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January 18, 2008 08:04 AM

Local to Global: Ashland's Qwest Grant

With easy access to iPods and digital microphones, students will be able to capture, edit and publish oral histories. Using a multimedia workstation they will be able to present information about content, such as the Oregon Trail, through creatively written and produced video podcasts. Students developing book reports or biographies will express themselves through varied media.

Through iEarn projects students will experience authentic investigations and expand their audience for projects. iEARN is an organization dedicated to creating world wide opportunities for students. It is a global network that enables teachers and students to use the Internet and other new technologies to collaborate on projects that both enhance learning and make a difference in the world. http://www.iearn.org/

Through blogs and video conferencing, students will share writing and collaborate on projects with their classmates, students in other Ashland schools and peers around the globe. The ability to publish instantly and engage in interactive, two-way communication builds a powerful learning community.

Posted by morgancottle on January 18, 2008 at 08:04 AM in Ed Tech Grants | Comments (0)

January 15, 2008 09:01 PM

Qwest Grant: Mapping of the Buck Creek Cabins

The 6th Graders at Sunridge Middle School in Pendleton have been braving the rainy winter weather to begin their preparations of training to use the GPS and learning to import data on to Google Earth and Google Maps. In rotation, all nine classrooms are going through the GPS boot camp in preparation for Outdoor School at the Buck Creek Cabins in May. The students have had no complaints - even when we had a complete down pour in the middle of our geocaching activity! Boy, did they want the treasure!

The main goal of this project is to bring technology and the outdoors together. Using GPSs, digital cameras, and mapping software, the students will be adding another dimension to all they see and do while at Outdoor School. They will be recording coordinate data, species of wildlife, trails, and elevations while at the cabins. Upon return from Outdoor School they will be working together to put their collections together as a class into a collaborative multi-media mapping project.

As far as the laptops, set of GPS, and digital cameras, they have all been ordered and until they arrive, we have been content in borrowing from the UMESD!

For the immediate future, the goal is to get all the classes through the GPSs and imputing data training. I will also be working with groups of students from each classroom in the coming months on how to import photos and written reports into mapping software. We will be doing this through a smaller community mapping project of sites around our town. This way we will have experienced students in each class to be peer helpers. The 6th grade teachers are all excited to be a part of this project as well, with some of them attempting to use GPSs with their students for the first time through this project! It has been a fun process so far, and as the weather improves, it should only get better!

Posted by heidipaullus on January 15, 2008 at 09:01 PM in Ed Tech Grants | Comments (0)

Engaging all Learners – One at a Time

At the beginning of this school year we received two eInstruction student response systems to use in our school. We were amazed at how it changed the atmosphere during direct instruction and class discussions; allowing teachers to meter time on task for both the quick thinkers and the slower methodical thinkers, the openness of discussion when students were commenting on “most chosen” or “least chosen” answer, and the high level of active participation of even the most reluctant learners.

We dared to dream… “What if every grade level at Mabel Rush Elementary School had a response system to share and to create lessons for each other, collaborate on best questioning strategies, and encourage each other in the use of the systems in their classrooms?” Knowing change can be a slow process in larger schools, we started small (where we could be successful). We asked for teacher leaders to volunteer to be on the cutting edge of this learning. We had at least 2 teachers at each grade level excitedly step forward. Our short term goals are to:

Meet each month January to May to:
1) Learn how to set up and use the systems
2) Be focusing on developing questioning strategies, focusing on critical thinking and metacognition.
3) Sharing tips and tricks for using the systems in the classroom
4) Collaborating on the sharing and organization of grade level lessons we have created on our server.

The long-term goal of this project is to develop teacher leaders at each grade level who will then become trainers and supporters (guide on the side) of the other teachers in their grade-levels on the best practices of using student response systems in their classrooms.

As a side note, after we found out about this grant, funds came available to purchase 1 more system for our school, having a total of eight systems for first the 11 lead teachers and then our 25 staff members to use.

Posted by krisbower on January 15, 2008 at 12:05 AM in Ed Tech Grants | Comments (0)

January 14, 2008 09:20 PM

Skate Park in My Backyard?

My students will combine the use of three types of technology (digital cameras, Google Earth, and Garageband) to create a virtual fieldtrip.

This project will include designing, planning, researching, synthesizing media (text, pictures, and location), writing to communicate what they have learned, and presenting it.

