Letters and sounds objective

The Standard we chose to find technology for was Kindergarten Language Arts Standard 4, Objective 1a: Upper and lower case letters. We found a wonderful website for helping children with their upper and lowercase letters called "Starfall.com". The URL is http://www.starfall.com/n/level-k/index/load.htm?f. This is an interactive website where children can choose a letter, hear how it sounds, and see a word that starts with that letter.
Pedagogy: have each child open Starfall.com, click on the ABC's, find the letters B, G, and S, and listen to the sound. Then find one item that starts with that sound. After that have child make those letter sounds using clay, write the sounds on a sheet of paper, and draw a picture of an object that makes that sound.
For our Math Kindergarten Standard, we chose Standard 2, Objective 2a: Identify and describe simple repeating patterns with numbers and shapes. Pedagogy: Have children go to the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives and play the game where they have to chose a colored circle to complete a pattern. THe URL is: http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/topic_t_1.html. Then I would have the children chose different colored clay, make little circle balls of different colors and create their own pattern.

Using digital cameras and other technology in the classroom

This week in class, we had a small group of ECE students talking about how to use technology appropriately in the Early Childhood Classroom. We came up with a lot of great ideas that I want to share here:
1. Technology should be interactive. Young children learn better when they are not just passive watchers.
2. Technology should be used regularly for real tasks.
3. Computers are intrinsically motivating for young students.
4. Computers enhance children's self-concept and improves their attitudes about learning.
5. Technology gives students more learning choices.
6. Computer use increases co-operation among students.
7. Use of speech synthesizers like in "Kidsperation" gives them both visual and audio re-inforcement.
8. Technology enlarges words for those who struggle with vision issues.
9. We should use technologies that allow students to explore not be task focused.
10. Some things a child could do with technology can be found on the early connections web site: www.netc.org/earlyconnections/. For example: Make and display a graph. Explore with digital tools like a digital microscope or camera. Tell a story in pictures and words with art software, record a book, etc. Put together a digital record of a special activity, or make an electronic slideshow of a class book. Share and document learning with digital photos of skits, projects geometric patterns etc. Take family portraits of a school's open house and send them home.
What if every Child had a lap top? (OLPC) We had a chance to learn about the XO, a new kind of computer designed for children to use. It was invented by a man from MIT named Negraponte. It's cost is about $200 and when you buy one, you also purchase one for a child in a developing country like Cambodia. It was fun to have Dr. Graham's son help us get around on this new computer. I enjoyed reading about some of the activities available for children on this computer in the "OLPC Help Topics" article on Moodle. Kids don't need teachers to show them how to use these computers. They are very intuitive. However, I think a teacher could give them assignments that would enrich their use of the computer.
After our XO experience we did a project using a digital camera. We discussed creative ways we could use digital cameras. Some ideas were:
1. Take pictures of students at the beginning and at the end of the year to show how they have changed.
2. Take nature walks and record observations by taking pictures.
3. Drawings made from pictures.
4. Take pictures for a class story.
5. Take pictures of children doing a class project and make into a power point.
6. Take pictures of a sequence of events (the growth of a plant from seed)
7. Role-play a story , take pictures, and make a class book.
8. Take pictures of shapes
Our group chose Kindergarten content, Standard 1, Objective 3a, which is about identifying and expressing ideas and information about feelings in a variety of ways. We decided to take pictures of people expressing different emotions and then use these pictures to help students be able to recognize emotion in people. The pictures could be of different classmates, and then we would have a discussion about emotion. Perhaps we could draw pictures of these different emotions and label them in another activity. Some of the emotions we recorded were: Excitement (Prof. Graham), Anger, Sadness, and happiness (Prof. Graham's son). See the pictures at the beginning of this post.
What was the TPACK (technology, pedagogy, content, and knowledge) used in this activity? The technology was the digital camera. The Pedagogy was demonstration and practice plus experiential learning by students taking pictures themselves. The content was identifying and expressing emotion from the Kindergarten Core, Standard 1, Objective 3a. The knowledge gained by the students was: gaining greater understanding of emotions, gaining skill in digital camera useage, and learning new vocabulary words about emotion.

technology inventory

This week I had the opportunity of visiting a first grade classroom at Brookside Elementary in Springville, Utah. The teacher had a number of technologies available to the students which I will elaborate on. The list starts with:

1. TV/VCR/DVD combo
2. Overhead projector with pull down white screen
3. 1 computer for the teacher
4. 2 computers for students with a self-monitoring Waterford Education tutoring program
5. A digital camera
6. A sound system (microphone around teachers' neck) and speakers throughout the classroom (this was to help her not have to speak so loud, and also for a hearing impaired student to be able to hear more clearly
7. The teacher has created a classroom blog to share with other students and parents
8. A listening center with DVD players and headphones and DVD's of high quality music

The teacher had enough of a wish list (5 more digital cameras, A computer projector, a lap top) that she was in the process of writing a grant to obtain those items. She uses technology every morning by pulling "the good morning song" off of the computer (it was bookmarked for easy access). A lot of her art work was gathered online. I asked her if she might be interested in learning about other online resources that I could find out from my technology class. She was very interested and I want to make her a list of websites, downloads and software that could be helpful to her. She told me she would love to have a Smartboard. She let me browse through her blog and it was well organized with great pictures of the children doing class projects and working together.

The teacher mentioned that the students have a computer lab that they go to once or twice a week. I did not have time to visit the lab to see what kind of computers they had or what programs they had acquired. I suggested that she take a look at the "Storyboard" program we used in our class to see if it might be useful to her. I believe she is a very capable and opened minded teacher where technology is concerned and would benefit from a bit of guidance in how technology resources can readily connect to curriculum objectives.