Homework Website

Our grade-level teams have been asked to create and maintain websites to communicate homework to parents. We've been looking into a few and will pick soon. It will be different from when I wrote mine from scratch in HTML a few years ago, but I hope that it will be as helpful for the parents and students. In second grade we have a fairly rigid homework schedule, so I don't know that it will be as useful as it was for me in the past. Plus, I created a listserv to contact parents about upcoming events, which I have found to be super useful. Maybe a 2nd grade blog that parents could subscribe to might be useful? Any ideas?

Wiki

I am struggling with the benefit of the wiki in kindergarten. I think back to the video we saw in which people were able to manipulate things for a camping trip...and it doesn't seem to be what I am using it for. It's more of a "portfolio" at this point. Thoughts??

reflection

The STEP training has been a wonderful experience for Rockledge. For me, I am really excited about learning about blogs. As an educational administrator, at times I am so busy that I don't take time to experience all that is going on in our world with technology. During the election I took note of how many people referred to blogs but I didn't really get it. Once I learned the idea behind it, I realized this election was really won because of the way people were communicating. That is a powerful change.

I am now on a committee for the Summer Leadership Institute and came up with the idea of sending 30 second videos to principals to entice them to enter a talent show. Prior to participating in the STEP Grant, I would never have thought of such an effective way to compel people to participate.

The STEP Grant, over the past two years has been instrumental in our school's growth in the use of technology every day. Those teachers that were not able to be a part want desperately to be part of it. Those involved really do teach others. We just don't have the time we wish we had to bring everyone along as fast as 1. they want to and 2. the kids deserve for us to teach everyone. Teaching everyone remains one of our goals at Rockledge. We can't thank the STEP Staff enough for all they have done for Rockledge. We will never be the same! We are so grateful.

end of year awards

We want to do something different for our Awards Assembly this year. We want EVERY child to feel a part of it so every child will be recognized with a tangible piece of something that makes us all a whole. Technology will play a big role in this...certificates, presentations, etc.

How great we are!

Parents who enjoy working in schools are a true gift. They understand that it is like a family, some days are great and others are hectic. At Rockledge we are so fortunate. We also have many great days.

Finale!!!

I am happy to be creating this final post. I did realize that I need to go back and find some of my original blogs...oops! So, I will be spending the next bit of time doing this. In the meantime...as a reflection, I can honestly say that the use of the digital camera and photostories has been the biggest asset this year! We have created several photostories, and voicethreads! It is exciting, and I am glad it is all coming to good use!!

The End

Now, we are finalizing all the information for the STEP walk. It is so exciting! I am looking forward to seeing the other teams. It will be exciting to see everyone's projects and look at their boards. I am so lucky to be in STEP!! I can't wait until next year!!

Bye, Bye, Blog! 6-2-09

Well, this puts me at blog entry #24at last count. I am crossing my fingers that my Wiki, Classroom Wiki, and Podcasting pages meet all of the requirements for CPD credit. This has been such a valuable professional experience for me this year. I learned a great deal about the newest advancements in web technology. My one wish would be to have our own equipment to use. I’ve had to share with the STEP Team member from last year who had a baby and had to drop out for STEP II. It is difficult to do at times when you are in the middle of a project and the other person needs the digital camera. Overall, I am very thankful to be able to be a part of the team and enjoy sharing all we have learned with our staff. I look forward to attending the Gallery Walk and seeing the accomplishments of the other teams. It should be a great opportunity to share and grow even more. Thanks so much to John, Tia, and Ronlyn. They have been a terrific support team!

Last Minute Tech Stress! 6-1-09

Stress was unavoidable this past week for many reasons. One reason was because I had been very concerned that I did not have enough blog entries to meet the requirements for CPD credits. I emailed John and Ronlyn for clarification. Ronlyn sent me what she had of my entries from the Ektron blog, but a few did not appear to be my entries. They were mixed with two other schools. Does this mean mine are lost in the Big Blue Blog in the sky? I am hoping that I have enough and have met all of the requirements. It is really frustrating to know you put forth effort in writing something meaningful that just disappeared. I am now adding more posts to our blog to make up for what is still missing. I sincerely apologize for bombarding the blog wall!

MB to the Rescue! 6-1-09

Many thanks to Mary Beth today. She was able to figure out how to add separate users to my VoiceThread profile without having to create an account for each student. This was wonderful because it protected their anonymity and made it much easier to have several students comment by taking turns on the same computer. I had already ended up creating a new Google account and profile for them to use before she showed me, but this still worked out well when adding multiple users on the new profile. Now the kids can go on and access it as they please. I just need to write out a clear set of directions for them in case they forget. It really ended up being so simple. It’s amazing what you can learn from one another when you work as a part of a team.

Hard Work Pays Off! 6-1-09

Today, the kids finally had a chance to go on and comment on each other’s landform projects on our VoiceThread. They were really excited to be able to hear someone else say something nice about the hard work and effort they put into their projects. We also shared our VoiceThread through our class website and a mass email sent to the parents. Many sent a positive response back to us which I shared with the class. They were very proud! What a worthwhile experience for us all!!!

VoiceThread Victory! 5-28-09

The children had the chance to watch my instructional VoiceThread, How to Write A Book Review, this week. Their reaction made me feel sooooo great. They thought it was hysterical! I was so glad that they were engaged throughout the PowerPoint/VoiceThread presentation. Several shared that they found it so much easier to follow the steps through this presentation rather than reading the written steps on the screen as before. The increased motivation due to the use of technology was evident once again.

Computer Woes....

This week has been the week of trying to get the machines to work. My classroom is equipped with some ancient computers that in of themselves work fine…add a MIDI board and well it is more than either can handle. They shut down completely if the midi board it turned on.

Blogging!

Blogging is cool! Wish I could really have others respond to my very opinionated statements that ramble on and on. Education gives one so much to discuss.

All done ... Thanks!

I think I'm all done with my STEP projects. I just wanted to say thanks for the opportunity to participate this year. IT's been great to have time set aside to learn about new (at least to me) technologies that I can use to enhance my teaching. I look forward to using what I've learned even more next year and (hopefully!) being involved in STEP again.

Seriously????

Okay, I do talk too much. I just went through and counted how many blogs I had done and skimmed by fellow Rapping Roadrunners blogs. What I found out was: I was not alone in some of my frustrations and joys (Voice Thread); I talk too much on my blogs; and I only had 23 blogs! So here is #24!

Winding Up 31 May 2009

This is my last blog. (I think.) Today is the day I try to complete everything before the due date of 2 June 2009. I am unsure if I have 24 blogs, but I am pretty sure I did blog once a week.

As I am writing this, I am listening to the John Fishback Voice Thread. I did not find how to upload the Voice Thread on anything. I tried doing it through Google Documents. Like other things I tried using this service, my stuff is too big to use it. I had to edit down the two Power Points until there was under 10 MB to embed it into the Advanced Power Point. The final Power Point models don't do all the cool tricks I have in the originals, like voices without the little yellow speakers appearing, the music underneath the entire slide show, and the moving video. I may have to look into Google Videos, which appears at the top of a page too, but I can not use because I do not have administrative rights.

Any way back to embedding widgets, I did get both the John Fishback and the Abraham Lincoln pieces embedded after some problems with the copy/paste action. The Fishback one did not show up at first, but I kept trying. Lincoln was quick and done. They work and that is a good thing.

Widget wise I have embedded widgets in the Voice Thread/Podcast thing and the Advanced Power Point. They work. The ones I thought I embedded into the Classroom Wiki, just seem to be embedded links to other websites. I see the little screen on the edit page and the web address on the embedding page, but it does not work on the wiki page other than when I click on the link. I don't know how to get the URL to break down into code. So I will have the links as they are.

Thing I learned trying to get this final wiki project up are:
1) If you have already made your links for your pages on your wiki, don't click DELETE because you think that you are suppose to have the word VOICE THREAD on the link and not PODCAST. I could see the PODCAST page when I went to the Manage my wiki page, but I could not get it back where it needed to be.
2) Those headers from Flaming Text always seem to work on some computers and not all. The lovely red x appears and when clicked on, does nothing. Go back to the Flaming Text wed site and do you titles again. This time save them as picture files and copy/paste them. I had the same problem last year and perhaps if I ever need to use them again, I will remember this fact.
3) I make things that are too big to go on any of these sites. Google Docs couldn't hold my material. I had to edit down stuff to just give a taste. The Fischback material was edited by the students, so wasn't going to mess with their project, but it was too long. (Sort of like this blog...)
4) The students really liked to do the Voice Thread voice work. They liked hearing themselves. They were self critical and wanted perfection. One student who was negative when asked to write things, I had write a comment on his worksheet. He did find one thing he liked. I called him in with his special ed teacher. He watched other students do the process first. I showed him how the recording happened and demonstrated the use of the curser to draw on the image. He improvised his way through the one he had selected. Then he asked to go through the entire slide show so he could comment on other things. He sounded quite knowledgable. His problem was that he didn't like the sound of his own voice.
5) Keep playing with things and perhaps it will work. Trying to do some of these projects was sure frustrating...even if I think I followed directions...even if someone showed me, I forgot...but sometimes just taking a hunch and playing, I did figure stuff out by myself.
6) I am more competent and confident using technology. I will be using it more over the summer and throughout the next school year. I will be having the students using it more as well.

Logo

Our STEP Team is very dedicated to this project. We are very proud that our LOGO was selected and each time I see it, I really do smile. It reminds me what we can produce at this school.

almost the end...

