Technology Reflections

It’s that time of year again – State Testing! After the tests are over (2 days this week, 2 days next week) most kids will think that school is over for the year. But we have a little over a quarter of the school year left.

This quarter ends March 15th so there is a little over 2 weeks left. I have been looking for things to do with my 2 Wheel computer classes – Wheel means they change subjects every quarter – and I get a new group of students in every quarter. This year I have really nailed down the curriculum for these classes (6th and 7th graders) except for the last 2 weeks or so. I start out with a Unit on Online Safety, then we do some Word Processing activities (I usually change those each quarter so that I don’t bored) and then we do Spreadsheet activities (these stay the same because I have a good program for teaching spreadsheets). By this time there is about two weeks left in the quarter. I used to teach PowerPoint at this point, but no more! I usually get PhotoStory (which I have decided that I like better than Movie Maker) in during the Online Safety Unit. This quarter’s kids even added narration! I was going to do some Google Earth activities, but GE doesn’t run well on our computers I have asked the IT guys to look into it…so we’ll see….. I think I’ll let the kids make another PhotoStory digital story – maybe I’ll have them make How To videos for the things we learned this quarter…yeah! I like that

That still leaves my 8th grade computer class. I have this class all year….and this year I wish I didn’t. I was spoiled last year with a fantastic 8th grade computer class – probably my best class ever – we had so much fun and learned so much, too! This year’s class is immature and doesn’t care about what I’m teaching them. They only care about impressing their friends and seeing how much they can piss me off Of course not ALL the kids in this class are driving me up a wall. There are some great kids in there to, and if I didn’t have the core group of problem children, they would be a wonderful group to teach. I set up a candy earning behavior system and it works pretty well, but today since they had just done 3 hours of testing where they had to be silent, I tried to give them a break – give them an inch and they took a mile! This class just completed a three step research project; Inspiration Software to plan, then they wrote an essay and ended with a documentary done in PhotoStory. The documentaries were due last Friday and we watched most today. They SO didn’t get it – most of them were childish and silly; narration was not done seriously, music that had nothing to do with the topic, just a song they liked and little to no content. And they had no idea what they had done wrong when I pointed out their shortcomings. A couple were really good though! We have one or two left to view tomorrow. I want to go into Copyright, Effective Searching and Valid Websites next, but every time I try to actually teach, I spend more telling them to be quiet than I do lecturing. OK – I realize I’m being a bit whiney today but sometimes you just get a class that you dread and this is mine…..

Ah well….tomorrow is another day…….