TechieTeacher5280

Last week I started my new job with Poudre School District, and as predicted, I'm learning tons! One of my main assignments this year is to help the 9th grade core teachers in PSD learn to teach in a one-to-one environment. Every Freshman in the district will be getting a laptop this year to use at school and at home. They will be disseminated to one HS a quarter, and the first set of laptops deploys (hopefully) September 21. There is much to do before then, including training all the very nervous teachers about how to use the laptops in their lessons. In the meantime, I've been learning lots about the district, and I've picked up a few cool tools & tricks from my new coworkers. Laptops (and a few desktops) sitting in the warehouse, waiting for deployment...and that's not even all of them!

This year I'm teaching a new class, an advanced technology class for 7th graders. In our district, we do not have curriculum for technology classes, so I get to create all the projects my students will work on. I love coming up with new ideas, so I was very excited to have the opportunity to plan for a new class. This class has the added challenge of being marketed as "advanced" but does not have any prerequisites, so my students may come to me with very little computer experience. As a result, I decided to come up with projects that ultimately require a lot of different skills, but are broken down into mini-assignments to be more manageable for my students. My favorite assignment for this class involves Claymation. Through this project, students learn how to use Microsoft Word, Windows Movie Maker, wikis, discussion boards, digital cameras, tripods, and microphones to record sounds on the computer. The students have really enjoyed this project and have created some gre...