my status message the other day saw that I was teaching 4th graders how to make data graphs in Excel for science fair projects and 3rd graders were working on a PowerPoint to present as a study guide for their science unit on magnets.

It is so important that we begin teaching these technology skills including keyboarding, multimedia skills, research, etc. in the elementary grades. There are so many other technology and 21st century skills opportunities out there that if they get the basic technology skills at the elementary level they can cover so many other skills in the higher grades such as web design, and incorporate so many other "Web 2.0" tools. (I'll explain that one in a post for another day!)

Keep in mind that the normal subjects such as reading, spelling, math, science, history, etc. are taught from the very beginning from Kindergarten all the way up so why not incorporate those 21st century skills of technology to prepare our students for the work force they will encounter when they go out into this digital world!

Have a great Saturday!

Susan

Whew!! Whirlwind!

Wow, it's been ten days since I've blogged, and I was doing so well at keeping up. February was another busy month as I'm sure it was for all of you readers out there. I am glad to be back here on the blog to catch up a bit.

At work we have been busy working on the renewal of our grant that funds a part of our salary. That is due toward the middle of March. Other things at work have been good, but just very busy working with teachers and students as I train them on technology. We even made a video in February to present to the Board of Education. I hope to have a copy of that to post here in the future. Yesterday I moderated quick recall matches for one of our district Governor's Cup meets.

I hope to get back on my exercise plan soon as that has, unfortunately, de-railed with the busy-ness of work. My goal, also, is to get back into keeping this blog up to date!

Enjoy and have a great Sunday afternoon!

Susan