Techno Tots

Technology Infused in Pre-Kindergarten
By Lori Madison

The Pre-Kindergarten curriculum is based on ten centers. Students are required to have two hours of center time per day. Centers allow students to have ownership of their education by freely exploring various centers. The belief is that students gravitate to the center that they need the most help in. The teacher and the paraprofessional monitor the centers and take anecdotal notes, documenting the usage of centers by every student. Centers are a means of providing education “without tears”. For example, a teacher may have a student that is struggling in the area of phonological awareness, but this child may enjoy construction. A teacher may ask the student what he or she is building, in the art center the child can draw a picture of their creation, in small groups the teacher can take dictation describing the picture, thereby improving reading fluency.
This being said, computers have become an invaluable Pre-Kindergarten learning center. Computers are also the most popular learning center among the students. My students are very adept at navigating the internet. I limit the websites to PBS kids, Starfall, or sesamestreet.com. Through, my personal technological evolution I decided to create a blog, very late in the school year, so the information is limited. The listening center is another technological center, students may listen to alphafriends CD’s or use the Leap Frog learning program.
Next year, I hope to create a classroom blog as a means of communication for parents, teachers, students and staff. Since, I have been introduced to blogspot.com. Blogging is not a daunting as I thought. Pre-Kindergarten is the first school experience for most of my students. It is imperative that I am in constant communication with my parents, concerned about their first time students and alleviating the anxiety that comes with that, for both parent and child. Blogging is an excellent source of communication to keep students, teachers and staff abreast of the current events in the classroom.

Gloging With the Gifted

The Gifted Child and Technology


By Lori Madison



Not so easy my friend ….when your teacher is not that technologically savvy. Nurturing giftedness in all of my students is a primary goal in my classroom. Traditionally, students are encouraged to use the computer for at least thirty minutes per day. The websites routinely used in my class are: starfall.com, sesametreet.com or pbs.kids.com.
In an effort to get away from the drudgery of continuously using these websites; to provide an increased challenge to my gifted students; Glogster.com would be an excellent website to use.
Alliteration is a crucial learning skill in the pre-kindergarten curriculum. Students are required to be reading ready at the completion of the Pre-Kindergarten year. Alliteration is a fundamental skill in achieving reading readiness.
Alliteration stories, are an excellent method for increasing vocabulary, reading fluency and phonological awareness in pre-kindergarten students. In large group instruction, creating alliteration stories is a fun and engaging activity.
Combining alliteration stories with Glogster is an excellent way of merging technology with literacy. Students would be given a “letter of the week”, for example, letter “Gg” . Using this particular letter would create an alliteration poster; using pictures that begin with letter “Gg”.
All of my students are very adept at navigating the internet. It seems in this age of advanced technology the “fearlessness” of childhood allows them more freedom to explore the computer’s endless amenities. But, websites such as Glogster helps build a bridge between the core curriculum courses such as Reading, Writing, and Math, yet allowing learning to be extended a step further using technological creativity.

{Check how other teachers use Glogster in their classrooms.}

Mentors have become a commodity that is more sought after than gold!

WANTED: MENTORS –well educated, background checked and fingered printed, and ready to help the next... generation!

By Kira Dolley

With the social move to have schools become more of a community, and not isolated to a school parent, teacher, student (PTSA organizations) many business and non-parents (single folks) are deciding to opt out of helping community schools—but lately times could be changing.
It seems to be good that single civic minded adults, and business are taking a vested interest in our school---good…no, great for the common good of us all!

This may have become the case in your community…your next-door neighbor barely knows who you are,

the only time you look out of your window is to (not neighborhood watch) watch what neighbor who is making ALL THAT NOISE!,

your child may catch the bus but you may wait at the bus stop in the car with your child (YOU DON’T KNOW WHO THOSE OTHER KIDS ARE!)…

Yes we all heard this before or said it a time a two.

(AND IF YOU HAVEN’T weeeeeell GOOD FOR YOU live in the country and you are exempt from this blog post!)

For most of us, (whether suburban or urban) our neighborhoods have become a place of the “seldom to never” block parties and more “I don’t know who the heck they are’s”. It is a common phenomenon that is happening around the United States, communities are no longer are interconnected. But times are a changing, and many people believe it could be for the best! With the occurrence of the evil recession, a good point has reared its beautiful head. People have to rely on one another to get by. With this purpose comes the fact that we have to talk to our neighbors. This is great! And what makes it greater is that inside these newly talking communities are schools. Schools with the need of great mentors. But before you run off screaming for the hills saying… I don’t want a stranger with my child, there is nothing wrong with my child to need a mentor, or I am mentor for them they don’t need another adult in their life---STOP!