We are getting so close to the end, and I am thankful to just be putting on finishing touches!! I hope that we can continue to have the STEP program year after year....because I feel like the resources we have been given have been invaluable to our team. We have had many opportunities to share what we have learned with the staff, and it has been great!!

Kindergarten orientation

We created a photostory explaining the typical day of a kindergartner to play at our kindergarten orientation! It was awesome, and I was glad to now have that as a resource that we can use year after year! The parents loved it, and the kids enjoy using the technology like the digital camera and the headset.

Kindergarten Play pictures

We are making a Kindergarten Photostory for the parents to watch before our BIG Kindergarten Play. It will show all the children in pictures, and the children will say what they liked about Kindergarten. It is GREAT!!!

Plugging Away

I think I can JUST see the light at the end of the tunnel. I have been working very hard to get all of my work for STEP done. All of my projects are finished (I think), I'm down to the reflecting point. I'm really looking forward to the gallery walk and getting more great ideas from the participants from other scholl (oh, and sharing what I did!).

Tricky Wiki...5-22-09

So far, the students and I have learned a great deal about and have enjoyed working with our Classroom Wiki. They have been able to try out the discussion boards, and have been pleased to receive commentary on their reviews. Time is always a challenge for us, but we hope to continue our reviews and discussions throughout the summer. I have planned out a Summer Book Buzz extension for those interested. We will be reading three books: The Westing Game, Holes, and Frindle for 3 weeks each and meeting to discuss the books at the end of each week. I spent some time creating a Google Calendar as one of my widgets on our Wiki that charted the chapters to be read for each week throughout the summer. To my disappointment, when I embedded the calendar, it appears blank on the Wiki. I have not been able to figure out why just yet, but am hoping for an answer from Google or Wikispaces soon. Either way, we have found the entire project to be both motivational and fun!

Children

Kids really do come first with us. They can get upset, make poor choices, say the wrong things and someone at our school will come to their rescue. I notice that they smile a lot and even skip down the hallways - a good sign.

Kindergarten Orientation

Our team is creating an orientation photostory with the children telling the upcoming parents about their day. It is about 15 minutes long, and hopefully relieve some stress from parents.

Only Two more Blogs!!! 22 May

Yahoo! I only have to write two more blogs. This one will concentrate on frustrations and triumphs of doing things with digital images, still and moving.

FRIDAY: For a report for the Maryland State Arts Council, I decided to do a video of things that we did this year at Rockledge. I opened Movie Maker. I selected the clips to use. I added still pictures in it. When I checked to see how it looked, the dreaded red X's appeared. Oh yeah, I said to myself, I need backup on the desktop to keep working because I was going on and off CD's. I dragged the images off. I needed to finish it at home. I put copied all of the images from the desk top onto my thumbdrive, copied the Movie file, and took it home to work on the school's laptop.

I opened up the file on the thumbdrive and got the red X's again! I dragged all of the copied files off the thumdrive and put them on the laptop's desktop. I looked again at the movie, the video images were there, but the still images had the red X's. I gave up and decided to make a photo story.

I spent two hours making this really nice flow of images. I pulled from many CD's. I noticed that sometimes I couldn't make certain images appear on the viewing screen. They just stayed on the storyboard, but I wasn't too worried. It was a photo story. I knew I had planned well. I had the images selected already and listed on papers. Nothing was going to have a red X. Nothing had to be saved on the desktop. After two hours of working on it, THE STORY REFUSED TO STAY!!!! I went to bed and dreamed of how I longed for one of the new little HP computers instead of the Dell that had little or no space on it.

SATURDAY: I had to do a Power Point for a presentation I was doing with another person on Thursday. I found a design layout I liked. I added a little annimation as the photos flew into place. It took an hour and looked good. I had also decided to do the Arts report as a Power Point. I spent the next two hours adding text and photos to a show that (at that time) was 92 slides long. It looked good and told the story of the Arts events at our school.

MONDAY: I knew I had images on the school computer that I had not put on a CD, so I added more. I showed it to a few people and they liked it. I decided to add music. I selected Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue because it was long and could cover the time of the Power Point. I did not know how to do it and neither did others that I talked to. I decided to ask Jim Kerns, our instrumental music instructor because he had just done it for a PP presentation that he had worked on. I walked around the lake by my house and heard voices---no not that kind---voices of students talking about the arts. I wanted to add them to the first slide.

TUESDAY: I added a slide to preview the introduction of the slide show. I recorded the PK and two girls saying lines that were written on the screen. I had never recorded for a PP before so this was cool. Jim helped after school. I ripped the Gershwin piece to the Windows Media player. I knew enough to get that as a file ahead of time. Jim helped get the timing of the first slide going correctly. We played with this slide for a good 45 minutes before I came up with the idea to get rid of the text when the words were spoken. The presentation was now FABULOUS! The music timed perfectly with the images. I added the forgotten band and chorus concert and there was now 114 slides. I felt proud of the final piece.

WEDNSDAY: I completed work on the Movie Maker file. I deleted some of the still images. I added titles, transitions, and a little music to open and close the piece. I had trouble editing the moving images from the timeline. There was only one, so I kept it on there. Oh well. I copied the final draft to a CD. I was okay with the product, but it wasn't as well done and cool as the Power Point. I added the movie to the CD with the Power Point and put it with the material for the Maryland State Arts Council.

I am going to buy a small laptop.

Frogs and Horses and Chickens - OH MY!

We are done with our Animal Report VoiceThread! Hooray! After lots of hemming and hawing about how I would find the quiet time to get the kids on, I finally decided to just go for it. I had a few kids come in at recess and they learned how to use the program. Then they served as peer coaches for the other kids during "silent" reading time. It wasn't perfect, but I do think I was able to manage it reasonably well. I also think that if I use VoiceThread on a more regular basis next year, kids will get the level of noise that is needed in order for it to sound good.

My Voice on VoiceThread 5-15-09

This is the first experience that I have had working with VoiceThread. It was really user-friendly. Taking the pictures and organizing the presentation was a breeze. Our biggest challenge was finding the time for each student to record their voice in a quiet setting. Students loved the fact that they could preview what they sounded like before saving. Needless to say, there were MANY redos. They were constantly remarking that they didn't sound like themselves or didn't like the way they sounded saying a certain word. It was actually a good tool to use for them to monitor their fluency while reading their information sheets and 5 interesting facts. The students were quick to notice how often they paused while reading, got "stuck" on a word, or repeated themselves. They most enjoyed viewing the final product and were very excited to share the VoiceThread with their parents.As for my experience with creating the VoiceThread for instructional use, I must admit it was pretty frustrating at times. Uploading the PowerPoint was a snap, but when I viewed it, the transfer process appeared to distort some of my text and speech bubbles. After fixing this, I began recording the narrative portion. This was more complicated than when the children used it. Often, it would not record my voice, or it would appear to be recording and then halfway through playback, my voice would fade off. I couldn't figure out if I was saying too much or if there was just a glitch in the VoiceThread site that day. In the end, I managed to get all I wanted to say for each slide recorded. It turned out to be a pretty cute presentation. I'm looking forward to seeing how the students like it.

pre-k

Our PreK class is the perfect example of the power of modeling. They can actually mimic the morning routine of their teacher independently. They get up in front of their classmates with no inhibitions. What happens as the years go by?

DONE!!!

I am so excited. Pending final approval, I think I am finished with my portfolio/wiki!! I am hoping that it is OK. I am very proud of the hard work that the students put forth with such a technologically advanced project!

I feel now I have a bit of breathing room, and can go back and make edits as necessary!

04/30/09

This week I looked on line about web bender and pixie. The two programs do not look that expensive. I asked our technology person and she did not think anyone in our building is currently using the programs, but I think it will be great to use!!! We are lucky and the PTA lets the teachers make small purchases for the year. I think I am going to puchase the programs!!

I think I am done.

May 15, 2009

I think I have all the componets necessary for my project. I really like the voicethread activity. The children loved using the microphone headset. I now feel like I have accomplished a goal for the Step program. It feels so good.

Yes I Can!

Yes I Can!

Yes, I can upload the mini-Power Points I created for the John Fishback Voicethread project. It was much easier and faster than I thought it was going to be. Thanks to all who said make it small. It took about five minutes total. Awesome!

Yes, I can figure out how to put the old blogs that Ronlyn sent into the Blogger site. I couldn't edit it the way she sent it. So, I in my new tech knowledge, copied and pasted it onto a Word Perfect page. TaaDaaa! Then I cut and pasted the posts onto the Blogger site. One that appeared in the middle of the blog Ronlyn sent seemed way out of sequence because it said Orientation Blog. I know I did one that day, but it doesn't look like something I would write. I added a note to say that. I also posted dates. This one has no date.

Yes, I can write a grant for the Maryland Arts Council in an hour and get it in before time. Yahoo!

Yes, I can do a series of videos for teachers and parents to see students' performances as they do shadow puppets. I will download it later and create a movie with it...Lots of photos and other things to download and create something with. I hope to take a lot of time tomorrow to do it.

Fluency

I am really liking the fluency practice that my kids are getting as they use VoiceThread. Being able to hear their comments is so powerful. I've started having kids read their reports and they are very picky about how it sounds. They are picking up on things that I have been trying to get them to hear for a while. I really look forward to using VoiceThread more regularly next year, both for formal products and in more informal ways.

