Hello again everyone,
Thank you to so many of you who got back to me saying this
is a useful communication habit. I will do my best to live up to
it! I’m aiming to send them every other week.
Just as a reminder, I am popping into classrooms to observe
how we’re using technology. It has been the highlight of my
week to get to watch many of you teach and engage our students. I know
this is always a little disruptive but please feel at ease and know that I’m
looking for two things: what’s working well and ways I can support you
with effective use of technology.
In the last two weeks here are the things I’ve seen and
heard:
What’s working:
- Check out the 6th grade SWIFT page
for pictures of all teachers, links to their respective pages and a shared
calendar. Nice work! http://teachers.northwestschool.org/nws/sixth-grade-page
More of these are planned for other grades.
-
Effective use of SMART boards for projection,
interactive activities and note-taking/sharing. We are also looking
to bring in a SMART board trainer to give teachers more ideas on how to use
these tools to their full potential. Stay tuned!
-
Francoise is having a lot of fun exploring
subtitles with her students (writing scripts, filming and editing)– they
are making their own versions of this classic Youtube video of Henri the cat
(who narrates his existential crisis here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M7ibPk37_U
– well worth a watch!)
What’s wonky:
- The school website’s list of Teacher Pages
has changed and you now see a longer list, alphabetized by last name.
We are discussing ways to make this more searchable and easier to use.
- We’ve seen increased problems printing from a
webpage when you’re using IE. You might have encountered this – when
you print a blank page instead of the actual website that is on your computer
screen. The solution at this time is to open the same webpage using
Firefox. You should be able to print without problems. We are
looking into solutions.
What you wish for:
-
Further discussion about an online tool that
would let students log in and write their take-home essays in a timed
environment. This would reduce the frequency of students
spending 6 hours on essay that is intended to be written in an hour and a half.
Worth mentioning:
-
How to link to documents on the common folder
from your email – steps below:
o from
a new email window, click on Insert (one of the tabs across the
top of the window) now click on the Hyperlink icon (the globe with a
little chainlink image). You’ll now get a chance to browse to any folder
you have access to. There’s a drop down list that defaults to My
Documents, but just choose Common and browse from there. Your link
will now appear in the email. This is an alternative to attaching
the file – and will work from home now that we have the VPN portal set up.
-
You may have noticed students playing computer
games in the library that look at first like a “first person shooter”
game. In fact, they are playing Minecraft – an online game that
encourages problem solving and teamwork. Here’s a bit more about the
educational value of Minecraft : http://blogs.nitle.org/2010/11/16/learning-from-computer-games-playing-minecraft-part-1/
Thanks so much for reading!
All the best,
Catherine
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