NOTES: Presentation

This evening, Aaron Berthold and I presented to the Technology Steering Committee. Our focus was illustrating where netbooks fit in to education and how the netbooks are being used. Aaron spoke about from macroscopic perspective and I presented from the microscopic perspective of how teachers are using netbooks.

The presentation I created follows closely Robert Marzano meta-research for classroom strategies that have the greatest impact on student achievement. Presentation (ppt) The presentation contains links to many useful resources that are free.

This video below was created by Tom Fox and clearly demonstrates the benefits of using 1 to 1 computing with blogging to foster greater literacy among students. Watching the video, you’ll notice that several of the strategies that Marzano writes about are mentioned; summarizing & notetaking, reinforcing effort & providing recognition, and providing feedback.

The night before  Spring Break, we kicked off our 100 Mini’s Project. The participating teachers were presented with goals, expectations, presentations and more importantly the mini’s themeselves. We are using the Dell Mini 9 with the prestigious ubuntu (Linux) operating system.

I’m very excited about this project and can’t wait to actually see the mini’s in the hands of students. Here’s a glimse through videos published by Cari Roberts.

These students have access to a full range of applications that can be used to research, organize their ideas, collaborate and share. With the exception of Inspire, all of the applications below are also free and run on most operating systems (Linux, Mac, XP, Vista). So students that have family computers are able to utilize the same applications at home.

• ActivInspire (Activstudio 3)
• FireFox(Internet browser)
• GIMP (like Photoshop)
• Open Office
  • Word
  • Spreadsheets
  • Presentations
• XMind (graphic organizers)
• and much, much more!

I was reading one of my favorite blogs (NashWorld) the other night and stumbled upon the work of Punya Mishra from MSU. He has done some amazing work highlighting the need for utilizing relevant technology in the classroom with Lee Shulman’s work on Pedagogical Content Knowledge.

This morning I presented to the Technical Services Department five of my favorite ways that teachers are using technology in the classroom. Specifically, I focused on the computer, projector and visualizer.  There are thousands of examples to choose from, so it was nice to have a clean way of organizing my ideas. I leaned heavily on Punya’s work for the presentation below and am quite thankful that he shares his talents.

If you are interested, my attempt at blending Punya’s work with presentation is below in the form of a Google presentation. Below, I’ve added links to the 5 parts of Punya’s video. His videos are definitely worth your time. Check it out!

My Presentation on Creative Teachers | Punya Mishra’s Keynote: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5,

Creating a District Wide Response to Linguistic Diversity: Your Leadership is Key

Nancy L. Commins
Rebecca Freeman Field

Check out this great example of showcasing linguistic diversity! http://thornwood.peelschools.org/Dual/

Linguistic Diversity Presentation (.pdf)