In the Blink of an Eye…5-8-09

I was really disappointed to find out that Google has abandoned Notebook which I was really getting used to using during our research project I found it to be incredibly useful and had even gotten the students started on taking notes and remembering sites. I think this is my biggest fear in technology. When we are putting so much hard work into the documents, presentations, and websites that we are housing on the Web, it is disheartening to think that, at any moment, the “forces that be” who are hosting our information can just wipe it all away without notice. Is it worth putting in the effort to use these tools only to have them gone in the blink of an eye???It makes me think of many of these WEB 2.0 sites that we are spending so much time developing projects with and on. I would really like to be able to save some of our hard work, but cannot figure out how this is possible. The kids would also like copies of their final products such as their Voice Thread projects. Is there any solution to this dilemma???

Falling into place May 8

Well, I am getting a little closer to understanding how to get my things up on Voice Thread. I created a Power Point with the images selected by Mr. Purdy's 5th grade students to tell the story of John Fishback's visit. I thought one way to manage the voices and what would be said was to run off the presentation and leave the lines for notes. My plan was to show the Power Point and have them write notes next to the pictures they wanted to comment on. Only positive comments would be allowed. This was one way I could get 30 students to comment on 25 photos. I thought I could get it all done on Friday of this week.

HA! Silly me! I forgot that they had MSA Science testing during my media time with them. I also found that when I tried to upload this really large file, it did nothing on Voice Thread's side of things. I had compressed the file and I had compressed the photos. John had earlier suggested that I shrink the photos so I went through and shrunk them all. When I looked at what the product was on the Power Point, the photo was quite small in the space it was given on the slide. Forget that. So I asked Susan and Wendy what they did and they said that they broke their slide show up into smaller chunks with new names and sent it through. It took time, but they did it.

So I tried several times to do that, I couldn't figure out how to do that. Joie showed me how to copy the slides and now it sits on this computer in nine separate pieces waiting to be uploaded onto Voice Thread.

As to the plan about using the Power Point and students writing notes...there was some grumbling..."Do we have to?" "I can't think of anything to say." "I have nothing to say. I hated it all."...Yeah, positive thinking. I showed them the presentation. I showed them what a Voice Thread was. I gave out the papers. One wrote "good" on a few slides. Others wrote a lot. I am waiting until after Camp Schmidt next week to have them record anything. I will go through the papers and select who comments on what picture. Wish me luck on the enthusiasm bit...

Learning walks

Our Learning Walks have been well received by the staff. Most fun has been when teachers realize it really is about student learning and not a focus on their teaching.

Kidspiration

Today the class created a Kidspiration about What I learned in Kindergarten. The children brainstormed and we created a web. The children did write the response for the writing prompt. It was amazing all of the well written responses! The children were able to use the web to organize their thoughts, spell correctly, and create a complete project! It was wonderful!!

Training session

The last training session was very valuable. This year, I feel as though we have been provided a lot more time to get the project done, and for that I am thankful! Having the option of doing 2 sections instead of 3 has been a lifesaver. I am looking forward to seeing all of the different projects at the gallery walk in June!

Feliz Cinco de Mayo

My teacher-created VoiceThread is done! Yay! It was really a lot of fun putting it together. I think it has the potential to give some good extra practice to some of the kids in my class who are a little fuzzy on how to count parts of solid figures. Now, I just have to find the time to work it into our schedule!

Catching Up...5-1-09

This week, I attended a make-up work session at Seabrook ES for the one I had to miss due to my mom’s hospitalization. At first, I thought I didn’t really “need” the work session because I felt that I had a good start on my projects and an understanding of what I had to do. Come to find out, I have quite a way to go. I learned that the widgets on our Wiki are supposed to be different types. I had a few TeacherTube videos embedded; including one that is a PowerPoint in VoiceThread type format on different genres in reading. Now, I have to decide how to include two more different ones. My only concern is finding something to put up that is applicable to the page and doesn’t appear “forced” or “meaningless”. I have been struggling to find the time to have the students post more of their reviews. They are slow typers, and have been losing computer time as a whole class due to the 5th graders taking the Science MSA. I may have to intervene and type in some of the remaining ones myself. I want to have this done ASAP so that they can go on and post some discussion thread comments. This is going to be another obstacle in terms of time. Is there ever enough???
One good thing has happened at the beginning of this week. Ann Starr, our technology teacher, was able to help me locate and download a 30-day trial version of the program, WS FTP Pro, which allows me to upload the school website onto our county server. This buys me time for the next month, but not the rest of the school year. Since we just explained to parents in the last newsletter that the site would be down for the remainder of the year, my principal and I felt it would be better not to announce that some updates will be made for the next two weeks. It appears now you must download the software each year for a fee. A decision is going to have to be made whether to purchase the software program. This decision is not to be mine.

POL

The Principles of Learning are a direct correlation to the Dimensions of Learning. Why in education does it take so long to institutionalize a concept? It will be great to see how technology plays a role in this.

VoiceThread/Kidspiration

I decided to use Kidspiration as a part of my student-created VoiceThread. I'm going to have the students web their ideas from their animal reports. Our technology support person is going to be integral to this project. She is going to have the kids do that portion in the lab during their computer time which will really lighten the load for me.

Questions??

I am interested in knowing from other schools who have daily access to smart boards (or similar technology) how often it is REALLY used? I have a feeling I would use it daily, for everything as I do the document camera and visualizer. But, is it really user friendly? What are some of the difficulties with it?

I find that I am using the document camera, visualizer and digital camera on a daily/weekly basis. I believe I would also use the other technology daily/weekly as well. Just curious!

Clogging and blogging 30 April

This week I have been so stuffly, congestested, headachy, tired, and miserable, I have not been able to fully explore the fine art of playing with anything techology related. Blinding headaches and not being able to even type a complete sentence without making a spelling error have been the joys of my last two weeks. I'd like to thank the trees. I did use the Weather Channel's allergy alert to find out that I'm not out of the woods yet. This has also made life difficult to try to concentrate to plan and work on the STEP stuff. Hopefully, I will unclog all of my congestions (in the brain, nose, and chest) and be back on track.

MICCA Tuesday Posted 26 April

I went to three sessions at MICCA on Tuesday and bought two books (that I'll probably look at once knowing me). I also talked to some vendors. I still want one of the little laptops. They can hold more and do more than my school laptop and have web cameras built in. But I digress...

The first workshop I went to was Pixie 2 for Comic Strips, Tent Folds, and Trading Cards. I was drawn to this one because of the comic book idea. The presenters, a computer teacher from Baltimore County and a rep from Tech4Learning took turns explaining different ways the Pixie software was used from lessons for Kindergarten to Grade 5. Each one had a differnt Pixie application and an assessment of what was learned built into the activity. Pixie appeals to me more than Kidspiration because it seems more user friendly. Plus, it has links to online materials not found on the CD-ROM.

I next went to the Voicethread presentation done by a technology specialist from Cecil County. She's only been using it for a year. I was hoping to get a clearer picture of the capabilities of Voicethread, since I really couldn't pay attention when we were trained (nor could I hear if I recorded anything when we practiced that part at school). There was one activity that she showed us where a teacher found many triangle images and posted them. It was called a triangel scavenger hunt and the students identified the type of triange it was by commenting vocally or using text. She also talked about this being a Widget. One thing I got out of this was that a person only used 3 images with a longer voiceover and it was powerful . I'm thinking that my Abe Lincoln thing doesn't have to be super long. I can do the first four vidoes and a copy of primary source visual material and get the same impact. It will fit better on the site. John had suggested I do it in chunks anyway, so this is a good solution.

The last one I went to was presented by two Virginia teachers. They were comparing 20th century teachers and learners with 21st century teachers and learners. They aslo thought about classroom jobs. Many classrooms have paper passers, board washers, etc. Why not give the students jobs where they are becoming a different kind of learning community? New job one, SCRIBE. This student takes notes for the week for the class. They can be written long hand, put on graphic organizers, photographed, scanned, or put directly on the computer. All students will get access to the information by the end of the week. The notes need to be communicated clearl.
Job 2, RESEARCHER. This person looks up anything intersting that was brought up in class, finds answers to questions posted for the week, and shares it with the class and opens it up for discussion. TUTORIAL DESIGNER is Job 3. This person teaches other students "How To" do something. There could be a video of how to make a bar graph or step by step directions with photos of how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The point is, it is a peer teaching a peer. The benifits to this kind of learning leads to many higher order thinking skills because the person teaching, must create a lesson for a peer to understand. They are analyzing and sythesizing the material. I found this workshop to be a real eye opener.

I think that we a STEP team and Kim and Maddie, should find time over the next two weeks to sit down after school one day and just talk about the sessions we went to and what we liked or didn't like. We are in this to share what we learned.

Kids!! :)

Kids really make you laugh. A group of first graders remember that ONE day last year I told them a story in the lunchroom. So now they ask me everyday if I am going to tell them a story. A photostory may be in order!!

I MICCA-ED…DID U? 4-24-09

This week, our STEP II Team had a wonderful professional development opportunity. We were able to attend two days of the MICCA conference in Baltimore. Overall, I learned a great deal. Just when you think you are up-to-date with the latest in technology, you turn around and are left in its tracks once again. Two sessions that I most enjoyed were presented by Selena Ward, technology integration teacher, at Benjamin Tasker Middle School. She is an official Google Certified Teacher who gave two information-packed sessions on WEB 2.0 and Google Tools. One general understanding I gained the most clarification on was the difference between WEB 1.0 and WEB 2.0. It was fairly simple after all. The main difference was in the amount of interaction a person has with the Internet and how this has evolved. The wealth of valuable info. she shared is vast. I still need much time to further explore it in its entirety. I am hoping to do so a little at a time, and probably in great depth over the summer. I think Mary Beth’s suggestion to get together as a team to share and collaborate is terrific. Our only obstacle is finding a common time.