By using Google Earth, students will be able to see how geographic features impact city planning. They will also use Google Earth to design a virtual fieldtrip, and will explore various layers to learn more about the physical Earth. By using GarageBand, students will be able to make their voices heard around the world.

Google Earth has been used very little at my school and only in an introductory way. GarageBand was introduced last year to those of us that participated in an Ed Tech grant, but not as a focus for us. I’m confident that with my training this year and my help disseminating this information to my students and my fellow teachers, these are two technologies that could really lift us into teaching our goals of 21st century technology!

Posted by kimhernandez on January 14, 2008 at 09:20 PM in Ed Tech Grants | Comments (0)

Collaborative Writing Project

Fourth Grade teachers at Central Elementary were thrilled to learn that we received the Qwest Grant to help improve our writing program. We received the technology equipment....Macbooks, projectors, document cameras, and tablets during our winter break. We spent a couple days during the break to get the systems up and going. It was and is a fantastic learning experience for the students, as well as for the teachers. We have already seen an increase in student motivation to use proper conventions, better handwriting, and more details. Students never know if their work is what is going to be shared via the document camera. Here is our goal statement and lesson outline:

Project Goals

Central Elementary School, located in LaGrande, Oregon, has had a major shift in size and population in the last two years. We have seen our school change from a K-6 elementary school with 410 students and 25% free and reduced lunch, to a K-5 school with 468 students and 42% free and reduced lunch. As our school changes, the needs of the students change, our class sizes are growing, and our teachers are looking for ways to reach students in whole group settings, rather than the time consuming one on one conferencing approach.
Our School-Improvement Plan focuses on writing. We have seen our writing assessment scores go from 42% meeting or exceeding to 35% in 2007. We are getting more students that have lower reading and writing abilities, with less and less Title One money to pay for assistant help.
We seek the ability to reach all students as our class sizes grow and our opportunities to work one-on-one with students decrease.
Our goal is to incorporate technology that would allow interactive lessons during our writing sessions.
Our goal for our students is to provide scoring, instant feedback, and collaborative writing opportunities.
Our School Improvement Plan states that we will improve our writing assessment scores by 5 % each year.

Student Goals:
Students will use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others.

Students will use the writing process to produce quality writing samples that will met the Oregon 4th Grade Standards

Use a variety of strategies to prepare for writing.
Learn revision techniques
Learn how to paragraph correctly
Learn how to edit and what editing is all about
Use the REAL network at the Oregon Department of Education’s website
Learn the Oregon Scoring Guide and to score other students’ work.
Provide opportunities to explore the modes of writing such as narrative, expository, and persuasive.

The following are examples of how we will use technology with students in our classrooms:

1. The teacher will prepare a lesson on the use of an inviting lead sentence using literature and authors students are familiar with. It will be loaded onto the laptop and presented to the students via the projector. After discussion about the characteristics of an inviting lead sentence, students in collaborative groups will search for more examples of inviting leads within the classroom library. They will type them on their Quickpads and share with the rest of the class.
2. The class will collaborate on writing a five paragraph narrative essay with either a student or the teacher writing on a piece of notebook paper using the document camera and projector. When the rough draft is complete, using the Tablet PC, students and the teacher can add revisions and edit in such a manner that everyone in the class can see and contribute.
3. Using the Oregon Department of Education’s REAL network, students can interactively learn the Oregon Scoring Guide for writing. The scoring guide can be projected onto the screen, the teacher can highlight on Tablet PC, while students are highlighting their copies. Students can score available work samples, and using the Quickpads can beam their scores to the class laptop, and then discussion will follow.
4. Students have written a five paragraph narrative essay. Revision is the lesson goal. Students volunteer to take their essay up to the document camera to collaborate with the class on adding details to the essay. Students use the Tablet PC to interject editing marks or details.
5. The teacher shares descriptive writing (orally and visually) from literature and authors students are familiar with. Then she provides a very bland paragraph for group to collaboratively revise using figurative and descriptive language (appropriately, without going over the top). The groups type in their final copy on their Quickpads. It is then beamed to the projector for group assessment and discussion.
6. Under the dimension of Word Choice, using the Quickpads and projector, students can collaboratively brainstorm lists of words for topic word banks, lists of words to take the place of old tired words, use the thesaurus to look for synonyms of bland words that may be more exciting to use. These lists can be saved for future use or copied out and put in student writing folders.
7. Using the Binocular Approach, a picture is flashed on the screen showing a shot of a scene in a marsh from far away. Students write a story about what they see. Groups then use the Quickpads to list details that they see. The Tablet PC can be passed around for students to circle the objects they see. They share their stories using the document camera. They make revisions to their stories at this time. Then a close up picture of the marsh is shown. Groups list more details, discuss and revise their stories further to create more detailed essays.

