Technology and Learning

I came across this AMAZING article about education in Finland.  NOW, it has NOTHING to do with MOVE 21 and what we are doing her in Barnesville with iPads, BUT it is SO SO SO worth your TIME to read this one!  I am in TOTAL agreement with it, and as an educator who also spends countless hours of my own personal time on things for the classroom, it's enlightening to hear that MAYBE, just MAYBE this will be the United States someday:)! 11 Ways Finland’s Education System Shows Us that “Less is More." More IS Less - remember that! Happy Wednesday - Mrs. I:)

  I MUST SHARE:)!!  We are now in our THIRD week of publishing our school newspaper.  CHECK IT OUT!  It's called The Trojan Turf and it really is SO SO NEAT!!  Mrs. Gross, and English teacher here, has a Media/Journalism class that she teaches here.  Each kid in her class has a blog that they need to write on every other week, but they also have to write every other week for the paper.  Whether it's student life, sports, news, or meet the teacher, once the article is written, they have to turn it into one of the four editors.  They fix major mistakes, and send back to the write for one more revision.  Once completed, students send them to me, along with a picture, and a student then uploads them all to the SNO website that we have bought for publication.  It has REALLY been a great experience for the kiddos!  Next year it will be a year long course, pending enough students take it!  Every Monday the new publication comes out ...

  While observing Mrs. Nelson, a 6th teacher, I saw two really FUN things that she is doing with the kiddos - 1.  Kahoot - I am not sure if I have mentioned this site - but CHECK IT OUT!!  She was doing a review for science and gave them a quick informative assessment from the lesson the day before.  The kids were EXCITED, ENGAGED, and EAGER to see how they did.  It was SO great!  Kahoot is simply a website where you create a free account and you write little quizzes for kiddos to do.  They then log into the site with the quiz number and BAM - Ready. To. GO! 2.  The OTHER thing that she did that I had NO NO idea she had done, was create a digital textbook using iBooks Author - LOVED IT!  She makes an iBook for each chapter or related standards that she has to teach and then the kids use THIS instead of the bulky book where they only cover certain topics - GENIUS:)!  She can embed video, interactive links, photo galleries, etc.. int...

  Sorry again for not posting in a while - seem SO busy - yet seem to get NOTHING accomplished - ever feel that way?:)  We have been meeting GALORE regarding next year and what exactly to do.  As of now here is what we're looking into: 1. Sell the iPads that we currently have to a MN company and then buy iPad Airs again through Apple directly 2. Get iPad Minis for our K-2 or K-3, since this will save us so money to offset the cost of buying new through Apple 3. Possibly get 32MG iPads for 10-12 as they tend to need a little more storage; especially with band and choir students 4. Keep Macbook Pros that we currently HAVE as teachers really want them to stay:) NOW - with all that being said is that what we will FOR SURE DO - WHO KNOWS???:-)  But that is what we are recommending to the Finance Committee tonight so I will update tomorrow on what was actually decided or what is going to go to the board again for final approval. We STILL plan on using Apple Con...