Friday 20 March 2015

Professional Learning Opportunities

One thing I have heard from many teachers is the desire to have more time to learn the tools related to Google Apps for Education. It is very difficult to find time during the day to "play" with the tools we have available to us in order to feel comfortable with them.

Tech Tuesday

Shawn Lachapelle, a teacher at Brooks Junior High, suggested the idea of a tech Tuesday, an evening where we can get together to have time to learn how to use some of the tools we have available through Google Apps for Education. I thought this was a great idea and through some work (mostly done by Mr. Lachapelle) we are able to invite you all to Tech Tuesday at 7PM on April 21. This meeting will take place at Brooks Junior High School in the library. Our hope is that we will be able to offer other evenings around the district so people have an opportunity to learn more about what they can do with the applications. We will have some teacher and student presentations, a Q and A session, and lots of time to use the computers in the library as well as the Chromebooks at the Junior High. 

If this is something you are interested in, please let me know by RSVPing to me at sean.beaton@grasslands.ab.ca.

If you would like more information, please do not hesitate to contact me. 

School Visits and Guest Blog

As of Monday, I will complete all of my school visits. I am in Tilley for the last one. My visits have been very beneficial. I have worked with students and teachers from grade 1 through 12. There are a lot of amazing things going on in the division that I would like to share with you all. If you didn't get a chance to work with me when I was in your school and would like me, please use the scheduling page on this blog or send me an email.

 This week, Lesley Dewar, a grade one teacher at Eastbrook Elementary is our Guest Blogger. If you would like more information about what she is doing please send her an email! If you would like to work with me, let me know: 

Hi, my name is Lesley Dewar.  For those of you that don’t know me, I wear many hats, most notably ATA treasurer and grade one teacher at Eastbrook Elementary.   Those of you that have worked with me know that I love technology and I love using technology with my grade ones.   I often find myself telling my students about how computers weren’t invented when I was their age and that I didn’t have a cell phone until I was an adult, which usually is greeted with a blank stare.  I guess this generation of kids can’t imagine a world without technology, and to be quite frank, I don’t think I can remember how I functioned as an adult without it.  I am a huge believer that kids need to learn digital citizenship as soon as they can, as most of them have access to this and can be used as a great teaching tool.  I don’t avoid technology with grade ones, I try to embrace it, incorporate it and use it to enrich our lives. 

Lately, I have been working on a book blog.  I used Google to set up a blogger website and have set the permissions to enable it to be only viewed by myself and invited others.  The blog runs much like a website.  At Eastbrook, we have a special “student of the week”, in my room, I let this student choose a book and read it to the class.  When they have practiced enough, I will record them reading their book to the class.   I have already asked permission from parents to “publish” the readings and I use my Google blog to do just that.  Each week I publish the reading onto the blog and we have a movie screening in class of the books.  I assign directors, sound technicians and crew.  It has developed into a small idea that I hoped would build self-esteem and promote literacy into something that ranges across many topics and has provided pivotal and powerful conversations within the class.  I am hoping that another teacher will be interested in joining me, and that I can share our class book blog with another class both inside and out with the division.  I am hoping that we can share book blogs, and perhaps meet online.  Here is a recent picture of my book blog:



Another technological venture that I am working towards is the world of Twitter.    As you may or may not know, up until recently Grasslands had blocked Twitter.  It is now open to use.  I have a Twitter account set up and have been talking about internet safety with my students.  Twitter is an amazing way to connect with the world and get real time information.  The next step in my plan is to set up a classroom board for our tweets.  I intend to give my students a paper with space for 160 characters, where a few times a week we will think and write some things we would like to Tweet.   As a class, we will review them and Tweet a few.  I am hoping to get this up and running in the next few days.  If you would like to follow us, our Twitter handle is @MsDewarsClass

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