The Last Thursday

Well, it's over. I'm sure going to miss everyone and all of the wonderful things we've learned. The last class was fun. I thought it may be a little stressful for me since I was in charge of dinner and I was the Roving Reporter, but everything went fine. It was actually probably the easiest class to be the Roving Reporter because we were paired off with a student. I didn't have to take extensive notes on how to do this or that.

After class I talked to Beth for a while about how she uses the handhelds in her class on an everyday basis. I came to the conclusion that since I'll have a substitute for my maternity leave the first 6 weeks (probably) of school, that the kids won't even use them until I get back. I debated whether or not to find a tech savvy sub or just wait. Are there any of those around anyway? I like to do things my way so I think that waiting will probably be a wise choice.

I'd really like to create a webpage for my classroom like Beth has done. I've never done that before, but hear it's quite easy. I've added that to my "To Do" list for the summer. Hopefully it'll get done!

I'm sure that I'll be in touch with you this next fall Tony, or maybe even sooner, for help on things that I've forgotten how to do and didn't take good enough notes for to look back at.

When you replace our blogs with your new class list of blogs, I plan on checking in once in a while to see if anything new has come up since our class. Try to keep on top of the newest information via your website.

Thanks for a wonderful class!
Until next time...(for my next blog I'll let you know if the babe was a boy or a girl. That won't be until at least August.)

Eleventh Thursday

Lesson plans are over and we can all breathe again! I really enjoyed listening to everyone's ideas about how to use the handhelds in a classroom. I know I'll be using some of the lessons with my kids next year.

This has been a pretty stressful week. On Monday we were told that CAT scores were back and things didn't look all that wonderful. This school is a very data driven school and so everyone knows (or is expected to know) what the scores mean. It's Thursday and we just received our individual scores. From what I looked at, I think most of my kids did an okay job. I guess I'll find out what admin has to say about them when I have my conference with them! They may think something different! From the scores, individually we have to reflect upon what we did this year, what worked, what didn't work and what we'll do differently next year. I did not use the handhelds this year as a strategy for learning; it was mostly for publishing writing. Next year, however, I plan on using the handhelds more and to use the various applications that Tony has taught us to incorporate more content learning instead of just using them as a word processor. It will be interesting to see whether my kids next year make bigger improvements from the Pre-CAT to the actual CAT, as compared to this year's kids. And if they do, I wonder how much improvement will be because of more integration of the handhelds?

Until next time...

Tenth Thursday

I've been frantically busy this week trying to get my lesson plan all figured out, as I'm sure most everyone else is doing. I decided to create an eBook as the final product of the lesson. After searching and searching for the free 30 day trial of eBook Studio and with no luck of finding it, I emailed Tony for his help. The next day he hadn't gotten back to me yet, so I decided to search again. Amazingly enough, it was right there in front of me the whole time! If it were a snake, it would've bitten me! Everything downloaded just fine and I created my eBook. There are some differences between using the Demo and using the purchased software. This is what I learned:

1. When using the purchased software, after creating your book the first step is to save it. This is where you put in a title, the author, publisher and copyright. After you save it you go to file and click make book. Well, in the Demo version, you are unable to save it. You have to go directly to make book. It will save it as a .pdb wherever you choose to save it and then when you go into the .pdb it will automatically go to install. The problem with not being able to save it to the computer is that when you get your eBook done and installed to the Handheld you would have to leave the file open in order to make any changes. If you close out the file is it only saved as a .pdb and you can't go back into a .pdb file to make changes. So...after all of the proofreading I did yesterday, my husband finds a typo when he's reading my eBook! I'd have to type everything back in and re-create the eBook if I wanted to change the typo. So unfortunately, there's a typo in my eBook.

2. Once you make the eBook and install it onto the Handheld (when using the Demo version), throughout the entire eBook it says in bold, capital letters "BUILT WITH EBOOK STUDIO DEMO". They definitely don't want you to forget that!!