MICCA

I really enjoyed my MICCA experience this year. It was really cool to see some others' projects using the tools we've been working with (like VoiceThread). One group used it to post videos of kids acting out vocabulary words. Then their peers commented with a sentence using that word. I also learned about Blabberize.com which I can't wait to use with my kids. It is right up the second grade alley!

MICCA Conference

MICCA conference was excellent. I am really interested in web blender and pixie. I want to research the two programs. Presenters made word cards, math cards, sequence cards, student created projects. It was a fun and easy program. I also loved the United Streaming session. The guys helped me fix a United Streaming issue and gave a good presentation on things you can do with United Streaming. I also love the little FLIP camcorders that presenters used with the students. What a great way to document the childrens projects and their growth throughout the year. The conference was great!

MICCA

This week we were fortunate to attend MICCA. Not only were the vendors great, but we were able to view many presentations that helped to clarify and extend things we are doing in STEP. I liked seeing the new forms of technology that are available, and only wish that in the future of STEP, we are able to acquire some of that as well (hint, hint,).

We saw a great presentation by United Streaming. They were able to fix some technological issues on site for us, and we got some great ideas. I enjoyed seeing some other presentations on voicethreads too.

Visualizer

Teachers are working to create checklists that give clear expectations for quality work. I can also hear them using many more advancing as opposed to assessing questions when teaching math. The teac hers are posting these expectations on the visualizer! Awesome!

Presentations

Our math EC does a great job presenting concepts incorporating the IFL strategies. Teaching how to teach procedures rather than leading students to the answer is becoming clearer. Our staff definitely uses technology on a daily basis!

Major Meltdown...4-17-09

This has been a tremendously stressful week. On top of having to miss our STEP work session due to a setback in my mother’s battle with colon cancer, the computer housing the school website virtually melted!!! Ahhhhh!!! Luckily, I have learned from the past mistake of not backing up my documents and such. I do have the most recent copy of the website created with Microsoft FrontPage. The problem is that the program, WS FTP Pro, which allows me to upload the site onto our county server “went down with the ship”. This computer was the only one in the school that had the program on it. This basically means I am unable to make any updates to our site until I find a way to get the program installed on another PC. One option is to convert the entire site using a program that the county is wanting us to switch over to so we are all standardized. It is called Ektron. The training I have had with it did not warm me up to it much more than how I felt about it going in. I suppose I’m acting like a seasoned teacher, resisting change in the curriculum because it is out of her comfort zone. That thing is, Ektron is really not very user-friendly. Also, it doesn’t allow you the creativity that using Microsoft FrontPage does. There is also the time factor. We are nearing the end of the school year and doing a major conversion such as this would be very time-consuming. Luckily, since we are close to the end of the year, our principal was more understanding about our inability to keep parents and the community informed through our site. I am really hoping to find a way to maintain the site as I have been, but am anticipating I will have to give in and conform to the county request in the near future. :(

Yay for a Work Day

Today's work day was very helpful. I really need about a work WEEK to get done with everything, but it was nice to have the chance to sit with the team and John and get some things accomplished. I am all set up now to get my kids more actively involved in the projects that I have been creating and that's really exciting. I am really looking forward to attending MICCA next week and getting some great ideas. I also think that June 10th is going to be a lot of fun.

Voice Threading

I took pictures of the book I wanted to read on Voice thread. I was able to download the pictures on the voice thread site. I actually made comments on voice thread. It was amazing! It was a GREAT accomplishment!! I loved the headset microphone! It worked wonderfully!!! I would use this again. I think the children will love using this tool!!

success

I was having trouble with my podcasting. I couldn't upload anything at all. I emailed for help and was in the process of receiving that help when suddenly I had someone else come in and see what I was doing wrong. (Thanks, Rena!) It magically started working!!! I was relieved and happy! When it all starts coming together, I feel so much better! I am looking forward to the work session so I can be a bit more complete!!!

Blog Worries April 3

I have tried to post my blog, (that okay, I just wrote.) I put it in editing mode to change the date of the post and I can't figure out how to publish it. When I looked at the list of all of the posts, how come mine all have an edit box and delete at the side? WHAT AM I DOING WRONGGGGG???
I thought I had how to blog correctly, but obviously, I am missing information when I take these trainings. Could it be when I have duty and am outside when all is explained? I don't want to lose the blogs after I have spent time thinking about them and working on them.
Technology takes time for me to understand and to figure out how to work it successfully. Luckily, I am in the STEP program. Perhaps I can get the HELLLP I need to feel better about this and wikis.

Spring Break Learning April 13

Over Spring Break, I had the priveledge to attend a two and a half day workshop at the Library of Congress where we use Abraham Lincoln's artifacts and things from his lifetime to learn how to utilize using primary sources. We began with a tour of the exhibit about Lincoln. As I walked, I saw some ways that I could use some of the source documents, maps, and photographs for my podcast/voicethread thing about Lincoln. We partnered up and had to do a "box activity." You answered questions about the exhibit using a box with questions on all sides and two inside. You wrote and drew on the box. This idea was hatched because the clipboards and notepads LOC workers were seeing were cumbersome. The box we used fit easily in our hands as we did our work.

We did found poetry using documents by and about Lincoln. Here we looked at http://www.wordle.net/. A document, the Gettysburg Address was copied into Wordle. The words used over and over were larger than the other. You could also make it color or arrange it in other ways. Very cool for teaching main idea.

We also looked at maps in a different way and sheet music from the day also. Very interesting and I wish I had time to share it with the staff. Our last task was to go to the comuter lab and work on a power point slide that linked primary sources found in LOC. Then we were to post it on http://www.drop.io/ . This site can hold up to 100MB of stuff. It is free and lasts a year from its last viewing. This is excellent information for us at STEP in my opinion. Last year, I could not post all of my stuff for my final evaluation for STEP because of not enough room. Drop.io seems like a good solution for that.

strategies that work

Another teaching strategy that sounds so easy but really is not is, not giving any indication in your response that a student’s response is wrong or right. Otherwise, the thinking gets cut off.

Happy Vacation!

Hope everyone is enjoying their time off from school. I've had a really restful, if not super productive break so far. Today is my day to try to get more of a move on with some of my STEP projects. I'm looking forward to experimenting with my new headsets and updating my wiki.

kindergarten

It seems that most educators really want to do a lot of talking. That is at all levels. Today I observed in kindergarten, 5 year olds taking control of their own learning. They could explain and ask away. We need to stop talking so much. The kidspiration tool they use is incredible...and they are able to use it successfully!!

Technology is Special! To Special Education that is…4-3-09

Over Spring Break, I came to a realization or two concerning the wonders of technology. They were on both a personal and professional level.
Last week, I had lunch with my best friend from Elementary School who I had not seen in about 10 years. In that time, she has had two children, the eldest of which was born weighing a little over a pound. They were told not to expect Taylor to walk, nor talk if she made it at all. Miraculously, 9 years later, after numerous surgeries and therapy, she is an active third grade student in a regular education classroom in Anne Arundel County. Taylor does receive special education services and a number of accommodations and modifications that make it possible for her to be included in a class with regular education students. What really made me start thinking about how this all relates to technology was when she told me that Taylor qualifies for the use of a personal laptop that she carries between home and school. She said that without this, Taylor would be lost. She explained how Taylor is able to access programs she uses at school when at home allowing her to have extra practice and exposure to the material in order to help her keep up with her peers. She also went on to share how motivated Taylor is to get her assignments done. I began thinking about how wondrous it is that through technology, so many students with disabilities are able to speak and be heard just as their classmates are, and how they are able to reach their highest potential which may have never even been known without the use of laptops, headsets, and hearing aids in addition to so many other technological marvels. My question lies in the difference the access to these types of technologies such as laptops would make in the lives of every student. I know there are school out there that offer this – maybe not on a take home basis, but at least in the daily classroom. In terms of motivation, if this became the norm, would students soon become less enamored with their use and just as lackluster in completing assignments with technology as they are with a pencil? Something to think about…
Another realization I came to this week concerning the wonder of technologies is also on a personal and professional level. I know that social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook have been on the front burner for many reasons lately. First, as everyone praised them for their ability to connect people and reconnect people with their past in a way like never before. I cannot tell you how many people who have been tremendous influences, dear friends, and valued colleagues that I had let slip away as the daily grind of life took over that I have found or who have found me through these types of sites. People who I thought to be miles and miles away who turned out to be just around the corner; including my very best friend from elementary school. Now, these sites are on the burner for a very different reason. This time, it's for taking over people’s lives, at times destroying them, and many times, becoming an addiction. While I do reward myself with time on Facebook as I complete less desirable tasks, and I was not one who chose to give it up for the 40 days of Lent, I certainly do not think of myself as a social networking addict. Still, I went ahead and read up on an article a fellow Facebooker shared just to be sure. I’d like to share it with you as well:
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/04/23/ep.facebook.addict/
There’s also:
http://blog.guruofnew.com/featured-home/seven-signs-you-may-be-ready-for-a-social-media-detox
And let’s not forget to read about this: http://www.imagolady.com/Paula_Pile/A_Temptress_in_the_Computer.html
If these catch your interest, be sure to take the Facebook Compulsion Inventory:
http://www.imagolady.com/Paula_Pile/A_Temptress_in_the_Computer/Facebook%20Inventory%20Test.pdf
I scored a 44…Yikes! A little closer to being excessive than I would like…How about you???

YEAH TIME TO WORK..

Now that spring break is upon us I think we can all have a uniform sigh of relief as we hae some unstructured work time to get some things done. I know that I will. I hope we all have wonderfully restful time together with our families. See you all in a week or so!

