techsuccess

In the world of Itinerant Staff, keeping up with multiple schools is a job all of it’s own in addition to services provided to students. Success often requires a set pace and rhythm be maintained so change is often not met with enthusiasm.

This fall, I helped several staff members explore the calendar function for the first time. The best moment for me was sitting with one particular person who I shall refer to as Meg (for mega responsibilities in the world). We went through the mail system and checked out the cool functions. Then we went through the calendar, looked at all of it’s wonderful tricks and cleaned off all of the previous scheduling attempts while reviewing all of the time that can be saved by using the system.

Beginning in September 2007, Mercury Mine students began to read and study the Grand Canyon Readers Award nominees. These include 10 recently published picture books with high appeal to students. Children across Arizona then vote for their favorites and the Arizona Library Association issues an award to the winners at the AzLA Convention.

Mercury Mine 6th graders read the books independently and then worked in small groups to write book talks in the form of a short commercial script. The reviews were word processed and then students worked with Garage Band for the first time to record and add effects to their commercial. It was a BLAST! Students were enthralled by hearing their own voices and digitizing them into helium breath and mouse sounds as well as adding sound loops and being in control of the volume, timing and pace of their work.

Classes listened and viewed each others work and critiqued what was good about each one. This also gave them a perspective of what others accomplished with Garage Band and what was distracting or enhancing.

It was wonderful to see students enthralled by technology again and we are hoping to apply their new skills in other curriculum areas as well as to advance them to iMovie.

Shari Anton, World History teacher at Shadow Mountain High School, has created a CyberSocratic wiki for use in her classroom with 32-34 students per class. Shari learned about PBWiki and how to create one after she attended a 3rd Year Mentors seminar on Atomic Learning in August.

communication. "I am a huge supporter of Socratic thinking, but found that it may not reach many of our ELL and struggling students. Socratic Technology is perfect for all kids. They had sooo much fun and can think and share without that fear of group speaking.

I plan on expanding this to reach other classrooms, or countries someday. We can not just have them Googling and being fed info to transport to a worksheet or poster. They must use all the learning styles to connect and then finally discuss it as they would in emails or texting. "

Shari extends special thanks for all the support and encouragement from Karen Martin, the tech seminar and to Jane Koval who constantly encourages her and guides her to go outside the box.

My goal this year is to meet the technology standards while integrating teachers lesson plans into technology. In sixth grade they are learning about the human body in science. Instead of doing a traditional report Mrs. Marks and I are collaborating and creating a Power Point presentation incorporating the information learned in science with the functions of the Power Point program. The class will also present the slide shows to the class as part of their viewing/presenting grade on their report cards. It's not cutting edge but it is a start in collaboration with teachers.

I have started to hold monthly technology meetings at our school. It is a voluntary meeting for those that want to learn more about the topic that I'm teaching. Our October meeting covered connecting their laptops to the Ricoh copier for scanning purposes. We downloaded the Citrix software and I demonstrated to them how to scan single page and multiple page documents. I have already had teachers comment on how much time this saved them when they wanted to update their web pages. I use it all the time to scan our second grade calendars and our homework assignments for our second grade web page.

The November meeting is going to cover Filamentality. My goal is to have many teachers create a hot list of web pages that they use and then I will create a hot list of all the teachers hot lists so that we, as a school, can share all of our great resources. I think this will be a great help to all of us.

I'm thinking that I will have pDAT refresher course in December. I'm fielding lots of questions on this subject right now and I think it would help for them to learn a little bit more about this.

One of the challenges in the media center is teaching students how to use the WebCollection to find books in the library. This year, I decided to change how I presented Webcollection. First, I gave a brief review of each search type. Then, working in small groups, students in 4th through 6th grade completed a more in depth study, writing step by step instructions for how to complete various search types. After that, the students created Keynote presentations for their directions incorporating screen shots to clarify directions. Finally, students viewed all of the presentations, voted for the top three, from which I chose one to use next year when I am reviewing WebCollection. Students had a great collaborative learning experience and I have a teaching tool to use in years to come!

GenYes is a course/club that allows students to work with technology everyday in an effort to help teachers enhance their lessons using 21st century tools. Students work with such programs as the Apple iLife Suite, the Microsoft Office Suite, webpage development, digital photography/videography, and other multimedia projects. The classroom comes alive when a GenYes student is there to help!

Thirteen teachers from PVUSD participated in the Beginners' Tech Camp in Tucson. They spent 5 days at a beautiful resort and learned the basics of Word, Excel, Internet, and iLife! All of them created a multimedia presentation of their field trip experience and left the camp with new found confidence in their emerging technology skills. Congratulations to them for their efforts, enthusiasm, and commitment! For information on the camps available for Summer 2008, visit the AZ K-12 Center Tech Camp Web Site.

In June, July and August, approximately 145 PVUSD teachers participated in one or more of fourteen different technology literacy class offerings. The classes ranged from Online Resources to Podcasting to Digital Storytelling and more. Some of the comments from the participating teachers include: "This was a great learning experience." "It was perfect! The Best!!!" "Great class. Tons of great info!" "Friendly learning environment and lots of individual help was provided."

Thanks go to the instructors who made these classes possible: Joyce Bertilson, Debbie Kovesdy, Arlene Ashe, Judy Gerdin, Nicole Murphy, Ralle Krenitz, Bryan Smith, Allan Harris, Penny Wipprecht, Lee Gerwitz, Cherie Stafford, and Jill Felty.