SBTS EdTech

In preparation for the Global Awareness project  5^th graders at Cameron ES created powerpoints  on Syria, Jordan and Spain.  The students researched their topic and took virtual field trips with the librarian and classroom teacher.  The completed projects were posted on Blackboard for everyone to see.  Additionally, the classroom teacher posted one powerpoint per week for the students to blog about within Blackboard. 

Fifth graders at Mount Eagle are using Audacity as an editing tool. After learning about editing symbols and where to use them, students read their writing and record themselves. They then listen to their readings and edit their papers as they listen. They are able to capture the “oral editing” that students tend to do when reading their writing aloud and add in punctuation and emphasis where they hear it.

At Cameron ES, a September training was conducted on Photo Story and Movie Maker. The goal was to get cameras into the hands of teachers who in turn would do the same for kids. The results have been fabulous! Students and teachers at various grade levels are creating photo stories and mini movies that are posted to Blackboard for all to see. The principal spotlights some of them on Cameron Morning News.

Grade 1
School Bus Stop Safety
Students created a mini movie to discuss the importance and procedures for exercising good safety tips for the bus and walkers. Students created posters in groups with various tips and then generated their scripts from the posters.

Grade 5
Social Studies
Students created timelines of their lives, including pictures and memorabilia, on poster board. They took photos of each timeline and narrated them using Photo Story. Students enjoyed sharing their videos with family on Blackboard.

Grade 6
Language Arts
The principal works with a small reading group daily. After reading about the solar system and the planets, kids created posters and a script to create a Photo Story about the Solar System. The kids were engaged and loved the entire process from start to finish.

At Hayfield ES, a fifth grade teacher and SBTS worked together to create persuasive commercials in Movie Maker. Students worked in cooperative groups and used a classroom set of digital cameras to practice the art of video recording. After the final videos were created and downloaded to the school server by the students, the SBTS trained the class in using Movie Maker. Students successfully added a title and credits, edited the video and created separate clips with transitions and video effects, and added music from a free music production site. The videos may be posted to Blackboard so that students can access them anytime/anywhere.

Second graders at Hunt Valley are participating in Skype sessions with an elementary school in Alaska.  The Alaskan school is raising salmon and will act as experts as they answer Hunt Valley Student’s questions about the unique life cycle of Pacific Salmon runs and about life in Alaska.  Hunt Valley students will then act as experts about Washington DC and other historical attractions in our nations capital.

The hope is that a relationship will develop between our schools so that future projects on all grade levels will occur.

At Dranesville ES, upper grade students designed snow flakes in Geometer’s Sketchpad and imported them into PowerPoint. In PowerPoint, students learned how to animate the snowflakes into “falling snow.” With these animations, they added winter poetry and winter scenes drawn in Pixie. In addition, some classes are combining all of the individual slides into one “class PowerPoint” adding music and/or narration.

To help support and prepare 5th graders for the Global Awareness Project,  Colvin Run 5th graders have completed research projects on MesoAmerica using PhotoStory and are starting a WebBlender project.  As a kickoff for the project five teachers, the librarian, SBTS and GT Resource Specialist each chose a different question from the eight guiding project questions and prepared a sample GAP project.  These projects use different technology applications: Publisher, Inspiration, PhotoStory, WebBlender, and Power Point.  Students participated in a ”GAP Museum Walk”, spending a few minutes listening to a presentation for each of the eight project.  This helped jump start student thinking about their project before they choose the question and topic they will be researching.  

At Great Falls ES, teachers and students are busy using technology as a tool for learning and teaching.  Fourth grade students are using dialogue blogs in FCPS 24-7 as reading responses and they are doing current events journals where they are finding lots of articles from online kids’ newspapers.  Kindergarten students are becoming quite savvy using Pixie 2 to take a snowman adventure.  Students drew pictures of snowmen in various settings (in space, at the firestation, in the jungle, along a Native American camp) and will be working to add text and voice recordings about their snowman’s adventure.  Students will share their story in their classroom as well as on the morning announcement TV show.  Second grade students created slideshows in Pixie about the lifecycle of crickets and are working on Animal Classification movies in Photostory.

Fifth and sixth grade students at Centreville Elementary School are learning to blog!  After a lesson on blogging, students and teachers are off and running with this tool in 24/7 Learning.  Sixth grade teachers have set up different blogs for their reading groups.  Students participate in the blog by posting their own thoughts, and commenting on others.  Teachers love the fact they don’t have notebooks to collect, and are excited about the ease of grading online writing.  Students are excited, teachers are excited, what’s not to like about blogs?

There have been many things going on in the neighborhood D schools since the beginning of this year.  It is nice to be past the first month and focus on instructional best practices with technology.

Blackboard and blog implementation have been on the rise in all schools. SBTS and teachers are working to use Blackboard in an instructional way and finding ways to increase use at school and at home. Teachers are reinforcing content in many subject areas and working on writing skills through the use of the blog and discussion board.
Co-teaching with Teachers is a priority in all our schools. We are attending team meetings, co-teaching lessons, modeling lessons, meeting with students through Tech Teams and special assignments, and planning with teachers on short and long projects.

We are all involved in school planning, testing, and other school leadership roles.

Currently, our neighborhood is discussing options for a neighborhood-wide training.

For more information on any of these activities, please contact the School Bases Technology Specialists in Neighborhood D; Canterbury Woods, Daniels Run, Fairhill, Kings Glen, Kings Park, Laurel Ridge, Little Run, Mantua, Mosby Woods, Olde Creek, Ravensworth and Wakefield Forest.

As an SBTS neighborhood we have celebrated many successes this past school year both instructionally and technically. However, the main focus of our job is the impact we have on teachers and instruction. Here are some of our favorite instructional technology celebrations from the 2007-2008 school year.

• As a group we organized a mini- conference entitled “Ed Tech Expo.” Teachers from over 20 schools were invited to attend and learn new and innovative ways to infuse technology into their instruction. We had a great turn out, of both presenters and attendees. However, the real power or impact this conference had, happened not during the conference, but afterward when teachers applied what they learned there. One instance was with a second grade teacher who was introduced to a program called ”Scratch,” a free program where students can use creativity and problem solving skills to create and animate pictures and scenes.  (Learn more about scratch here http://scratch.mit.edu/.)  The teacher was so impressed she went back to her home school to share with her teammates so that they could begin using it as tool in their classroom. (Franklin Sherman)
• Essential vocabulary is an instructional focus for teachers particularly in the clusters where Marzano’s Building Background Knowledge, book had been emphasized. To promote the learning of essential vocabulary and giving the students control of their learning, Lemon Road ES began using recorders (small mp3 players) to make digital dictionaries. The students were responsible for researching the term and then creating the recording. The recordings were then put into a PowerPoint to create an index using a simple teacher created template of an image, definition of the word, use in a sentence, and the recording.  This project really helped focus on essential knowledge and brought in several learning styles for differentiating instruction.  Sally Bryan, the school SBTS, wrote a Best Buy grant and from it recieved $2000 to purchase the mp3 players.
• Over at Shrevewood ES, the teachers began to use audacity to check for fluency for their ESOL students.
• New SBTS, Carrie, used audacity and mp3 players last year in her 4th grade classroom to help differentiate lessons for students without a lot of parental support at home to help with homework not on their own grade level.  They posted recordings of the teacher or other students reading the assignments to the students. They received a grant through speech and language, to help pay for the mp3 players.

We had a great year last year, making a difference in the lives of teachers and students in FCPS. We look forward to posting many more celebrations this year too!