Student-centered use of technology impacts student performance

Ideas/Content: *60%

The use of technology will open the world to students that rarely travel out of Eastern Oregon. The more students experience, the better writers they become. As we all know, it is better to write about what you know.

Organization: *55%

Students come to fourth grade knowing how to write one paragraph. They need to be able to write essays using paragraph skills by the Writing Assessment window which is in January/February. Using collaborative writing, students can learn how to use paragraphing effectively. Students can write their rough drafts, show them to the class using the document reader. The paper can be cut up to show what belongs where and the whole class can participate. Students can judge collaborative writing in the area of writing an inviting introduction and a satisfying ending. Access to graphic organizers on the web will help students to organize their thoughts before they begin to write.

Sentence Fluency: *55%

Students often have problems with sentence fluency. Some create long sentences that take up the whole essay. Some have short, choppy sentences that are very boring to read. Giving students the ability to see and experience sentences that flow across the page as opposed to those that are choppy and mechanical, invites the students to incorporate appropriate sentence structure into their own writing. Working collaboratively with the Tablet PC, Quickpads, Document camera, and projector, students can quickly share their new and improved sentences with the class for their critiques.

Conventions: *42%

Editing, editing, editing. Just telling students they need to look for misspellings, punctuation, indenting, capitals, and left out words, does not do the trick. They do not transfer it over to their own writing. They need ongoing work with learning to edit. One program we use is the daily edit or Daily Oral Language. The two sentences for the day can be projected, students can write corrections in their DOL journals. Then the Tablet PC can be given to a student to note corrections for the whole class to see. Or, students can volunteer to have a collaborative edit session, where the whole class can help to edit their paper.

* Percentage of students meeting or exceeding in this dimension 2006/07

Posted by lesliegraham on January 14, 2008 at 07:15 PM in Ed Tech Grants | Comments (0)

Qwest Grant - Thurston H.S.

On a weekly basis, as students stream into the classroom, someone comments on the large check displayed proudly on the back wall of my classroom, and there is a sense of mixed excitement and anticipation that comes with my explanation of the project the check makes possible.

Go.Map.Springfield: The Springfield Storymapping Project will challenge Thurston High School students to share stories of the place they call home. This concept of story mapping, www.storymapping.org/, involves students in the process of going out into their community, unearthing stories connected to specific places in Springfield, interviewing those involved in the stories, turning it into a digital story format, and then publishing via Google Earth to share the stories.

As a culminating part of this project, students will share the stories they find by inviting the community to attend a special screening of Go.Map.Springfield: The Springfield Story Mapping Project. In addition, the stories will be available online for others to see; this interactive map of Springfield with digital stories that can be clicked and viewed will only be the first in what, I hope, will become a larger collection of stories created by Springfield students about their community.

I plan to implement this unit by guiding students, working independently or in small groups of two or three, through the following stages:

1. Discovery. Students will choose to share either a story of place already familiar or find a new story of place. Through this process of discovery students will research their community using the internet, books, the local newspaper, school yearbooks, and other resources. In addition, they will find community members knowledgeable about the places found within Springfield and will conduct interviews with these individuals.

2. Scriptwriting. Students will work through the stages of the writing process, writing a script about their place story using information gathered in the interview and research process.

3. Storyboarding. Students will plan and organize the images, script voiceover, transitions, music/sound effects, and special effects that will later be blended together to create a digital story about the place they chose to tell a story about.

4. Gathering Resources. Students will collect and digitize video, photographs, and audio files that contribute to the story.

5. Movie Making. Students will work through the movie editing process using iMovie technology to blend all the elements together in the creation of a three to five minute digital story.

6. Publishing. Students will participate in planning and presenting their stories during a movie premiere. In addition, students will assist in the creation of the Go.Map.Springfield: The Springfield Story Mapping Project website where their stories will be made available to the public via Google Earth.

