Relax. Young and rambunctious as the students may be, Forest Lake has not had one laptop dropped or broken beyond repair. Williams suggests you teach them basic care: Wear the camera strap around your wrist; tuck the computer cables under the table; use protective cases when possible. Beyond that, make the kids feel like these valuable tools are theirs, and chances are they'll want to take care of them.
Maintain the same rigor as in pen-and-paper projects.
Start with the standards. Use technology only when it enhances your content -- not the other way around. It's less effective if you use technology for technology's sake.
Connect with peers far away. Penpal programs have come a long way, baby. With webcams and video conferences, kids can actually see and talk to their peers in real time -- and that's exciting. Williams recommends you prepare before the meet-up: study the culture, brainstorm questions, discuss Internet safety, and learn email etiquette.
Give kids a real audience. Technology opens up new ways for kids to show their work to the world (which, no disrespect intended, can be more motivating than just handing it in to a teacher). At Forest Lake, fifth graders studying erosion took photographs of patches of their playground that were washing away, then sent the snaps to the school district office with suggestions on how to correct the problem. Second graders videotaped themselves reviewing books they'd read, then voted on the best recordings to show to kindergarteners down the hall.
Put the tools in kids' hands.
assessments
Technology Integration for Elementary Schools
quick
Portability is key
It's important that students learn to safely explore the Web
This explains why how to incorporate technology into your classroom. Each technological tool is and how it can be used is explained throughout the reading. Also, discusses keeping balance in the classroom between pen and paper and technology.
Ways to integrate technology into an elementary classroom. Helpful tips on ways to use the technology but a reminder not to rely on technology to much where it will ruin a lesson due to a malfunction.
This site has a list of reasons of how technology would be helpful in the classrooms. it is short and to the point so it will be easy to read. It will not get boring because of its layout.
This is pretty nifty if you're trying to figure out good ways to incorporate technology into the classroom without making the lesson all about the technology.
This website is called the TEC Center, which stands for "technology in early childhood". It is a website that is useful for teachers because it shows how teachers can thoughtfully and appropriately use technology in the classroom.
I think that this website would be a useful technology resource for teaching because it talks about how to create different websites and use different technology tools.
Vocabulix provides numerous free tools for learning Spanish, German, or English.
Currently there are nearly 200 languages supported on Forvo
The purpose of CAPL is to provide images that demonstrate the true meaning and intention of the words in a language
images for teaching and learning English
The Story Place
digital stories in English and Spanish for students of pre-school age through elementary school.
Verbs Online provides foreign language students with a good selection of activities for practicing verb conjugations.
WordSteps is a resource for learning the vocabulary of your choice of nine languages
create your own dictionary.
Kindersay is designed for use by pre-K students.
There are more than 500 activities that students can use
ESL Basics is a site that provides short video vocabulary lessons for beginning and advanced ESL students.
Make Beliefs is a free comic strip creation tool that provides students with a variety of templates, characters, and prompts for building their own comic strips.
write their comic strip's dialogue in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portugese, or Latin.
This website focuses on 10 different websites that can be used to help teach emergent bilinguals the English language. The links are provided to help aid in both language skills and content skills by introducing child friendly ways to learn.
This website gives daily tips for teachers to become 'tech savvy'. The posts range from educational gaming websites to new technology and how it an most effectively be used in the classroom.
This site would be helpful because it give a brief description on what special education teachers do, what their work environment is, pay, job outlook, and similar occupations if you may not be interested in special education. This is very helpful for people that might be interested in this field of work because it gives information necessary to be in this field.
This website gives a brief description of what Special Education teachers do, what the median pay is according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The website shows the work environment, how to become a special education teachers along with similar occupations with a special education degree.
I think this website would be useful for teachers for many reasons. One reason I think would be useful for teachers is that it includes ideas of lesson plans, and other options of things you can use to lead a class. Another reason why I think this website would be helpful for teachers is that there is a "teacher store" where you can probably buy things that would be useful for your classroom!
This webpage has links that take you to places that provide an example to utilize in the classroom. It also helps with ideas for projects to do in the classroom.
I fee that this would be a great website for teachers to use because they can use it for their students. They can use many books, activities and art ideas.
I think this site would be useful to teachers because it gives several links to tips about technology in the classroom and also information about ipad's.
This website is a very good starting page for looking into different topics on technology in the classroom. When I found this I really thought I could see myself using this because it does have so many different topics that I can find information on. As for all teachers it gives good advise on how to use such methods of technology.
This site would be helpful in the classroom because it navigates us to several other technology related articles. It talks about using everything ranging from using iPads in the classroom all the way to how studying has impacted studying in the classroom.
