Positive Energy Radiates at Elkmont
I also love all of the positive energy that surrounds our students and that our teachers and students radiate each day. The hallways are filled with examples of student work that celebrates student success. Classrooms are filled with positive messages and teachers who love their students and encourage them to be the best they can be every day.
Elkmont Connects the Dots for International Dot Day
Using Skype and Google Hangouts, students from Alabama, Georgia and New Jersey connected and shared information about what makes their school and town awesome. It was exciting to watch as these kids connected, shared, learned and grew together during our Dot Day activities. One really fun thing we did using Skype was Mystery Skype.
Mystery Skype is a 45-60 minute critical thinking challenge that your class takes part in while Skyping with another class somewhere else in the world. Your students' goal is to guess the other school's location (country, state, city, school name) before they guess yours.
Learn more about Mystery Skype and other ways you can use Skype in the Classroom click HERE.
In addition to our fun with Skype, students also made Dot Day Trading Cards and recorded their dots using FlipGrid. Learn more about our Dot Day activities HERE.
Elkmont BYOD Gets A Boost With Google Classroom & Khan Academy
Each problem is randomly generated, so you never run out of practice material. If you need a hint, every single problem can be broken down, step-by-step, with one click. If you need more help, you can always watch a related video.
Teachers and coaches can access all of their students' data. You can get a summary of class performance as a whole or dive into a particular student's profile to figure out exactly which topics are problematic. The coach reports let coaches glance at their dashboard and quickly figure out how to best spend their time teaching.
Ms. Hobbs also got her students started on Google Classroom and Google Drive. Students no longer have to worry about losing a USB Stick, not being able to access an assignment because it is on their computer at home, etc.
Classroom is available to anyone with Google Apps for Education, a free suite of productivity tools including Gmail, Docs, and Drive.
Classroom is designed to help teachers create and collect assignments paperlessly, including time-saving features like the ability to automatically make a copy of a Google document for each student. It also creates Drive folders for each assignment and for each student to help keep everyone organized.
Students can keep track of what’s due on the Assignments page and begin working with just a click. Teachers can quickly see who has or hasn't completed the work, and provide direct, real-time feedback and grades right in Classroom.
Elkmont 5th Graders Collaborate With Google Drive
One of my professional goals is to help teachers use technology as an efficient and effective tool for student learning instead of using it as an add on to the end of a traditional unit of study. Google Drive tools are well-suited for use as a starting point to help teachers begin to break the barriers of traditional methods of tech integration and design student driven learning experiences that require students to construct knowledge as they create, an idea supported by the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).
The features available in Google Slides make it a useful tool for helping students begin to develop digital literacy and engage in the types of learning experiences suggested by the Common Core. With Google Drive tools like Slides, technology and research are seamlessly integrated into the learning process as students are engaged in problem solving, critical thinking, communication and creativity.
Anytime Anywhere Professional Learning
One great thing about technology is the ability to learn anytime anyplace...even in your PJs! Elkmont High School's Instructional Technology Facilitator, Nikki D Robertson, has been creating video tutorials for technologies taught to teachers and students. Additionally, Ms. Robertson offers this service for other technologies that teachers or students would like to learn. Watch our list of video tutorial resources to grow through out the school year HERE. |