In February, the first group of students, about 120 sophomores, will begin storymapping. After receiving the first grant payment in December, I was able to order all items necessary for student recording and editing kits, a digital projector and mounting system, and additional recording and editing accessories. Five student recording kits for student use in school and available for student check out to provide students with quality products to capture audio and/or video interviews, photographs, video clips, and audio music clips. Each recording kit, packed in a protective photo/video carrying case will include one iPod nano equipped with a microphone and a Canon digital camera. In addition, five classroom editing kits, including microphones and headphones, will enable students to listen to, record, and edit audio elements.

Posted by ginnyhoke on January 14, 2008 at 10:33 AM in Ed Tech Grants | Comments (0)

January 13, 2008 01:36 PM

Project Title: Optimizing Listening/Learning Opportunities for Deaf/Hearing Impaired Children Through Integration of Assistive Listening Devises and Current Technology

Alison Kaiser, Teacher of the Deaf and Marcia Zegar, Speech/Language Pathologist are thrilled to have their grant funded through QWEST. Both Alison and Marcia work at Salem Heights Elementary in Salem, Oregon. Salem Heights is the Center Site for Deaf/Hard of Hearing Students from Salem-Keizer schools and surrounding communities. With the advent of digital hearing aids and cochlear implants, students now have access to sounds never before achievable. This provides opportunities for auditory learning but also demands updated teaching methodologies and integration of current technology. With optimal integration of assistive listening devises and technology, many of our students can now “learn to listen and listen to learn”. The purpose of our project is to use technology to aid a student’s auditory language development in each of the 4 areas: listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Through funds provided by the grant, 2 Listening/Learning Labs will be created. Each Lab will consist of a Mac Book, InFocus Projector, and iPods. Students will also have access to MP3 players paired with books for take-home activities. Students will learn how to link their assistive listening devises to the above mentioned technology to enhance auditory learning. Students will also learn basic processes to incorporate use of iLife features and iPods in the speaking, listening, reading and writing processes. Productions will include podcasts, auditory stories, iMovies, iPhoto books, iWeb design, and exploration of the many features of the operating system, Leopard. Use of Garage Band and the external Snowball Mic will enhance auditory learning and will be integrated into productions.

Many of our students are at the early stages of “learning to listen”. Through a generous donation by a local recording studio, selected literature will be recorded at stages of auditory development. Signal to noise ratios will be controlled and auditory background information will be introduced in developmental steps to aid the student’s auditory processing and development of auditory figure/ground differentiation.

Students will share their newly learned technology skills for select projects in their mainstream classrooms along with organizing a ‘parent night’ to display their many project productions.

At this time (January 15, 2008) we are anxiously awaiting arrival of our Apple purchases so we can begin this merger of hearing aids, cochlear implants, and personal FM systems with current technology through the QWEST grant purchases.

Posted by marciazegar on January 13, 2008 at 01:36 PM in Ed Tech Grants | Comments (0)

January 7, 2008 03:17 PM

Hand in Hand Learning with Promethean Boards

Our Hand in Hand Learning Project is about enhancing all students’ learning while engaging the special needs students using Promethean Board Systems. Desert View is K-5 school in Hermiston, Oregon. This project involves a 1st, 3rd, and 4th grade classroom and the media specialist. The main goal of this project is to motivate and improve student learning in Math and Writing using the interactive white Boards. Each of the 3 classrooms will receive a Promethean Board, a slate, a wand, and share a set of ActiVotes. The teachers will also attend the ITSC conference and receive training on using these systems.

Teachers will integrate the Interactive Boards with a variety of lessons across the curriculum. Learning will be student centered starting with an introduction to basic prerequisites, involve student exploration, teachers will facilitate student collaboration and sharing within the grade level, teach others across the school, and publish on the web. Teachers will team monthly at Professional Learning Community events to share discoveries, teach other teachers about their impact on student learning and what’s been most motivating.

The second goal of this project is to increase teacher skills incorporating this interactive and motivating tool into student lessons with more boards in the future. Our teachers have used Promethean Boards before on a check out basis, but need to have them permanently available in their rooms to impact on-going student learning.

Our project blog can be viewed at: http://danahill.umesd.net/journal.php?catid=0

Posted by danahill on January 7, 2008 at 03:17 PM in Ed Tech Grants | Comments (0)