Sunday, April 26, 2009

Teachable Moments

We had our School Community Council annual meeting the other evening. There were, I believe, equal numbers of staff members to council members and we actually had two new parents who were nominated. Yeah! We actually have a very active SCC and they have accomplished a lot since their creation two years ago. The meeting was the usual review of the year and elections with one twist. We have two Smart Boards installed at the moment and one, possibly two, to be installed in the near future. One SCC member asked if there was a way we could showcase these new tools so parents and grandparents could see exactly what they were and how they were useful. The discussion went on and it came to light that although the SCC has done fund raising for Smart Boards most of them had never touched one. So, I volunteered to get one up and running and let them see exactly what all the fuss was about.
As they finished their meeting I set-up my laptop and loaded up a few of my French lessons using Notebook10 and then I decided while I had a captive audience I'd show them the You Tube video on A Vision of K-12 Students. They watched the video and most of them tried the French games. I showed how them how they could write or type on the board, highlight things temporarily with the smart marker, draw shapes, and so on. The SCC members were really interested so then I kept going and showed them their son's and daughter's blogs, a power point the grade one class had done, and finished up with a quick intro to Quest Atlantis. It was so neat to see their excitement and to have them see the future possibilities for education. It was a teachable moment. Now we just have to plan the parent and grandparent open house we are putting on in May. ;)

Sunday, April 19, 2009

PhotoStory

I made a video to explain to my students how to create a PhotoStory. I thought I'd share it here: