On the Trails

I work with teachers for a school district in Buffalo, NY. I also work at Buffalo State College teaching undergraduates and graduates how to effectively use technology. This entry will explain how technology is integrated during a computer lab session at my K – 5 school.

For the past seven years, I have been an Educational Computing Strategist – which means that I think of ways to use technology to improve learning. I don’t use technology for the sake of using technology…most of the time

My Philosophy is simple: Use the same technology available in the lab, the classroom and at home. I am a big proponent of using web-based resources.

Here is a typical hour in the computer lab:

Kindergarten (complete with approx: time)

• Turn on the computer (1 minute)
• Login into our Novell network (username and password are the same for all kids) (2 – 3 minutes)
• Start Firefox which opens to the school web page (1 minute)
• Go to the learning centers on my home page – (1 minute) http://www.btcactus.org/informationliteracy.cfm?
• Click on the keyboarding cactus and (5 minutes) http://www.btcactus.org/informationliteracy.cfm?subpage=113694 complete a keyboarding activity that teaches kids about letters – not about keyboarding skills
  • e.g. http://www.literacycenter.net/letters_en/typing_en_uc.asp
  • while students are doing this activity, the classroom teacher and I talk about the learning taking place in their classroom and we decided on an activity
  • sometimes I model the lesson, sometimes we co-teach, sometimes I support the teacher – see the METSS technology integration model I developed.
• Teach Lesson – here is an example:
  • Performance Indicator: Isolate individual sounds within spoken words (”What is the first sound in can?”)-Phoneme Isolation
    • Let’s say the teacher wants the kids to work on beginning sounds
  • Students close the Firefox tab where the keyboarding activity was
  • They click on the Reading Cactus (part of my learning center) (15 minutes) http://btcactus.org/informationliteracy.cfm?subpage=90783
  • They then click on Letter Match – under the Read with Clifford subheading
    • The students work through the activities on that web page while the teacher and I monitor the students by walking around or using our lab management software, synchroneyes
    • It is easy to differentiate instruction with the use of my learning centers. If a child is completed with this activity, the students go back to my learning center and I have them do the Sound Match or Make a Word – on the same Clifford web page
  • Closure of the lesson – assessment (5 – 15 minutes)
    • Visit my learning center
    • Choose the Writing Tools Cactus -
    • Choose the alphabet organizer
      • type in name
      • skip title
      • choose option 2
      • The teacher or myself will ask the students to click on the letter that makes the “C” sound, for example.
      • The students will click on that letter and we can easily see if they did it correctly. (it is also easier to cheat, but that is why we have teachers right?
      • When we are satisfied with their sound knowledge, the kids will print out the letter list to take home
  • Students will:
    • close Firefox
    • turn off computers