Schools are forming what many people liken mentoring to being a little kid life coach, tutors, and/or muses to little apprentices. Whatever you want to liken them to, they are what every school in the United States has called “needed”. Even Talented and Gifted students (one most people traditionally don’t consider in need of any help) need mentors. According to Donna Y. Ford, of Ohio State University, “Use mentorships and role models to show students that they can succeed.” This allows students to see people beyond their parents as people doing what is right, civic minded, community conscience.

John F. Feldhusen of Purdue University had this to say about mentors:

“Mentorships afford opportunities for students to learn about careers that match their own talent profiles, to begin to emulate the professional behaviors that characterize the occupations to which they aspire, to develop the motivation for appropriate educational services for targeted professional fields, and to set goals for high-level achievement in those fields. Pleiss and Feldhusen (1995) reported that without mentors who model high-level achievement in fields related to youth’s specific talents, many youth simply take on popular athletic or entertainment figures as their vicarious mentors. Mentors must be carefully selected and trained to model appropriate high-level achievements in youth academic talent domains.”

Before one goes to saying that they don’t have time or that they can’t provide the support. There is always that little time on such technologies as Skype and podcasting. Mentors can not only volunteer their time to the school with one particular student but also work with a classroom teacher. It is the occupation that many students and teachers are interested about. The community has a wealth of knowledge and all many schools want to do is tap into that knowledge.
There are many organizations that you can go to volunteer your time and knowledge as a mentor: Big Brother Big Sisters is the major organization but you can also go to Youth Mentoring Connection or Mentors.net for other options.

OMG! Text /Internet Slang: Foe of the English Language

BY
Lisa Taylor

As many of you already know, we are in a technological era that is moving ever so fast. It seems like everything is being done by technology now and it seems like conventional things have gone by the waste side. It seems like all the students in my fifth grade class have cell phones and are able to use computers with great mastery. But one thing that has came with these devices is this new way of communicating called Texting/Internet Slang or as I (and other educators I know) call it “The Enemy of the English Language”.
As I began the year, I walked into a fifth grade class where about seventy five percent of the students could barely format a strong paragraph and I could not understand their written thoughts, due to what I have called “creative spelling”. Perplexed at the situation that my students were having trouble spelling and reading simple words such as “there” and “because” and I knew that the teachers that taught them previously did not just let these spelling errors go unnoticed, I knew I had to find the root to this evil.
Then I began to really analyze their work and was seeing that some of the texting/internet slang that I was using to communicate with my own friends showing up in their writing. Then I kindly asked one my students to see their cell phone and saw that they were able to carry on an entire conversation without using any conventional English in the conversation, and the funny thing is that it made sense to them. I saw many OMGs, LOLs, and L8Rs and some that I did not even know. But the students were perfectly comfortable with it and it was this type of slang that was showing up in their writing. Furthermore, it was hard for them to peer edit each other’s writing because they don’t know what things were actually spelled the right way.
With this technological era, students have gained faster ways to do things but have sacrificed the ability to communicate with written and orally language in a formal situation. Is the computer helping the problem or making a big problem worse? Besides I have never seen text/ internet slang on any standardized tests. I know that OMG means “oh my god” and LOL means “laugh out loud” but I also know certain spelling rules like “i before e except after c” and that when writing for school I should use “you” instead of “u” (like it is used in text messages). That’s simply because I was taught how to use these things in writing before learning this "techy" language and now it’s the other way around. Society wants children to learn how to use a computer and other electronic devices before they learn how to read and write their names but never take into account the impact later or what is going to happen when the computer crashes. The children won't be able to survive! I think that writing will never go out of “style” and good writing will be needed later when technology is just a thing of the past!




http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Internet_slang - List of Text/Internet Slang

WATCHOUT! TECHNOLOGY IS GOING TO SAVE US ALL!!!

Motivation In the African American Talented and Gifted Community—Where did it go and can technology increase lack thereof?