Wiki Wonders 2 April

I have a small core of students who are coming to the Wiki regularly to post comments about Black Eyed Susan books that they have read. I still can't seem to get them signed in correctly. They are all in under my name, even though I have added some to the Wiki with their own sign ins. I am looking over their shoulders as they write the comments. I have helped more than one student write a complete sentence, spell words correctly, and use capitals where needed. I read the comment right then with the child. I have only commented on one comment myself in agreement with the writer. I don't want to influence students with my opinions about the books that they vote on. The Black Eyed Susan award is voted on by the students, not by me. So, for now, I guess I must walk a fine line. I also wonder about the poor book that has no comment. Should I try and get some folks to comment on those also?

April Fools!

Is this day as fun for everyone else as it is for elementary school teachers? :)

I've been thinking a lot about what projects I want to do with VoiceThread. I'm thinking I might want to pull in Social Studies in some way since I'm feeling as though it's getting really short-changed recently. I'm really looking forward to next week when I can carve out a bit of uninterrupted time to do some thinking and working on these projects. I'll keep you posted on how it goes!

is tech helping or hurting us?

One of the topics on my mind of late is: Is all this technology in education ultimately helping or hurting us? While I am aware of its benefits, what are the things we as educator are no longer doing for the benefit of children in order to make way for technological inclusion?

What to do...

The work goes slowly as far as the discussion boards are concerned. Even the voice threading is going slowly but that may be a reflection of the cirucumstances of my schedule. I have too much to do and apparently not enough time right now to dedicate to being in my room so kids and work, but then when I am available they are in a core subject and I feel that taking them out of core subjects is not in keeping with good education...any suggestions for solutions?

feedback

Feedback is a powerful tool. It needs to specific and meaningful. Just writing good job on a students’ paper is meaningless. Letting them know that using descriptive words in their writing lets gives the reader a change to really understand the meaning.

MSA Madness and Book Review Blues…3-27-09

With all the madness of MSA, it seems like everything in both school and home life has been put on hold. How is it that these assessments manage to take over and control so much? The power they have is truly amazing no matter how much we try to avoid it. This week, our first official book reviews were due for our class wiki. The quality of what I received varied from stellar to stinky with a little of everything else in between. Even after modeling how to write one several times and viewing a number of examples online, there appear to be some major areas of need. The biggest gap is evident in the amount of content given in the story elements section. Students are either giving away the ending or not writing enough to hook the interest of their readers. We’ve decided to pair up students who wrote engaging and thorough reviews with those who need some extra assistance. These students will share their reviews aloud with one another and hold peer review discussions. We are hoping that the students will realize on their own that their reviews are missing some critical elements in order to be effective. I am considering doing my own voice thread on how to do a book review step-by-step. I think I may be a bit confused on exactly what we have to do. I’ll have to go back and revisit our list of requirements to be sure I am on the right track!

Frustration

After 20 minutes of sitting here being ready to blog...I am finally online. I could not figure out my sign-in to save my life!!! But...now, I am thoroughly confused as to what I will be doing from here on out.

We have finally finished the pictures. Now we have started putting our PowerPoint together for the students to use as their book. We are going to thread this into the podcasting somehow...although I am just not there yet. We don't have the equipment we need. I am finding that completing the wiki portion of this project is difficult with kindergarten. Is it meaningful for them? Really, I am doing most of the work of putting it together...while they give me the ideas and I input the information. The PowerPoint is off to a nice start. I look forward to having that done, and posting their work to the wiki for all to see.

The podcasting will be next. Hopefully we will be able to do that before spring break.

Time

I'm finding it a little difficult fitting in our STEP projects with the rest of what needs to get done here at school (forget about home!). I'm really enjoying it and learning a lot. but time is hard commodity to come by. I want to be sure that I meet all of the requirements, but more importantly, put some of this new knowledge to authentic use. I know that it will happen, but I'm feeling a little bit stressed about it all right now. Anyone have any suggestions?

Blogging

I am finding it difficult to blog. It took a while to find the new post for the blog site. I noticed that I am missing dates on some of my posts and can not figure out how to edit the post. I met with my peers about how to edit. They are having trouble getting in the blog space and even posting. I am sure it will get easier the more we blog.
I am excited about the podcasting. We are going to have so much fun with the podacasting. I am so excited that someone is going to show me how to edit my blogging!!!

Kidspiration

I enjoy using kidspiration...and the kids do too! They have been using it to write what they like about each other. It has been a great tool to increase writing.

Voice Threading...

Voice Threading…what an interesting concept. Though this opens great many things for all of us again I am troubled with authentic application. Is all this technology really helping us instruct better, or is it hurting us?

Blogging Blues

Are these blogs really necessary. I am not a blogger. The last few weeks has shown this to be true.

Choices

I had a very interesting conversation with our tech support person this week about choices. She has a speech that she's going to email me about this and I'm looking forward to seeing it. Apparently it's all about how the more choices we are given, the more difficult it is for us to make choices. We are paralyzed by the fear that we might make the wrong choice or that a better choice is out there, just waiting for us to find it (often using technology). I can see lots of connections to this idea, both in my personal and professional life.

I also made a connection between this and a conversation I had this week with one of our regular substitutes. She is a retired teacher. She commented on how it seems that with all of the new technology applications that are being thrust upon us as educators to make our life easier, nothing is being taken away. She says that she thinks our job is harder now than it ever has been. This is a sentiment that I have heard from other retired teachers as well. I definitely agree that if we are going to have all of these programs etc. put in place to make our lives "easier," then we need to find ways to eliminate or integrate some of the other tasks that we are holding onto. Otherwise, this profession will be impossible to manage very soon. I don't think that we are given/have the time to deeply consider how to determine which of the multitude of CHOICES that we have to use with students and for management are the best suited to our line of work. I also don't think (sorry) that this kind of thinking is necessarily being done the way it needs to higher up on the food chain where these decisions are mostly being made. What results for many teachers is a frustration at trying to find ways to manage the CHOICES that are made for us regarding technology. This frustration and a lack of time results in too many teachers not being able to really consider (or find) which tools (like podcasting, wikis etc.) might be the right CHOICE for our students. When I saw all the cool things that could be done on voicethread (which I had never even heard of) this situation was only highlighted for me.

I guess this post also reflects my feeling lately that I've been on a treadmill that I can't turn off! With all of the requirements placed on us (God bless you guys who have MSA too), I feel like I'm missing out on golden opportunities for my students because I don't have the chance to consider the CHOICES that are out there.

Speaking of Technology…3-20-09

This past week, I went out and purchased a headset with microphone to begin podcasting with the kids. Haven’t tried it out yet, but am planning on playing around with it over the next couple of days. The kids are really excited to start posting some of their book reviews to our wiki; I’ve got quite a few to edit this weekend. So far, they are looking really good. One student is just dying to get on and be videotaped. Her name is Autumn. She joined our class in January and has been quite a lively addition. This girl is going to go places – no doubt. She has a personality that is contagious and is brimming with self-confidence. I am looking forward to our first filming next week. Can’t wait to share!
Recently, I had to write a speech on why full funding of education is critical to academic success. I decided that my take on the issue would be to explain how full funding could impact academic achievement in how it is spent. One of the three ways I chose to elaborate on was technology integration. I thought I’d share this portion of my speech on our blog to see if anyone had any thoughts on the issue:
Another way to motivate children to achieve academic success is through technology integration.
Technology holds the potential to transform learning environments from teacher-centered auditoriums to highly interactive, student-centered powerhouses of knowledge. As we move into the 21st Century, it is crucial that teachers become aware of just how technology-savvy their students are. Students hunger with curiosity about our sophisticated and technologically based world. The one computer classroom doesn’t cut it in comparison to a classroom an ocean away where students are working with personal laptops. Can a chalkboard really get the same message across as an electronic whiteboard? What can a student produce when you place a stylus in his hand instead of a pencil? How does one teach reading comprehension and hold student attention when the click of a mouse overshadows the turning of a page?

In a technology-rich classroom, instruction is often complemented by project-based learning. Through the Internet, multi-media tools, and an extensive and ever-expanding variety of software, students can research, interact, dialogue, create, and demonstrate mastery of content and skill in a variety of disciplines like never before.

Let’s not forget the power that advancements in technology have given educators. With the touch of a button, educators today can access valuable data and information about individual students in order to design personalized action plans for increasing their level of academic success. In addition, technology use and integration impacts student achievement by allowing us to reach the special needs of students in new, dynamic ways. Hearing and vision impaired children can interact and compete on the same level in the same classroom with the general education population.

Former Director of the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology, Linda Roberts, dispelled the notion that there is a delusion about technology's capacity to improve K-12 education, and spoke of a realistic vision of how the use of technology can enhance teaching and learning to improve student achievement as well as provide access to valuable, educational resources. In this era of increasing accountability, it is important to be able to demonstrate that student achievement is being impacted. Technology can provide us the ways and means to do just that. The time technology saves an educator is immeasurable. And time is money, so they say.

Let’s face facts. Children today are mesmerized by the wonders of technology. With the flick of a switch, I can capture the attention of an entire class, find the answer to a burning question in science, or virtually transport students from Colonial Williamsburg to the Great Wall of China and back again. There is no question that technology motivates students to achieve, so is there really a reason to question the full funding of education to support its use in doing this?

