Due to the good fortunes of having additional PD money to spend before the month ended, I conducted eight technology trainings at my school in ten days. Call it a blitz, but I believe strongly in the value of all of it, and I had ideas “brewing” for years, and this was the first series of trainings that the school actually paid teachers to attend. I had many materials in the hopper.
A recap:
Day 1: MyData. Our school now has all student data accessible on our district site: MyData. It provides information about all standardized tests, past grades, attendance rate, credits, and behavior marks. The data is exhaustive and a major positive movement by our district. Some interesting reports including an At-Risk report for identifying students with multiple concerns and in-depth reports on specific items missed on sections of the California State Exam.
Day 2: Digital Grade books. Easy Grade Pro is my preferred choice for gradebooks, and through word of mouth, it has become the digital gradebook of choice of most of our teachers over the district provided option. A two-page guide for Easy Grade Pro highlighting the key features is here. I wish our district would scrap their attempt at a gradebook and adopt Edline. They have been promising the ability for students to view their assignments and grades online forever, but the parent access is not convenient yet.
Day 3: Google Earth. Google Earth is a great tool for expanding students’ geographical sense of the world. The kids love diving into Google Earth, and with projectors in the hands of teachers, it makes sense to take five minutes from time to time to use it to give context to the history or English or art class, so students have a little more familiarity about the places we throw out in conversation. Also, students can create their own trips quite easily using placemarks and paths. Best place for pre-created Google Earth activities is Google Earth Lessons. Here’s a guide I created for Google Earth.
Day 4: Using our school’s website. We use a site that most of the district uses (Educational Networks) at an exorbitant yearly rate, but it’s user-friendly and has many advanced features, though they seem to put more energy in unneeded features (like Twitter) and overlook the obvious (creating a start and end date for news items). I’m very impressed by another school website package in School Loop.
Day 5: Using Google Docs and Office for Technology Projects. Google Docs offers a free alternative to our students for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. It also gives students a place to store documents online with a simple upload feature. Every student in our district has 1GB of space for uploading their assignments.
Day 6: Web 2.0 in a Blitz: I highlighted a number of websites, including Wolfram-Alpha, Dropbox, Google Reader, Delicious and a number of screen capture tools. Then teachers chose from this list of my favorite Web 2.0 tools. Certainly one hour was not enough time for a thorough exploration of all of these tools.
Day 7: Star Reading and Accelerated Reader are two paid online tools created by Scholastic for assessing a students’ reading level and then rewarding students’ reading through incentive-based quizzes. Though not a favorite of English teachers, it is an alternative for supporting student reading for teachers not so comfortable initiating conversation about books and reading.
Day 8: Creating Online Courses with Moodle. Teachers learned the basics of setting up an online course using Moodle, a free open source platform similar to Blackboard and Web CT. Though not the most “appealing” course software, it is very functional for encouraging interaction and dialogue between students and teachers through forums, journals, and online submissions. Here’s a basic Moodle Guide.
All my technology training is located at Technology for the 21st Century Teacher with many guides, video tutorials and resources. Log in as a Guest and check it out.
We certainly can’t say that our school is not supportive of technology training.
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