3. The third thing I learned about the Demo version is that I want to purchase the real thing!

Monday night was an excellent night to use Flash Boom! I showed it to my husband and he played with it for a while. By the time I got my daughter to bed and was able to actually do Flash Boom! myself, I was so incredibly tired I couldn't stay awake between the flash and the boom.

Until next time...

Ninth Thursday

The week since our last class has gone by like a whirlwind! This week after Spring Break has been so busy! Our Technology Night is scheduled for this Thursday and getting everything ready for that has been hectic because there was no school last week. The Language Arts and Science teachers are who have to have some kind of activity planned for Tech Night. The 5th grade LA teachers decided to set up our demonstration like Ms. Sanborn at Willowdale did with her class on our Technology visit day. She had the students in groups and each group shared with visitors a specific application on the handheld. I loved visiting that! The kids were excited to share what they know and it didn't seem like a whole lot of work for the teacher. Well, come to find out on Monday afternoon, out of the three teachers that said they would recruit students to stay and demonstrate on Thursday night, I was the only one following through! There was a little bit of panic because when I asked my three classes who was planning on attending, not very many raised their hands! Wednesday by lunch time I had 6 kids committed to helping out on Thursday night and a time set up for each of them so they didn't have to stay the whole 2 hours! I let them take a handheld home and gave each of them a list of things to practice for the evening. All of what they needed to practice we have already done in class, but it's been a while ago. The kids thought they were pretty special to be able to take the handheld home! I gave each of them my phone number to call me if they had questions or the handheld was acting strangely. I didn't receive any phone calls! Now I just hope they show up tonight!

Until next time. . .

Eighth Thursday

This seems strange doing my blog the day after class. Usually I procrastinate but with OPS having Spring Break next week, I've to be on the ball because I don't have internet access at home so I have to get this done before I leave school today!

The graphic organizer show down was great. I'm glad that was part of class because it gives us exposure to more than one program. And although Idea Pad is free...I'm still sold on Inspiration! I like how simple the outline is to create. One of our 5th grade Language Arts CRT's is to create an outline using correct outline format and then creating a summary. And since we also have to include our building Extra Value Standards for technology into Language Arts, what better way to get two content standards done at once! Having the students create an outline on paper using the correct outline format is not an easy task. Inspiration does that for you! I believe it would be well worth the money spent!

I'm also very glad that we learned how to create an eBook. I started a project with my students last week using Margaret Wise-Brown's book called The Important Book. After doing a read aloud of the book, the students wrote their own important book. I am going to put those together by block and create an eBook for each block. I'm so excited to get that project done!

Quizzes in Quizzler. I took my own and got one question wrong! How bad is that? Instead of having the students do paper/pencil/overhead CAT practice, why not put it on the handheld in a Quizzler quiz? The students would be still learning the content but would be much more engaged in the process.

Until next time...

Eighth Thursday

This seems strange doing my blog the day after class. Usually I procrastinate but with OPS having Spring Break next week, I've to be on the ball because I don't have internet access at home so I have to get this done before I leave school today!

The graphic organizer show down was great. I'm glad that was part of class because it gives us exposure to more than one program. And although Idea Pad is free...I'm still sold on Inspiration! I like how simple the outline is to create. One of our 5th grade Language Arts CRT's is to create an outline using correct outline format and then creating a summary. And since we also have to include our building Extra Value Standards for technology into Language Arts, what better way to get two content standards done at once! Having the students create an outline on paper using the correct outline format is not an easy task. Inspiration does that for you! I believe it would be well worth the money spent!

I'm also very glad that we learned how to create an eBook. I started a project with my students last week using Margaret Wise-Brown's book called The Important Book. After doing a read aloud of the book, the students wrote their own important book. I am going to put those together by block and create an eBook for each block. I'm so excited to get that project done!