Kidspiration inspiration? 20 March 2009

Kidspiration inspiration? 20 March 2009

There was not a lot of time this week to be playing with technology, email, or anything due to MSA testing and my decision to have all classes. I rearranged my schedule to accommodate those classes I missed. One thing I did notice on an email newletter was something that very much looked like Kidspiration, but for older students. It was an organizational tool that one could make webs and mini-folders of ideas. One was to use it to help with writing. This was a big feature in this newsletter. When I went to check it out, there was a notice that stated that at this time, we can not accept new members. It reminds me of a new European web site, devoted to the arts. It was highly advertized in the US, and when launch day came, it crashed because too many people wanted to join it.

On a wiki note, I am able to add the student names to the wiki. The wiki is education. I have had them sign in going in two different ways. They are still not getting the sign in for their names to be posted. I am glad I have them sign at the end of the post. What am I doing wrong?

Technology problems

It seems as though my computer won't turn on at all. One of the cords was yanked out and damaged last night and it appears to have been dropped. The computer specialist is coming to look at it and will hopefully fix it.

Other than that, I have really enjoyed using the camera with the kids. They love taking pictures and they love seeing the ones that they have taken. I plan on using more of that in the future. It is so nice to be able to start really incorporating the technology from last year's STEP program into use this year.

Self-evaluation

Self evaluation is an important process to teach children. They are so scheduled around events and other peoples’ schedules that they don’t seem to think about their actions and reactions. They don’t seem to hold themselves responsible for their performance. This really limits their potential. Electronic portfolios have been used in self evaluation in the past.

community of caring

Our Community of Caring initiative is off to a good start. I can hear students referring to the tenets of caring, respect, responsibility, trust and family. Now we just need to teach them what all that means on a daily basis.

Alphabet Picture Taking

Today we sent students around the building to take pictures. They were finding pictures for the different letters of the alphabet. The children will make a list of the pictures they want to take and the pictures they have taken.

When computers work..LIFE is ordinary...

YEAH the older computers in my room now work…kinda!?! They work enough for me to start having kids visit during lunch and recess or go back during class to create their post, not that many are willing to do so at those times but I can try. I honestly haven’t really thought about it much lately. I have so many irons in the fire right now I’m barely keeping my head above the flood for work that has magically appeared on my desk. But it is what it is..

13 Mar 09 SAVE ME!

13 March 09
SAVE ME!

It is Friday the 13th and so far today, I have proven to be technologically incompetent. I was nominated for Teacher of the Year and found out Wednesday that all information was due by today. I took my school laptop home and worked on my educational stuff at home on Wednesday evening. I saved the file on the laptop.

Yesturday, the education stuff didn't print to the printer in the library even though the printer is the default printer listed. I put the file on a thumbdrive, took it to another computer, and printed it out. I wrote a speech here at school and then took the laptop with me to complete work at home. I ended up writing a completely different speech and edited the first one as well. I saved everything on the laptop.

I got to school this morning. I could NOT access either speech. I saved them in My Documents and not on Mary Beth's Documents on the desktop. They are GONE!!!

I spent my morning rewriting just one speech. I thought I saved it on the desktop I was writing on. When I went back to add a title to the top, IT WAS GONE!!! I apparently didn't save it at all!
SAVE ME!!!!

19 Feb 09 Not a technical week

Blog 19 February 2009

Not a technical week.

This week, I barely used or shared technology. I did a lot of research the old fashioned way, using books. I am writing a quilt unit to go with a presentation Regina and I are doing on Saturday. Instead of searching for even more resources on the Internet to support the lesson, I went to some old reliable stuff that I already knew.

I did check my records for a lesson I wrote for ArtsEdge using FOLLOW THE DRINKING GOURD. I found my drafts and knew that if was on the site…at one time. It was gone! Yes, they have begun getting rid of some of the lessons and that lesson (which was really good and had quilt patterns with it) was something I wanted to see as to what they did with the patterns. So I ended up drawing out new patterns. No technology, just me, a pencil, and grid paper.

Rubrics

It is great to see rubrics as part of the bulletin board displays of student work. When you really study them one can see that students had to put effort and rigor into their work. I love seeing all of the technology used in generating these displays!!

Podcasting Rocks

Today's session was really cool. I am very excited to start working on Voicethread with my kids. The samples that we saw were very, very exciting. I really loved the way that you can have kids publish shared writing using Voicethread. It would be cool for them to be able to access it from home and share with their parents. I also think that it will be very cool to try to use this to have kids share research and other classroom projects.

Today's blog!!-podcasting

Today's session was very informative. I enjoyed looking at specific kindergarten examples of podcasting. Coming into this being completely unfamiliar with podcasting, I was pleasantly surprised that it seems so user-friendly. I am currently brainstorming ideas of how to use it instructionally (maybe like a book read-aloud for children) or how I will have the students using it (again with the alphabet thing...or narrating pictures from our field trip!)

Just some thoughts!

Podcasting and Beating the Blogging Blues! 3-13-09

Today, we had our monthly meeting for our STEP II Team. It was centered on Podcasting. I'm excited to begin using this new technology tool. This weekend, I will probably go out and purchase a simple headset with attached microphone. I'll begin by having the students record the text for their personal page in our class Write-A-Book, Our Alliterative Animal Alphabet. This will give every child a chance to record one sentence of text as an introduction to podcasting. Our next step will be to record descriptions of our Landform Pictionary books and Landform model project. We will be working our way up to using this multimedia tool/option for presenting our Biweekly Book Reviews on our class Wikipage.
As you can see, we have also been able to begin blogging online again. It should be a much more user-friendly format to share a blog page on this site within our school.

Authentic Integration

My biggest concern as we learn about wiki spaces, podcasting etc...is the authentic integration of these technologies into the planning, teaching, learning paradigm. It is possibly just a personal concern however I worry frequently about such things. I am just now getting to the point where the technologies presented last year are becoming comfortable in their integration into the classroom in a manner that is authentic to both myself as the instructor and the children as the receivers of instruction. While I understand that as we introduce these new ideas into the classroom there will be that inital excitement about something new, however the projects that introduce the children to the new presentation format are and should be based on solid instruction and thoughtful naturalistic integration of the new tools as opposed to doing the project for the sake of the new technology.

Podcasting

Today we used the vociethreading website for podcasting. I thought this was fun and the children will love doing activities. I loved watching the other podcast for ideas!!

Welcome To Rockledge's STEP Team Blog

Hey Rockledge Roadrunners!

This is our STEP team blog. We are going to use this one blog to jointly communicate our experiences from this year's program. This is also where you can add/repost your previously written blogs (remember to put labels on them so they can be sorted). I look forward to communicating with you. Go Roadrunners!

TIME TIME TIME...part 3 of a thousand part rant...

TIME…where is the TIME TO WORK!!! I am getting behind on this stuff. That may be an overabundance of ideas and not enough time with kids to get it done. I can see how if I were in a classroom and could devote a small amount of time to this daily with select students tell all were done this would be a great benefit. But as a specialist with different kids every 30 min…this is hard.

Grateful for Technology 3-6-09

This week, we have been consumed by continued MSA preparations. I cannot begin to share how wonderful it has been to have our personal laptops and LCD projectors. Not only can we easily type modeled BCR responses and student responses on the laptop to project clearly and modify easily for the class, but we can print out these samples in a snap for students to take home for parents and students to use to assist them in answering BCRs at home. Parents and students have been grateful to have these as a resource. I have been grateful for happy parents as a result!

rubrics

I was thinking how rubrics for work can really make a difference in how children approach a piece of work. If the items reflect literal ideas and concepts that have been presented it is like a recall or review. If the rubric calls for a student to analyze or draw a conclusion it includes more rigor. The higher grades may be able to use "Inspiration" as a tool to expand on their writing.

Equal Parts

03/20/09

I just did a great lesson using united streaming about equal parts. We watched the Number Crew on Fractions, and then we did an activity using Skittles. We used the Elmo and sorted out the Skittles and put them in pairs to share with each other. The class discussed equal numbers of Skittles and uneven numbers of Skittles. They enjoyed the lesson very much. It was simple and delightful to teach!!

5 Mar 09 Wiki? What's a Wiki?

Blog 5 March 2009

Wiki? What’s a Wiki?

This was a refrain I heard from students and staff as I tried to explain what I wanted them to do with my new classroom wiki. Some folks had heard of Wikopedia, but most were confused. I tried to explain it.

I uses the wiki-ness of my wiki to edit each one, yet again. I decided to add annotations to each. Over the weekend, I read all of the Black Eyed Susan picture books and created a plan for reading them to the school. I know only a few lucky classes will get to hear them all because of the snow day and because of MSA schedule. Anyway, the annotations were easy because I had a CD of the books and there were some annotations there. I just copied and pasted. The few picture books with none, I wrote quickly myself. The picture book ones are about a sentence or two long. The novels are quite a bit longer. Not every font was the same when I did the copy and paste thing or wrote my own annotations. I do not know how to fix that. I hope the reviewers don’t mind.

I found a student who had read three of the novels and I wanted her to be my wiki guinea pig. I invited her in on Tuesday, sat her down at the computer, and went right to the wiki. I explained what I wanted her to do. She selected the book she wanted to comment on. We clicked on the discussion part. She could not discuss. I did not know how to add her> I must have been on bus duty when that was gone over. I went to Susan and Wendy for help. Wendy set me straight.

I took the girl into Wendy’s room after school and Wendy showed me how to manage the wiki to add the names. Now this is going to be time consuming, since there are 510 students who go to this school. I decided to see who else had read three novels. I did a copy history on each book and printed out a list. I found only one other student who matched my first as in the number of books read. I added her as well. Both girls came into the media center yesterday, and I explained what I wanted them to do and how to do it. One girl wrote a lot. The other girl wrote a little. They took about 10 minutes to do their work. They were excited to post and want to come again today to write about another book.