This site would be useful for teachers because it lets us how schools are becoming more technology based. Also, it shows us how technology is helping out high school teachers. Finally, it shows us how technology in the classroom makes things faster and easier.
This site is helpful as it has multiple links about technology in the classroom. Teachers can come here when they need help with technology or when they would like to learn something new.
The average classroom has at least one desk top computer, a class set of laptops, iPads are appearing, not to mention that it is standard to have a SmartBoard in classes including Pre-Kindergarten.
Parents are worried about safety. Internet has the potential to expose children and youth to inappropriate information. One click of the mouse and children are on websites that have questionable content and may be unsuitable for their age.
This is a good point regarding technology in classrooms. This is true, one wrong click on a website and it can lead to inappropriate material for these young children.
This is a very interesting website. It provides good points to why technology might not be a good thing to have in classrooms nowadays, or not to have technology for the really young children (such as the Pre-K students)
Create a classroom Twitter account (http://twitter.com) and invite parents to follow the class on Twitter.
This keeps parents updated with exactly what is happening in your classroom throughout the school day. When students get home parents can ask about specific activities that happened throughout the school day instead of getting the standard “nothing” answer when they ask what they did that day.
Here are 10 technology tips for new teachers. Every teacher has trouble memorizing everything that is new but this website makes it easy to remember what to do
Modern technologies
are very powerful because they rely on one of the most powerful genetic
biases we do have — the preference for visually presented information.
The human brain has a tremendous bias for visually presented information.
Television, movies, videos, and most computer programs are very visually
oriented and therefore attract and maintain the attention of young children.
Children need real-life
experiences with real people to truly benefit from available technologies.
Technologies should be used to enhance curriculum and experiences for
children. Children have to have an integrated and well-balanced set of
experiences to help them grow into capable adults that can handle social-emotional
interactions as well as develop their intellectual abilities.
Unfortunately, technology
is often used to replace social situations and I would rather see it used
to enhance human interactions. And I think that can happen.
This would be a good website for technology in a classroom because it states how you can integrate technology in the classroom and how to create a website.
This website gives valid reasons as to why teachers should use technology in early childhood classrooms. It does give the negative effects of technology on young children but unlike television and video games, computers being used in the classroom are active and not passive which stimulates children to learn.
Talks about how visually presented information such as, television, movies, videos, and most computer programs are able to maintain and attract the attention of children.
This site describes if technology should be used in the early childhood classrooms. And if they should what types of technologies should be used and what shouldn't.
"Children need real-life experiences with real people to truly benefit from available technologies. Technologies should be used to enhance curriculum and experiences for children. Children have to have an integrated and well-balanced set of experiences to help them grow into capable adults that can handle social-emotional interactions as well as develop their intellectual abilities."
While lectures and lessons can be informative and even “edutaining” when delivered with passion and good materials by knowledgeable experts, sadly many traditional lectures and lessons are boring, and even worse often ineffective.
Even if you don’t have computers or tablets available in your classroom, the fact that an increasing number of High School and college students have smartphones is making it easier than ever to leverage technology to create engaging, active lessons students enjoy working on. For younger grades, if you don’t have access to devices with Web access, perhaps you can access a computer lab by request, or use devices in your library.
1. Incorporate Student Input & Gather Feedback
are two of many applications that make it quick and easy to create simple polls that can let you gather feedback from students – determine if they are struggling with a topic, if they know the correct answers to questions you ask, and so on. They can often participate in these polls using a smartphone.
You can also gather feedback by creating a “back channel” using Twitter.
2. Gamify It
Leveraging gaming mechanics can make learning more fun is probably easier than you think. For example, any time you bring competition or levels of achievement to a classroom exercise, you’re gamifying your classroom.
Here’s a variety of resources and ideas for using gaming in the classroom:
3. Let Students Create
4. Get Interactive
Here’s a few tools and ideas to consider.
Online Interactive White Boards
Bounceapp
Interactive apps that work with Smartphones
5. Have Students Collaborate
Here are a number of tools and techniques for classroom collaborations.
6. Project Based Learning
7. Simulations
Economics
Marketing
Medical:
Business
8. Bring in a Guest or Two
With the power of video conferencing apps like Skype, Google Hangout, Facetime, and others, our ability to connect with people all across the world has never been better or less costly. Teachers have been using Skype and similar tools to being guest lecturers, experts, students, and others into the classroom for years
This website focuses on specific ideas of what you can do with technology and give ideas on how to keep students involved. I really liked their ideas about how to get feedback from students in a non-traditional way.