Netbook Excitement at Shadow Lake

Shadow Lake received two class sets of netbooks in February. Fourth-grade teacher Stephanie Hofferber was excited enough to have her class use them for two weeks in many different subject areas.

For the first netbook activity, students used kid-friendly search engines that Stephanie posted on her Web page to explore information about space. To start, the class brainstormed a list of search terms and Stephanie recorded them using the document camera. This ensured that the words (soon to be search terms) were spelled correctly. After students finished their exploration, they proceeded to generate questions about space. This activity culminated in astronomy PowerPoint projects.

Since every student had a netbook, each created their own astronomy PowerPoint. Each slide contained a fact and a picture that related to their fact. Students were required to have a minimum of five facts but many students were excited enough to include many more.

neptune[1]

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To see more finished products, visit Stephanie’s SWIFT site.

Students also used the netbooks to publish their writing. Before they could publish they needed to edit with a friend and conference with Stephanie. Previously, with only four computers in the classroom, this was a difficult task as students would sign up to publish and then have to wait for their turn. With the netbooks, the excitement level never dropped as the students didn’t have to wait to publish.

Finally, Stephanie’s students used the netbooks to work on keyboarding skills, reading, and math. For instance, in math the students went to Stephanie’s SWIFT site and played specific fraction games that she had posted. This extra practice with fractions increased the number of students that mastered sometimes daunting fraction concepts.

“We haven’t had the net books for two days now and students are constantly asking for them," Stephanie said. "They truly stimulate the learning process and motivate kids to go beyond the basics. We definitely need more sets of netbooks because they are booked all this week and now we have to wait until next week to use them again. My students are very disappointed. Netbooks are a powerful learning tool!”