Quizzes in Quizzler. I took my own and got one question wrong! How bad is that? Instead of having the students do paper/pencil/overhead CAT practice, why not put it on the handheld in a Quizzler quiz? The students would be still learning the content but would be much more engaged in the process.

Until next time...

Eighth Thursday

This seems strange doing my blog the day after class. Usually I procrastinate but with OPS having Spring Break next week, I've to be on the ball because I don't have internet access at home so I have to get this done before I leave school today!

The graphic organizer show down was great. I'm glad that was part of class because it gives us exposure to more than one program. And although Idea Pad is free...I'm still sold on Inspiration! I like how simple the outline is to create. One of our 5th grade Language Arts CRT's is to create an outline using correct outline format and then creating a summary. And since we also have to include our building Extra Value Standards for technology into Language Arts, what better way to get two content standards done at once! Having the students create an outline on paper using the correct outline format is not an easy task. Inspiration does that for you! I believe it would be well worth the money spent!

I'm also very glad that we learned how to create an eBook. I started a project with my students last week using Margaret Wise-Brown's book called The Important Book. After doing a read aloud of the book, the students wrote their own important book. I am going to put those together by block and create an eBook for each block. I'm so excited to get that project done!

Quizzes in Quizzler. I took my own and got one question wrong! How bad is that? Instead of having the students do paper/pencil/overhead CAT practice, why not put it on the handheld in a Quizzler quiz? The students would be still learning the content but would be much more engaged in the process.

Until next time...

Seventh Thursday

What a week! I'm officially addicted to a new game that I downloaded last Thursday. The program is called Patience. It contains A LOT of different card games. My favorite so far is called Canfield. It's kind of like Solitaire.

This week at school is our Exploratory Week. We do one at the end of every quarter. Each teacher has developed a week long lesson plan about the topic they choose trying to incorporate some of the grade level Extra Value Standards into their unit. An example of some of the Exploratory units are: Help the Homeless, Power Point, What's in the News?, Rocket Science, and 50 Nifty United States. The students then choose their first three choices of where they would like to go for that week. The teachers try to assign the student their first choice, but depending on class size, that doesn't always happen. I co-teach 50 Nifty United States. The last two Exploratory weeks we've had the students research a certain state on the computer and then their final project is creating a poster about that state and presenting it orally. This time we decided to be brave and have the students create a Power Point presentation instead of a poster. Most of the students were quite Power Point literate. That was nice. The part that is the most time consuming on the teachers part is going back in to fix all of their conventions mistakes. We have spent most of the day fixing mistakes. I'm glad tomorrow is Friday and the last day of Exploratory!

We did incorporate the use of the handhelds into our unit just a bit. As a filler the students played Spell It. The clues for each state are its abbreviation and nickname. They had fun with that.

I'm so glad that we are learning how to create an eBook. I did a lesson with my kids a week ago using The Important Book and we are going to turn their important writing into an eBook. I'm excited to learn that!

Until next time. . .

Sixth Thursday

Well...it's been a long time since our last class, I'm trying to remember what we did. Oh yes! The "Sketchy Show Down". How fun was that? I thought mine was pretty well done and then Erika shared hers! Great job Erika!

What I want to know is why it is so much more difficult to install applications from a Mac than it is from a Gateway? I recently received my new handhelds. I forgot how time consuming it was to open those human-proof plastic cases that the new handhelds come in! I charged them all and went to install Documents onto the handheld from the Mac computer and could not figure it out! So I switched to the Gateway. All I had to do on the Gateway was perform a hotsync, enter a new name, choose that I wanted to have Documents installed, perform another hotsync and ta-da! It was there!

I just got done reading Tony's blog about the Easter Eggs. I can't wait to try it out!

Another thing from Tony's blog...I was at a conference about a month ago where one of the activities was reading a list of color words that were written a different color. I'm anxious to re-learn how to download programs to the handheld because I really want to try that new program called Reflax.

Until next time...