I heart efficiency

One of my colleagues teased me the other day about my favorite word--efficient. I love for things to be efficient. For me efficiency is the point where ease, time, and effectiveness meet and celebrate. That is the ultimate use of technology and it amazes me that some teachers do not take advantage of all it can offer. When I first started teaching, I looked at the giant army green file cabinet in my room and was not sure what to do with it. I would go into other teachers' rooms and they would tug open one drawer and it would be stuffed to the point of being immovable with copies of lessons, worksheets, and I am not sure what else. Mine stayed empty. I created files for it, but the only thing that really lives there are pieces of articles I print for reference or samples of student work that I don't use for lessons.

It's my computer drive that is full. I have files organized by units and theme. Everything I have created for the past several years is saved on my drive. It is great. If I don't like how a lesson worked, instead of beginning from scratch, I tweak it until it works. When others need documents I don't have to go flipping through papers, I just click through my organized files and documents and email them; which is great, because the receiver is able to put their own stamp on it if it doesn't quite work for them.

Promethean is great. I would lose transparencies, so now there are not worries as I easily play whatever the lesson is onto the wall. I can add videos to provide background knowledge with no worries and save it in a file for next year (wheels are not to be recreated). Plus, with all this talk about student data excel is my sweetheart. How many is 73% of our population? No problem because it is automatically done in the file. Yeah. I can save my time for the things that matter--one on one with my students.


Want to know the answers fast? Check out: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101343866

Typing a Paper Rules

Our classrooms lag behind our children's current social lives and future job opportunities. While some families are able to provide computers and internet access at their home; some are unable. The difference in the abilities of said families is amazing. Some students are familair with typing and understand how a word document is set up. They type their papers up without a thought. Others do not; they force returns at the end of the line instead of letting the computer do it for them. This disparity is always startling in the classroom because for so many of us teachers, computers are a constant in our lives.

To aid in this variety of skill, lessons that computers must be differentiated. We cannot ignore the children who are not as fortunate to have technology in their homes. We must provide the more savvy child a challenging lesson as well as the child who is not. Internet needs to be made easily accessible for those students: time for them to practice moving around and exploring the internet, time for them to practice typing, time for them to learn to email friends as a way of communicating. Tutoring sessions can be provided to learn basic typing skills or word skills that they might not teach in a tech class. Mini-lessons can provide a look into how software can be used at a very basic level, so that all the students can participate in the lesson. It is important technology becomes more important to job finding that are students feel comfortable using this resource.

Set a student up on an early morning tutorial before school starts at: http://www.sense-lang.org/.

For some interesting statistics regarding computers in the home: http://infousa.state.gov/education/overview/computeruse.html