Digital Natives - Tools to incorporate in Today's classroom

Results of a Netday survey released in March 2005 illustrates that
technology has become “an indispensable tool in the education of
today’s students.”

The survey showed that 81% of students in grades
7–12 have e-mail accounts, 75% have at least one Instant Messenger
(IM) screen name, and that 97% believe strongly that technology use is
important in education. And the fastest growing age group for using
the Internet is 2- to 5-year-olds (NetDay News, 2005).

So what does that mean for education? In the wake of goal setting training and LOTI training, it is evident that technology integration is crucial to connect with today's digital native. It is hard to believe that in the short time that the internet has existed, it has transformed life as we knew it prior, however, it is all our students have ever known! The book, "Read, Write, Web," has many ways that teachers can tap into technology integration that will truly impact the classroom. AND, many of the applications integrate technology are often free and user friendly. So just what are the technologies that will promise to transform the way we teach and learn? The teacher's toolbox that the book is made up of consists of a mix of tools that publish, tools that manage information and tools that share content in collaborative and new ways. They are:

1. Weblogs
Thousands of teachers and students have already
incorporated Weblogs into their classrooms and into their
practice. Blogs, as they are known, are easily created, easily
updateable Websites that allow an author (or authors) to publish
instantly to the Internet from any Internet connection.
They can also be interactive, allowing teachers and students
to begin conversations or add to the information published
there.

2. Wikis
A wiki is a collaborative Webspace where anyone can
add content and anyone can edit content that has already
been published. In schools, teachers and students have begun
using password protected wikis to create their own textbooks
and resource sites.

3. Rich Site Summary (RSS)
RSS is a technology that allows
educators to subscribe to “feeds” of the content that is created
on the Internet, whether it’s written in a Weblog or in a more
traditional space such as newspapers or magazines. In other
words, just as in traditional models of syndication, content
comes to the reader instead of the reader retrieving the content.
From a research and information management standpoint,
RSS may be the new “killer app” (extremely useful
application) for education.

4. Aggregators
An aggregator collects and organizes the content
generated via the RSS feed.

5. Social Bookmarking
Bookmarking sites allow users to not just
save the Web addresses of interesting content. They allow readers
to save and archive entire pages, thus producing a form
of a searchable, “personal Internet.” In addition, social bookmarking
sites like Furl.net and del.icio.us allow teachers and
students to build subject specific resource lists that they can easily
share when using RSS. This in turn creates a community of
information gatherers who extend the reach of any one person.

6. Online Photo Galleries
Publishing digital photos to the Web
not only means sharing pictures with family and friends.
It means becoming a part of a community of photographers
sharing ideas and experiences. It means
adding another dimension to what students and teacher can
do with digital images in the classroom.

7. Audio/video-casting
New technologies make it easy to not
only produce digital voice and video files, they also make it
easy to publish and distribute them to wide Internet audiences.
Students can now easily “write” in many different media, a fact
that opens up all sorts of possibilities for the classroom.
(Richardson, 2006)

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?! Also, be sure to check out Will Richardson's new book: "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms" also by Richardson.
Watch Read, Write, Web

Goal Setting

The Natrona County School District has set a course for student success by identifying key components to improve student achievement, by targeting interventions for at-risk students, and by focusing on across-the-district professional development for teachers.

In pursuing this course for success, and in response to NCSD's status as a district in need of improvement under the No Child Left Behind Act, NCSD developed a district improvement plan. The plan was developed by a task force of teachers, administrators, parents and community members.

Though the district did make adequate yearly progress (AYP) under NCLB in 2006-07, the district improvement plan provides a path to continue improvement for our students.

Goal setting and the Plan-Do-Study-Act framework provides a guide for teachers and schools to focus on data and making decisions based on the data. See ways you can implement the P-D-S-A in your classroom!

http://natronaschools.org/ci/

Turn Up The Heat!