Innovative Teaching with Technology

What I have learned:
The major project I did with my students in this grant was to help the students create and interactive quiz of sorts on insects. They had studied insects in science and one of the objectives was to have them learn the 3 parts of the insect body: head thorax and abdomen.

Observation: March 17, 2009
Audience: 22 second graders
Timeline: 50 minute class
Topic: Literature
The class was introduced to the scripts they will need to create an animated version of the book, The Mitten by Jan Brett.

Purpose: The students will be expected to create an animated version of the correct order the animals that go onto the mitten.

Scripts needed: go to x and glide to

It is good to be back on line and in business. For those of you who have never had a major computer crash you might not understand my situation. The motherboard on my computer went out two weeks ago and I have been trying to recover the hard drive ever since. (With lots of support from the technology people) Well I have the drive now and can again access the docs but now have to reorganize it to a smaller and slower machine. This has affected my ability to work with the kids because all my data was on the drive I couldn't access.

As I am still helping my kids get done with our first major project I have come to realization that it takes second graders a long, long time to finish a project. I guess I already knew that but had hoped I was wrong.

Shorty after our time together at the Science House I went out to Radio Shack and bought a 500 piece variety bundle of resistors. Cost for the bundle was about $13.00. I used the sensor watcher and sure enough they are a lot easier than trying to get the graphite just right.

This last weekend I spent a few hours sharing Scratch with teachers in a technology certificate program. The teachers came from the east metro area districts. Of the 22 people, 7 chose to come learn a little about Scratch. After a very short intro they were off and running. They were generating lots of questions and ideas. I shared the info about the Scratch sessions at the SMM, also.

I have been introducing my kids to the sprites and the idea of variables. It is exciting to hear them use the terms and understanding what they mean.

I have been invited to share Scratch with a group of teachers taking a course through Hamline this Saturday. This is a new initiative through an E2T2 Grant. I was part of a brainstorming session in August on what things to offer the class. This meeting took place right after we had met, so of course I said Scratch had to be included and they listened. 

Sabrina the info you just sent out will be very helpful to share with these teachers from  the east metro districts on the Thursday classes.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Here is the start for my project. I have also attached a PDF of how i see this working over a month or so.

Learn more about this project