I have so many ideas!

Seriously, I do. I just wish I had the time to pursue each one. There are so many exciting possibilities for lesson planning and 21st Century Learning. The applications tumble around in my head but the reality is that I have to pick just one to work on at a time. Even then, the hours I spend researching for one lesson quickly add up. It's Sunday, I've been at it for 3 1/2 hours, it's getting dark, and if my husband wasn't here to remind me of life's other occupations, I'd be here for a few more. But don't worry, I took Saturday off completely and enjoyed some rest and relaxation.

My current time-suck is a lesson I'm creating related to a speech my students began writing on a theme to unite our school. I perused YouTube for 45 minutes just looking for a few examples to inspire the kiddos. My goal is to have them create a video presentation to go with their theme. They will use text from their speech, inspirational quotes, music, and graphics that will inspire their viewers to embrace the message. The next step in the lesson planning is for Mrs. Blick to select the tool and figure out how to use it herself. Hmmm...I wonder how many hours will that take?

Testing

Agghh-Testing! It's not quite as exciting as 21st century learning, that's for sure. But, it is reality and I'm determined to help my students learn how to be successful testers. Now, I'm not sure how this ties in to my technology journey but it's what is on my mind this week so that's what I'm blogging about.

We just wrapped up CELA testing and CSAP will be here in no time. I don't know that my students, all ELA and a high percentage SPED, have often felt the satisfaction of a test well done. Therefore, this week we are beginning Larry Bell's UNRAAVEL, a method to tackle reading comprehension tests. I believe that just having a game plan to attack a reading passage will help my students immensely. It will give them a place to start and some feeling of control if they have concrete steps to follow. Afterward, we'll spend a while learning how to write "Better Answers" to standardized test prompts. This is based on a text by Ardith Davis Cole called Better Answers: Written Performance That Looks Good and Sounds Smart.

I plan to have my students write pre and post reflections on this process and hope to see a new confidence emerge towards test-taking. Stay tuned!

Jing

This week I finally made my own screen casts with Jing, something I'd been meaning to do for a while now. What a great tool! With an entire class in the computer lab, I'm able to show multiple students how to do something at the same time without saying a word! After three months of school, some of my students were still struggling to save documents to the server. Well, not any more. I keep the Jing video on the eboard for each assignment so they can re-watch as needed. I also used Jing to show students the first steps to setting up a Powerpoint for their book talk. It considerably lessened the number of repeat questions from students and they got a lot more accomplished in one period. Now that I know how easy it is to use it will become a regular part of the implementation of our computer lab activities.