Active ActivBoard Use at Cedar River

This is Patty Stillmaker’s second year teaching math with an ActivBoard in her classroom. Now that she has become more familiar and comfortable with it, her goal is to incorporate more active learning strategies to get her students working at the board regularly. In fact, she is one of the district TTTLs, designing the professional development classes for the newest ActivBoard software.

Students are frequent users of the ActivBoard in Patty’s classroom. Anytime she can put active learning strategies into her lessons she does. At first, letting go of control over her ActivBoard was scary for Patty. But moving toward a more student-centered classroom has been very rewarding. Not only does it free her up to work with students individually, but it helps to get students excited about math. She has seen her students’ engagement level rise as they jockey to “show off” at the board.

Patty and other Cedar River math teachers went even further and had the Activboard software installed onto the computers in the labs at Cedar River. Now students are able to create simple flip charts to review, teach math concepts to others, and demonstrate their learning. This integration of technology has given Patty a chance to teach math concepts in new ways.

The ActivBoard is but one of many ways that we can amplify our teaching through technology. Patty's experience is a great example of why we are all very thankful to the voters and the school district for investing in our students by acquiring classroom technology tools.

New News Team at Cedar River, Virtual Bookshelf on Your Laptop, and a Glimpse of Tech at TJH

This just in: The River Beat News Team is hard at work on its next story at Cedar River Middle School.

The news team, created this school year, is responsible for assembling a monthly news show. Team members completed an application packet that lists their “tech savvy” skills, desired learning goals and activities. Each month the team meets to brainstorm news stories, develop feature items (including highlighted events, staff or students), and practice putting together a show using known technology. This process often leads to becoming creative problem solvers and innovative designers as students seek to increase their skills in creating, developing and broadcasting their program.

Did You Know?
Your laptop is loaded with the VitalSource Bookshelf, e-book software that comes stocked with hundreds of titles. You can highlight and take notes as you read The Hounds of the Baskervilles, Plato's Allegory of the Cave, or Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. But books aren't the only things you'll find here--there's sheet music, art, sound recordings, links to resources, etc. Take a look and and see for yourself. From your Start menu, select "All Programs" then scroll through to find VitalSource Bookshelf (on my laptop, I found it toward the top of the list). Why not read a classic this weekend? Enjoy!

Technology Enhances Learning at Tahoma Junior High

The ActivBoard is used for many purposes in Ms. Lindgren’s SAILS program at TJH. It’s a daily part of individualized instruction and students enjoy the interactive features. Here you can see how a student has modified her screen so she can better follow along as the class uses images and text to record steps of a science experiment. Ms. Lindgren and her students use the interactive board to build vocabulary and writing, visualize reading passages, and engage in many other learning activities.

Down the hall, eighth-grade students use a variety of technology for their Design a President unit in U.S. History and Government. After researching the Constitutional requirements (and political “requirements”) and differing views on major issues facing the country, students create an eligible candidate. By the end of the project students have created a table with the candidate's position on a variety of issues, a chart showing breakdowns of their candidate's priorities for the federal budget, and either scan in a drawing or create a computer-generated image of their candidate. Teachers also use Flip video cameras to record candidate endorsements that the students have created. Students then review each other’s PowerPoint shows, which incorporate all elements, and vote on which candidate they would like for president.