NicholeProject

This is my second year as the computer teacher at my school. I was told to follow the curriculum that was already in place and feel free to make changes as I go along. Our campus doesn't have a Tech Coordinator so I'm on my own to learn new ideas and explore with hopes that our IT department. Last year I felt very isolated in learning and stuck to the projects that were already in place that coincide with the classroom teacher's units. I was afraid to try new ideas and have them fail due to the time restrictions of each project (parents come in for celebrations and a project is presented). I would like to take this year to continue to develop my personal learning network where I can learn and gather new information to eventually develop a curriculum of my own. Make small changes that will eventually lead to a curriculum that is geared towards 21st Century learners. While researching I will create a Wiki page where I will post helpful websites, articles, blogs…etc that I can share with other faculty members. As I create projects with my students I will also post these on the wiki page that I create.

To layout my thoughts I created a concept map in Inspiration that displays all of the grades that I teach and the projects that are currently in place. Some of the units in each grade have revisions attached. These revisions are projects that I would like to create with my students in the upcoming year(s). This map is simply an outline of my thoughts and/or ideas that I will research and create lessons for in the near future. Click this link to see a snapshot of the concept map that I created. . This snapshot is of two projects that I would like to implement into second grade's computer curriculum.

I will also list a few projects that I envision for each grade below. 2nd Grade:

During their poetry study each child writes a piece of poetry and brings it to computer class. They type the poem and create a picture in //KidPix//. Each child records his or her voice recititng the poem. I then create a //PowerPoint// title page with each child’s name listed with a link to each child’s picture and poem. This project occurs at the end of the school year so the parents rarely get to see the final presentation. I would like to create this presentation using //VoiceThread// so that parents can view the poems and comment on their children’s excellent work.

3rd Grade:

Third grade studies Europe geography during the Renaissance. Each student reads a biography of a person from the Renaissance time period and writes a report about the person. I would like to introduce students to //Inspiration// to have them start to map out their thoughts in order to visually connect their thoughts from their readings to their written reports. I will also look into online tools that will help to create timelines of important dates in their person of study’s life. The tools that I would like to look into are //Dipity, Capzles,// //TimeToast…//etc.