Meanwhile, one third grade class has decided that they want to check out Black Eyed Susan novels because they too want to post. I checked out five books over the past two days for them. I asked them to read it quickly, so that other student could also read the books. A student from yesterday already returned the book. She wants to post too. I learned when I added her four-letter name to the list of guests, I needed to have six or more letters for her. I added her short last name and that fixed it.

I think to manage how students are doing their commenting, I will open it up for before school, at recess, and after school. I hope I get more than three commenters.

Flat Stanley Wiki

One of the ideas I had for my wiki was having kids add pictures to embedded maps of where their Flat Stanleys had traveled. Tia was nice enough to ask the “Google Guru” how to do that. I’m in the process of experimenting with that now. It’s so exciting to learn how to do things that I’ve run across on the web. My kids are very excited to have yet another way to share their Stanleys’ travels.

Kidspiration

I used kidspiration today when counting money. It was so helpful to be able to manipulate the features around the screen and use it with the students. I saw the whiteboard in another class, and I really want to use it. It looks like it is an incredible resource. I would love for all teachers to have one! I am looking forward to getting a "turn" with this one...maybe next year.

Piano Keyboarding skills and STEP an unlikely paring

It is interesting that as I work with the MIDI boards I am discovering some children seem to have a natural affinity for the piano. With little coaching they are able to strike the keys quite pianisically while others are tentative to the point of not getting them to register. Which leads to the need to teach how to interface with the interface…huh…whom knew?

Parents are "Piki About Wikis" 2-27-09

This week, the kids posted their “Wiki Bio” paragraphs on their personal page. They are so excited to begin writing their reviews and sharing. I am pleasantly surprised at what a motivation this has been to encourage their reading and writing! Only two of 21 parents requested that their child’s picture not be posted on the site. The children were very disappointed. I completely understand the reasoning of the parents, but was disappointed as well. I think I will look into the possibility of making the site private with access only to our students with a password. I’ll discuss this with the team at our next session. For now, I am removing the 2 kids’ pics, and will look for cartoon character pics to put in their place. :(

27 Feb 09 Wiki Complete!

Blog 27 Feb 2009

Wiki Complete!

Given the fact that I only had a week to put 25 book covers and 3-4 discussion questions for each book, I am DONE!!!

I worked on it all last Friday during our work session and got about half of the Picture Book images, links, and discussion questions in. Then I slowly over the week added the rest in.

I had to think about how to insert the widgets that I wanted. I found them on Teaching Books. I did video, audio, and two print items. I inserted them the way I thought you were supposed to by clicking on the little icon thingy that said widget. I then identified them as video, audio, or print. On the edit page, I could see a little grey box that held each item. However, when I put it on the wiki, no link was made. I went back and put the URL and it linked in that way. I will ask what I did wrong when we meet again.

After the Picture Book section was done, I tackled the novels. I have read none of the novels and only three of the picture books, so I have some reading to do for sure. I made sure that the home page of the wiki had the teacher standards, my objective, and a short reflection on the what it looked like when I was done. I then submitted it to the STEP review folks. I hope I did well.

Writing

Teaching writing in our county is really an important concept that has been put by the wayside. It is the reciprocal process of reading and sorely lacking in our curriculum. In the past, third graders were capable of writing a good descriptive paragraph as a result of direct instruction. Now, a sixth grader cannot do that well on a consistent basis.

Wiki

Our team has discussed some ideas for the class WIKI. We have discussed having some students use the WIKI for letter recognition assignments. We thought the low group would benefit from these type of lessons. The high group could make alphabet PowerPoint. I am also thinking of using Kidspiration in the process as well. I will keep brainstorming.

Doing Business as Teachers Via Technology

Our meeting last week was SO helpful. I have a much better idea of how I’m going to do my classroom wiki now. Narrowing my focus was a big help. I always seem to bite off more than it is necessary to chew!

I’ve been finding it interesting to see how technology has affected the way that we do business as teachers. A teammate of mine ended up in the hospital on bedrest this week. I wrote plans at home and emailed them to another colleague who got things ready the next day at school. We chatted with her online to check in on how she was doing and find out where certain materials were in her room. It made adjusting to her absence so much easier than it would have been in previous years. It was interesting to see the whole process unfold.

Classroom wikis

Well, the wiki is harder then I was expecting. I am still trying to work with using the wiki with the students...which is a challenge with kindergartners.

I have been successfully using technology that we received last year now! The digital camera and video camera have come in handy. We were able to video tape some of the students playing "restaurant" during indoor recess, and there was a lot of valuable learning and interaction. The document camera is a must-have for all classrooms. I use it everyday!!!

MIDI Boards are my hero!

Today my first graders and I wrote a song with our MIDI boards from last year. It actually was not all that bad. I gave them the outline that with do a dear you have all you need to create any song, you just have to mix up the notes and see what you have. Each child chose a note so long as it was nto the same as the note before …at least this time then I created the chords underneath. It was very good.

Wiki Work Session 2-20-09

Today, we had a work session for our classroom wiki. I enjoyed posting the pics of the kids in the classroom on our main page entitled, “Hive Central”. I was also successful in linking their pic to their own personal Wikipage where they will post a “Wiki Bio” and their required monthly book review. March will be a good time for this to begin as the first required month as it kicks off with Dr. Seuss’s b-day on the 2nd! I hope they will be able to benefit from the site. I am going to do my best to make it as “appealing” as possible and work hard on promoting it to our parents in the classroom. Wish us luck!

United Streaming

I would really like to start using United Streaming in my classroom on a more regular basis. It would be great to use some clips to supplement lessons. I know that the K team has been integrating US successfully. I'll have to check in with them to get some tips on making it work.

Critiquing work

Students should be responsible for their learning and have a number of opportunities to judge their own work. Being able to display their work on the visualizer and edit with their peers provides this!

Alphabet Project

We started creating the alphabet power point. It will be great once we put it all together. Right now the process seems to long and tedious. The children have brainstormed, taken pictures, and now we are moving slowly but surely. I think when they record their powerpoint for podcasting that it will be wonderful. I think this project is a lot o=for Kindergartener's but it is nice to know there is support and love ffrom my team members Ms. Carino and Ms. Valeo. Without them this would be a task overwhelming for me~!

Kidspiration

Today I used Kidspiration as a whole group to sort the T,K, and N intial sounds. I made a chart of the letters and took pictures from Kidspiration to sort. The class loves that Kidspiration will talk and say the words. The children love to see the pictures sorted! It was a great activity!

Student work

Today we sent the kids around to take pictures of alphabet things. We had them brainstorm a list of things that started with the various letters, and then set them off taking pictures through the building. Their ideas changed as they walked around. We will be videotaping the next session…battery was dead. We will also use the document camera to add the brainstorm to the wiki.

Authentic Applicaiton..maybe?

So far the kids and I are so very good on ideas…NONE of us can seem to figure out how to do this naturalistically but we are getting there. We have a list of characters we are fleshing out some, but no real storyline yet.

Sites to See! 2-13-09

February 13, 2009

This week, I thought I’d share a few links that the team may find useful. One of the first is a fabulous resource site that I came upon while looking for ideas to expand on a current unit for regions and landforms. While the site requires you to pay for the material shared, it is very reasonably priced and extremely well-developed. I’ve always thought about how terrific it is that teachers are such generous people who share ideas and resources so others don’t have to “reinvent the wheel”. I suppose if teachers have found a way to earn a little for their hard work and efforts, more power to them! The site is:
http://www.teachersclubhouse.com/index.htm
For those interested in “spicing up” their Wikipage or Blog, these two sites are compatible with both, though I haven’t quite figured out how to use them.
http://www.thecutestblogontheblock.com/
http://www.glogster.com/edit/glog/?action=glogs_create
Finally, for those who want a “kid-friendly” tutorial on html, check out:
http://www.lissaexplains.com/
This is a pretty basic and easy to understand site to start your experimentation or refresh your skills.

duty

Each morning, as I stand on duty, I can tell by the look on a child’s face if they are had a good morning so far and/or are going to have a great day. So many issues are dealt with right a way as a result of my morning check in.

Alphabet Project

02-13-09
We set up the WIKI accounts for the students. The four students have usernames and passwords. I set up a Kindergarten Reading WIKI, and we downloaded an example of an alphabet power point.

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine’s Day! (In elementary school, we don’t always celebrate on the 14th!) I have gotten both traditional paper valentines (at school) and electronic valentines (from friends and family). I’m wondering if we will ever switch over to complete electronic communication even for things like valentines. Will the students in my class send evites for their weddings? If so, are we properly preparing them for this?

Wiki

Well, we set up the wiki accounts. We have added 2 widgets but are having difficulty understanding the way in which the students will be interacting with the site. I am wondering the best ways to use the wiki with them. Still, I would love a sample of a kindergarten wiki! I added the 4 student users…we had some question about their use and permissions. I look forward to the next work session to incorporate what we will be doing into the wiki.

11 Feb 09

11 February 2009

Blog Envy

I have just been looking at other blogger’s blogs that are posted on School Library Journal’s Extra Helpings newsletters. There are regular ones on non-fiction) by Marc Aaronson), comics, children’s literature, etc. Anyway, they all have links to other people’s blogs that they like as well. These linked blogs look like web pages. They are all fancily designed. Some have photos. All have the list of previous blogs. Geez!

