The second in a series of workshops from NWPM colleagues at MRA 2008, these are notes from Portland Middle School teachers Amanda and Garth Cornwell’s session on “Partnering Students, Parents, and Teachers Through Technology.”
- Begin with questions from the audience:
- How to get younger students to access technology on their own?
- How do parents react, what do they want?
- Our Hopes
- To demonstrate daily uses of technology that serve a variety of purposes
- To aid students, parents, and colleagues in realizing the technology of potential
- To equip students with the skills that they will need
- Michael Wesch vide: “A Vision of Students Today“
- Our Plan
- To share the tech tools that we use with students and parents
- To discuss why it is important to integrate technology when we feel like we are “giving up” time for content
- To discuss how flexibility is the key, because teaching with technology always yields surprises
- Students
- Shared Drive
- Create hotlists in word that students can click to for computer lab assignments
- District Digital Dropbox
- Track changes in word sometimes works with middle school students
- Wikis
- Nicenet
- Classroom discussion forums
- Good for access at home and school, because it is all online and doesn’t require a specific word processor (files lost, incompatible formats, etc)
- Watching for IM language and asking students to express themselves more clearly
- Google Docs
- Podcasting
- Buy inexpensive MP3 recorders
- Shared Drive
- Parents
- Blogs and Edline
- Lack of participation and interest in training sessions
- Considering teaming up with local libraries
- Be persistent and specific
- Teachers
- Open yourself up to learning with your students
- Our learning
- Small, simple steps can be beneficial
- Honor the time of the student, parent, or teacher coming to learn
- Listen to input from students
- Lessons and Student Work
- Book discussions