Technology and Multicultural Ideas

Saturday, August 17, 2013

It's getting closer to the start of school everyday!  We cannot believe it, but we are really excited.  We spent a big part of last week planning for our first week of school.  It seems like planning for the first week of school takes longer than planning for any other week of the year.  One of our focuses for week one is to make sure we incorporate technology into our day.  Anne found a great article that shares ideas for using The iPad as a Tool for Creation to Strengthen Learning.  This article gave us the idea of using the cameras on the iPads to take pictures of our first science experiment.  These pictures should help the students record the results and conclusion parts of their lab sheets.  We can't wait to share the pictures and experiment idea with you in two weeks.  In the meantime check out this article.

We started our Technology Boot Camp class with our fabulous technology coach Tony Melton.  Day one was learning all about how to create iMovies.  The best part of this was learning how to use iMovies during guided reading, math, and the content areas.  We have a diverse population of students at Madison School, and one of our goals for this year is to better incorporate the various cultures of our classroom into our lesson.  We want to celebrate our diversity!  Our first activity will be to have students share why and how their parents chose their name and why it is special.  This activity was inspired after reading the story Tikki Tikki Tembo retold by Arlene Mosel.  An extension of this activity will come after we read The Twin Club story.  The main characters are of hispanic descent, so we will ask the questions "Do you know your nationality?  Do you know where your ancestors came from?"  This will be their homework question.  They need to go home and find out the answers.  We will then use iMovie and the Watercolor Globe button to create a movie of their answers.  For more information on how to use iMovie check out Tony Melton's weebly site.

Have fun exploring these sites.  We can't wait to share more technology ideas with you next week.  We still have four more boot camp days with Tony!

Kim and Anne