I look at what I have done…and the stuff apparently lost to cyberspace with the old blog address and say, ‘At this point in time, this is what I can do. This was my skill level. Hey four years ago, I was: unable to successfully make a Power Point presentation; had not regularly operated a video camera; did not own a digital camera; and had watched others make digital videos. Now I can. So I wonder what will happen with my blogs and wikis in the future.

The technology thing this week was my work with 5th graders from all three classes. I had identified some of Lincoln’s words to do as a video project. Students were talent and camera operator pairs. I selected students who I thought were either fluent readers or readers with personality. Some were easy to direct. Others… not so much… I learned that I should have written the words larger. I kept running to blow up each set to hold over the camera operator’s head. What was fun was having them switch off jobs and give ideas as to how each little piece was to go, either by prop use of a top hat or the way the camera moved. I am going to take it home tonight and start editing it. I think it should look fine.11 February 2009

Authentic Application

After some contemplation, I think I have the idea to make this authentic. It am not quite sure that I can do this in a way that will not look contrived, but the idea is to have the work done somewhat traditionally and then transfer to the wiki. Many of my kids can not type so the onus for getting the information in there is on me. The creation is on them.

Technology to the Rescue! 2-6-09

This week, we have found that having the science and math textbooks available online has been a blessing. With multiple tests approaching in both subjects, parents are complaining that the books are too heavy for the children to bring home night after night to prepare. It has been wonderful to be able to refer them once again to the online link to access. This has also saved the day when homework has been forgotten in math, we can easily assign a few problems from the day’s lesson to work on. It has also been terrific to have the books online so that we can project the image of the page we are on when reading in science or working out problems in math. Planning at home has been much easier as well since teachers can access the Teacher’s Guide and accompanying workbooks from home without having to carry everything! What a load off our backs – literally!!!

6 Feb 09 It's Gone!!!!

6 February 2009
IT’S GONE!!!!

Last week, I was one of the lucky ones to be able to blog using the IP address http://172.18.22.43/Default. aspx. Now, that address is some international corporation called Ektron with an EIntrenat Starter site in its place. What happened? I was aware that there was trouble in blog land and know that addresses and IP codes change, but wow, that was fast. In the survey of other blog sites, that STEP put out, I thought the edublog one would best meet our needs for this exercise.

Besides blogging, I have been ALL OVER the primary source internet sites of Library of Congress, National Archives, and Smithsonian’s American History Museum. I was looking for information and documents about Abraham Lincoln for his 200th birthday. I got some nice stuff to share with the students.

Tech wise, I finally got Safari Montage reconnected at our school. I am at the moment downloading and making CDs of John Fishback and Marcie Wolf-Hubbard’s art residencies here at Rockledge. I spent the morning teaching 5th graders how to use the digital video camera. I had them in pairs. They did little bits of Lincoln’s words and life. One student worked as the videographer, while the other performed. They were very creative in how they wanted to be done. I am not done yet, but I have other things to do today, like…write this blog and clean this dusty, dusty library.

teacher planning

A conscientious effort has to be made in a teacher’s planning to keep rote lessons from dominating delivery.

Wiki Project Ideas

02-06-09
The classroom WIKI space will incorporate the high reading group. There will be four students who complete these assignments. The students will brain storm ideas for making the alphabet book. Then we will have the children take some pictures. Then we will finalize the pictures for the book, and create a power point with the students.

What to Wiki?

I have my wiki set up (well, at least started). I am starting to have some second thoughts about my topic. I think I may have bitten off a little more than I can chew. The idea of planning a camping trip from “Wikis in Plain English” got me thinking about getting my kids who need more enrichment to plan an end-of-the-year reading celebration. That would involve reading, math and writing. It could get a little complicated. I’m wondering now if I should narrow my scope a little. I guess it’s something to talk about with my team and at training.

focus-wikis

I think I have narrowed down my selection to the higher reading group…4 students. I’m thinking that we will have the students take pictures with the digital camera. I will upload the pictures and eventually those will be used as a part of our project for PowerPoint. As for the wiki, the students can type in ideas of what to take pictures of, and decide who will be taking which pictures. Then, they can be set free!

TIME TIME TIME ...part 2!

I NEED MORE TIME…I am so far behind on this that I am not sure what to do next. Ideas are good...carry through…that is the issue!

Technology in the Classroom Day 2 Day 1-30-09

This week, our intern returned to begin her student teaching experience. The children and I are excited to have her back. I look forward to sharing the new technologies I have learned during her absence. First and foremost, I need to share with her the variety of ways that technology helps to run our classroom. Starting with our online attendance, we begin the day technologically. Throughout the day, we use the document camera (visualizer) and laptop to teach every lesson. With 9 special education students, it is crucial that we present material in many formats and always have hard copies of notes and assignments to assist them. We also utilize Internet sites that are interactive and engaging. In addition, video clips are accessed through unitedstreaming.com or Safari Montage. We often show DVD clips using our laptops that are shown through the LCD projector. For the months of January and February, it is our turn to use the Promethean Interactive whiteboard. This technology was new to me as well. I have used and been trained on the SMART brand Interactive whiteboards, but not this brand. I hope we can continue to put it to good use and learn new things about it together with the students. Another way we use technology each day is to record our grades on the SchoolMax online gradebook. I have used electronic gradebook programs for several years, but not one such as this. Being a new program countywide, it has its share of flaws. Here’s hoping for all of the quirks to be ironed out soon. Finally, we use technology through the use of our classroom website and email system. The class website is where we post news, links, homework assignments, and much more to keep parents and students up to date on classroom happenings. Our email system allows us to stay in constant communication with the families of our students at times which are most convenient for us. Email also provides us with written documentation of correspondence. This can come in quite handy during conferences and SIT meetings. Overall, there is much to cover in this area in order to prepare our intern for full takeover.

WIKI

01-30-09

Our team has discussed some ideas for the class WIKI. We have discussed having some students use the WIKI for letter recognition assignments. We thought the low group would benefit from these type of lessons. The high group could make analphabet PowerPoint. I am also thinking of using Kidspiration in the process as well. I will keep brainstorming.

technology

Today I witnessed an entire grade level doing lessons incorporating technology. The students were engaged and productive.

Parents and Data

I had a very interesting conversation with my principal the other day. In the course of discussing data utilization/inquiry, we got on the topic of how parents will soon be able to access our gradebooks at any time. At first blush, it feels a little big brother-ish, as though the parents will be checking up on us to make sure we are keeping up with our grading and such. During our conversation it occurred to me that it would be healthier to see this use of technology in a more positive way. Giving parents that access will allow them (require them?) to take a very active role in monitoring their students’ performance and helping to remediate as needed. When I think of this tool in that way it makes me feel more excited than worried.

Wiki thoughts

One thought for the wiki is having students add words starting with each letter of the alphabet. Or some sort of yes/no option. I don’t know how beneficial that would really be. Using this as a tool for assessments may be good…or having the higher kids work on a story map. Parent participation is a possibility. How much can we count on them to work on this at home though? These thoughts are very random, but they are a start. More to come.

Ideas Finally some ideas!!!

We have some great ideas for projects. I already have some artifacts just doing what it is I do in my room. However the discussion boards and such on Wiki continue to confound me as to their naturalistic application to the classroom. More thought will be needed for this to occur in a convincing way without being an add on…

Beating the Zaner-Bloser Blues! 1-23-09

This week, I've decided to write about and share some of the resources I have come across while searching the Internet for links related to our curriculum. One that has truly helped me out recently has been the Zaner-Bloser website: http://www.zaner-bloser.com/educator/products/handwriting/index.aspx?id=4296 . Our principal is very committed to teaching our students to write legibly in print and cursive so that they are able to express their thoughts and respond in writing proficiently with increased speed and hopefully, in more detail as writing will not be as "painstakingly" a task. I have purchased several font cds over the years, and downloaded many online to use to create papers to use during instruction in the cursive and manuscript handwriting. The fonts have always been close to the Zaner-Bloser style we use in the county, but there have been certain differences that always bothered me and caused me to have to white-out and over letters or words. This would often make me feel like just writing the documents myself like in the "old days". While I think that I have decent cursive handwriting, it takes me some time to write documents for the children because I am meticulous in my attempt to form the letters correctly. The style of cursive I learned as a child is quite different than the modern style we teach today. In fact, just a few years ago, Zaner-Bloser changed a few letters once more. Goodbye to the capital Q shaped like a 2, and hello to the O-shaped capital Q. This is one letter I can NEVER seem to get right on the first try! I also like to use the cursive font when typing notes or graphic organizers on the laptop during instruction. The problem is that I am constantly having to remind (or be reminded by) students that the computer is forming a letter “incorrectly” or not as we are being taught to form it. In an effort to avoid having to go through this on a daily basis, I went on yet another quest to find and download or purchase the EXACT Zaner-Bloser font style being currently used. I searched several sites, but always came upon a letter with an added loop or missing tail. The Q was incorrect or the undercurve was off. Finally, I ventured back to the Zaner-Bloser site to see if I could just purchase the entire curriculum on CD, hoping to be able to access the font then. To my great surprise, they currently offer grade-level specific templates that you can type into in cursive or manuscript. The templates are lined appropriately and can even be translated into Spanish!!! I was thrilled at the find and began to type in the week’s poetry lesson template into a blank page. When I got to the point I wanted to print and save, I came to a halt. It is with great disappointment that I realized that I could print, but could not save my work. I was left feeling a little gypped, cheated out of the ability to preserve this masterpiece of cursive perfection! Still, I went ahead and printed a set of 3 copies - one to copy and 2 to file, and continued on to a new blank page to type this week’s spelling words. I guess the saying is true that sometimes, you can’t have it all…