Best Practices

Last week I shared the Technology Resources for Tahoma Elementary Teachers website which is full of links for finding tools, ideas, and resources to help you integrate technology into your lessons. While teaching any lesson, we have strategies we implement which allow our lessons to run smoothly. This week I would like to to help teachers understand what strategies will be highly effective when teaching tech skills to students in the lab and/or in their classroom. The Best Practices for Teaching Technology Skills document contains many of the strategies you already implement in your lessons such as labeling the learning, modeling, reinforcing the learning, and classroom management strategies. But there are additional strategies which will help you as you teach tech skills to your students. Once these strategies are in place, you will find that your lessons are more efficient and effective.(This document will be added to SharePoint under Elementary Curriculum, Technology.)

For this weeks post, read the Best Practices document and comment on the 5 practices you feel are the most important in your grade level and why. Then share with us 2-3 practices you don't currently implement but plan to implement in the future. (Remember, if you would like clock hours please click on the FAQ tab at the top of the page for further information.)

Welcome to Learn and Earn Thursday!

Welcome to the Elementary Learn and Earn Blog! Each week I will be posting ideas for integrating technology into your elementary classroom. I hope that you will explore these ideas and leave comments to enhance our discussion of new technologies. If you are taking this class for clock hours be sure and review the FAQs on the tab at the top of the blog.

To start the class, I would like to share the Technology Resources for Tahoma Elementary Teachers website I created containing websites and blogs for teachers and students. The online resources are divided into K-2 and 3-5. There are sub groups by subject. Once you click on the link you will be taken to my Diigo page (social bookmarking site). You can view all the K-2/3-5 bookmarked sites or refine your search by clicking on the subject under your grade level. Each bookmarked site has a short description. Click on the link to be brought to the site for further exploration. From time to time I will highlight some of these sites and show you some of the key features as well as describe how you can integrate these tech tools/ideas into your curriculum.

For this weeks post, explore several sites from the resource page and leave a comment describing a site of interest and how you see yourself using this technology in your classroom. (Tell us your grade level.) If you are taking the class for clock hours remember to type a thoughtful comment that will further the conversation AND type your first and last name with "CH" in the name field.