By Kira Dolley

Motivation is a serious issue in all the classes that I teach. As a teacher of a full range of students in all categories (and most times students in dual categories): IEP, TAG, ESOL, and regular education; motivation seems to be the main issue in my classroom. The true question is how do I get my students to want to learn? It seems to me that over the last 40 years learning and the thirst for educating the African American community seemed to have waned. History tells us that there were surges of motivation in education in the African American community. The Reconstruction Era, Harlem Renaissance, Brown Vs. The Board of Education, Civil Rights Movement all seem to have huge social movements on African American society and the motivation to want to learn and be educated. Today it seems as if the drive is lost in African American students of primary-secondary. If the drive is not shown in regular education students, I find it twice as disheartening to see it not shown in students that have proven to be able to perform off the charts as advanced--on IQ and standardize test (TAG students). It has me shouting “EVEN our Advanced students Don’t even want to LEARN—WHAT hope do we have for tomorrow”! But as I am noticing that through history it was social implications that brought about the motivation to want to be educated. Maybe the fact that America is in the middle of a social technology age, the African American community can jump on the bandwagon to make our youth want to show up to school to learn. Technology seems to answer all their questions “WHY DO I NEED TO KNOW THIS? and “HOW WILL THIS HELP ME WHEN I GET OLDER?”. Although technology won’t change WHAT their learning, it will change how it is delivered. I believe it is the delivery that might spark renaissances in motivating the youth in education. Multiplication will always be the same and Reading and Science will still have the same key figures, but if a teacher gets trained to show students that they can manipulate technology in a way to make it seem easier, exciting, or their own, it might bring about motivating the youth to perform above and beyond the bar that we currently have set using “NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND” and AYP.  Using technology in the classroom makes students computer literate and literacy using computers crosses over into literacy in Reading, knowledge gained in Math, Science, Social Studies and the Arts. We don’t have to just study Mars out of a textbook, but now a teacher can bring Mars into a student's palms (using the student own cell phones that they have with them) or i-phone/i-pod/i-pad. Smartboards and Interwrite boards allow the teacher to connect their lessons with the touch of a button, and interact with the world using Skype, podcasting, and Google maps! School does not have to be boring, but it certainly needs to change from the way we have done it---simply put—it’s so that our children are motivated to come to school! BUT LETS GET REAL!

There may be too many obstacles to overcome. The answer may be technology but the problem with implementing technology is that it is not accessible to a majority of African Americans. The stupefying thought is that instead of opening more churches, liquor stores, hair stores, fast food joints, we should be focusing on more libraries, internet cafes, and computer stores. The Digital Divide is real! What is the digital divide you say [read about the digital divide here] Research has shown that for the African American community the digital divide is main roadblock to educating the youth with technology. The lack of access to the technology (in homes, schools, libraries etc.) seems to be more challenging than almost any other adversity we have come across. And this is mainly because this roadblock is invisible to the masses. As many people like to say: “The Revolution will not be Televised”---well this is a revolution that may not come simply because we don’t have adequate technology to broadcast any message. More times than not---it takes the change of tomorrow to bring about the great strides for today. 

Technological Parent Involvement

By Lisa Taylor

A part of a village that is very vital to the academic success of students are parents. Parents are the first person a child sees when they come into the world and children rely on them for guidance and wisdom. Children often mimic their parents behavior and share the same values that their parents have. This also holds true when it comes to education.


Research has shown that students whose parents are positively involved in their education are more likely to show more interest in school, learn more, have improved standardarized test scores, and have higher rates of attendance. Furthermore, children have fewer rates of suspension, fewer instances of violent behavior, and decreased use of drugs and alcohol. However, the problem is not what happens once parents are involved, the problems stems from actually getting parents involved and having them as equal members of the school community.


I teach in school where the economic status of the kids is fairly low. My parents want to be involved more but they have other needs to take care of. Most parents are working long hours (if not more than one job) to maintain a household. Many are single parents who don't have enough time in the day to take care of day to day business let alone make time to come up to school on a regular basis. As a person living in these economic times I understand but as a teacher it is very frustrating because when parents are involved in tends to make the teacher's job just a little bit easier.


So what can be done so parents can become more involved?


Blogging.

This past year I had a parent workshop where only a few parents showed but those that did participate actually were able to talk with other parents and have a free forum to share ideas. Even though the discussion was rich, I was wondering what could I do so more parents could access the information. Then I learned about blogging while taking a technology class.



Blogging allows information, ideas, and comments to be shared by many. Blogging lets parents to read over the information and freely talk to me and other parents about the information. It allows parents to utilize the information on their time. They can share their insights with one another and pose questions to other parents without having to come into the classroom. Teachers and parents can participate in parent information sessions from the privacy of their own computer. Although not as personal, the information will be able to reach more parents and may help those parents who are not able to come to the school to receive valuable information.

This upcoming school year I definitely plan to use blogging to bring more parents in the classroom and hopefully it will help parents to be more involved. Of course, I do expect challenges and some resistance but hope that the successes make the challenges seem minor. Blogging will hopefully become a new and improved way to communicate with my parents.