Fall 2011

More Smartboards, Response Clickers,  iMac labs, Macbook carts, Macbook Airs,  iPads, iPevos and Lego NTX Robotic kits.  An exciting year is now upon us.  The teachers requested this hardware enhance their classroom and their teaching.  This is the best way to grow technology.

iPads in Kindergarten!!!

The school year of the iPad has begun.  Kindergarten, First and Second grade have 30 ipads that they are sharing for classroom use.

Kathrina Weekes, kindergarten teacher, dazzled us at our faculty meeting last week.  Sharing 6 months of testing and research, Kat demonstrated numerous apps, iPad specific software, that enhanced teaching.  Magic School Bus was a multimedia extravaganza.  She and Melissa Gale, intern and alumna, evaluated and rated 35+ apps appropriate for K-3.  Kathrina truly impressed her colleagues.  She is also the envy of the Head-Royce faculty as she will be teaching next year with a shared class set of 20 iPads.

New Middle School Activities

This year the middle school faculty have taught a number of technology courses as middle school activities.  Molly Barrett and Pauline Huang taught Robotics for the second rotation.  Pauline is currently teaching Interactive Media Design, a class programming in Scratch.  

Technology Staff Development

Two successful series of 2-day workshops (10/13 & 11/15; 2/7 & 2/14)


Session 1
Screencast - digital recording of computer screen output containing your audio narration - Karen Bradley
Blogs- create an online journal - Holly Below
Google Docs and Google Applications, Dropbox.com & Finalsite Dropbox - Dave Levin, Corey Turoff & Stevie Kaplan
Movies- quick and easy videos with Flip cameras - Ray Louie
Movies- iMovie editing - Harry Muniz
Keynote, Powerpoint, and more - Saya McKenna & Mary Goglio
Excel spreadsheets - Owen von Kugelgen
Smartboards - Kenny Ewbanks
Websites- manage your HRS website - Molly Barrett
Photoshop- photo editing - Scott Clark

Session 2
Google Quizzes & Forms - Karen Bradley
Photo Editing - Scott Clark
Planetarium - Chris Harper
Presentation Tools - Saya McKenna & Mary Goglio
SMART Clickers- -Chris Davies
Smartboards - Kenny Ewbanks
Social Networking - Holly Below
Spreadsheets - Owen von Kugelgen
Video Editing - Harry Muniz
VoiceMail to Email - Ray Louie & Biwesh Pradhan
Word Track Changes - David Enelow

Computer Science -- K to 12

Why teach computer science K-12?  Computers are everywhere and critical to our current and future well-being.  As teachers, we are doing a good job showing our students how to use computers but we need to do much more.

Just a few reasons from Computer Science Education Week:

Why Computer Science Education?

• Provides engaging way to expose students to critical thinking, a key skill for students entering any career
• Instills understanding of computation and computational thinking for success in the digital age
• As the role and significance of computing has grown, the teaching of computer science in K-12 has faded...

Are you ready?

Tutorials on Techwhirls

Techwhirls shares "how to" information for faculty. Click on the "How To" page (left sidebar) to find a list of online tutorials. The links include specific skills for everyday applications we all use, and you'll see some Web 2.0 tools you might find useful for student projects.

Please let Holly know if you need something more, find an error, or want to add other links you've found useful!

Have 12 extra minutes? Check the YouTube page in Techwhirls and click on "Changing Education Paradigms" from the RSA.

HRS Teachers Rock Tech!

Teachers!
I need your help.  Open houses are coming and we want to show you off.  You all use and depend on your laptops daily.  Would you be willing to share some of your key tech moments with me?  You are using it daily with your website, other websites, student website, avatars, alphasmarts, picasa photo sharing, Chinese wordprocessing, Flip cameras, laptop carts, student writing, peer editing, web design, photoshop, finalcut, youtube, document cameras, hyperstudio, keynotes, podcasts, lab probes, catlab,  smartboards, excel, screencasts, jing, snapz pro, stop-gap animation, digital art, student videos, teacher videos, google earth, blogs, forums, word editing, phonics, language, vocal recording, instrumental, art, drama, athletics, PE, Yoshis, debate, expos, graphics, artStor, tablet pc, geo sketchpad, inspiration ...  How could we survive without these tools?  Help me consolidate this and add it to our blog (photos and video welcome):