Skip to main content

Summer Adventures in Technology Integration

I am working at our local community center in a 6-week summer day camp program. Our themes are sustainable, green, and healthful living. The 40 students are mostly ESL, and at risk for summer learning loss. They have project-based classes in cooking, yoga, community mapping, art, theater, and even gardening. All the while the students are improving their English literacy and math skills--the learning is hidden in all the fun!

They take a trip to local organic farms twice a week, working on the farm in different areas each visit. They learn where their food comes from, bring it back to the cafeteria, and prepare it into delicious snacks.

My job is to give them some basic digital literacy skills.Today, I integrated technology with a yoga instructor and a group of 2nd and 3rd graders. They had to type in a URL, pick a kids yoga pose from the site and demonstrate it for their friends and the yoga instructor. Then we took pictures of each pose for the kids to create a book or poster of their favorite yoga poses. 2 more days of yoga with technology this week.

http://www.namastekid.com/learn/kids-yoga-poses/

It's amazing what the kids can do and learn in a short 6 week program and this is only week 2.


Stay tuned for weeks 3 - 6!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Teaching 21st Century Skills

I recently visited http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/ . I found a lot of resources regarding what skills students should be taught in order to succeed in the 21st century. There were also several states listed that have initiatives to implement policies and standards that will ensure students are presented with opportunities to learn these skills. I liked the recent news events of businesses partnering with schools to help further the students' education, but I was disappointed that there were not more states or businesses listed. I was also looking for suggestions as to how to implement teaching these skills in my class, and did not find them. Did anyone else find good ideas here?

Carrying out my GAME Plan

To carry out my GAME Plan, I will need to subscribe to several digital resources such as: http://teacherspodcast.org/ http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/ http://www.techlearning.com/   http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/ Reading and listening to these resources will keep me current on technology trends in education. Then, I can find ways to include or exclude those technological trends in my curriculum. I can consult with the Instructional Technology Specialist at my school to gain suggestions or fine-tune activities. I can get ideas from other students in my Walden class. I may need additional information, but the Walden Library, as well as Google, can provide more resources, if I need them. In carrying out my GAME Plan, I subscribed and listened to The Teacher's Podcast. I also subscribed to Cool Cat Teacher's Blog. I plan to spend a few minutes (10-15) every week to keep up with new ideas in the educational uses of technology. I have spent some time reading educ...

Blog Idea for my Classroom

I teach Introduction to Computer Technology in grades 5-8. So using a blog with my classes would be a natural fit. I would have the students blog about ways they use computer technology every day. The students would reply in a post on the blog site. Then, they could return to the blog later to see what the other students had to say in response to their post. In this way, we could have a meaningful class discussion over the internet. This blogging experience would demonstrate to the students the power of a blog and allow them to learn to use a blog.