Pride Goeth...

...Before the fall. Not long after I brag about how great my students are doing at typing, I get word that the administration has decided to eliminate computer classes at Charlevoix Elementary School. Thank you to my followers for reading my blog, to all the parents for your support, and to my students for always doing your best. I loved teaching you computers!

Super Typers

When third and fourth grade students come to computers, they practice keyboarding for 15 minutes with the program Type to Learn. Each year I keep track of how many lessons they finish. This year's scores are the best ever! This graph shows the average lesson finished for each grade each year. Before 2008, students had 50 minutes of computers each week. In 2008, it was reduced to 40 minutes. Since then, they have had 60 minutes each week! That extra time with each class means we can spend more time practicing typing, among other things, and is why I believe the scores have increased. Why the dip in 2010 for fourth grade? They were in second grade the year I only had 40 minute classes. Second grade is when we talk about and really learn the different keystrokes. Congratulations to this year's third and fourth grade students. You worked hard and that will really pay off!

Kahn!

Kahn Academy is a web site that started out with math tutorial videos. Now it also has self-paced exercises where students can navigate a "knowledge map" and earn points and badges. Parents and teachers can even sign up and be a coach. It would a great enrichment tool for fourth grade students and up.

Tons of Tools

Many of the productivity tools I have talked about here can be found at Kevin Honeycutt's Learning Tools webpage, along with hundreds more. Categories include Create Books, Collaborative Spaces, Creativity, Cite Your Sources, Ignite Writing, and Interactive Whiteboard Resources. Once the end of year craziness is done, this will be a great webpage to browse through!

Technology Words

Each week throughout the year kindergarten, first, and second grades have a computer word of the week. It is the students' job to remember that word and what it means. At the end of the week, the words go up on the computer lab Word Wall.

It Looked Like...

This week kindergarten students listened to the book It Looked Like Spilt Milk. They then drew their own cloud shapes using the fill bucket and eraser in Kid Pix. When done, they told Miss Frank what it looked like and she used the text tool to write a sentence.

Image Swirl

Google Image Swirl is a new way to search for images and view the results. Click on an image you like, and it will show you similar matches so you can find the best one. It is still in the experimental stage, so you can't find everything on it, but it is fun to use!