Staying Up to Date

This is one of the hardest aspects of my life... staying up to date.  We have had our computers for a while now.  Students are using them for more than just word processing.  In fact, I just put next weeks spelling list for struggling students on a website and linked it to my wiki site.  Woo Woo!  However, those accomplishments are not happening often enough for my high standards (of myself).

I was successful in implementing a technology book project prior to 4th quarter.  I used to put it off until the end because it was such a harried event.  This year, first quarter all book projects relied on some form of technology.  Their choices were to make a "breaking news" broadcast using iMovie, create an author or main character interview podcast using GarageBand, create a newsletter based upon the events in your book using Pages, or create a book jacket (with original artwork scanned by our librarian) and turn it into a slideshow using KeyNote.  I tried to reach all students comfort and ability levels with the project choices, but must admit they were not my ideas.  The power of the internet (and Google)!

I believe I was more successful with these projects because they had set  limits, such as a 2 minute movie or a 2 page newsletter.  However that is not to say all was smooth going.  I planned to allot one class period for the tech side - prep work completed beforehand was a requirement with points attached - however quickly moved that to two class periods.  As I only see my students 3 times a week this means that putting their projects into motion really took one whole week of school.  Can I sacrifice 3-4 weeks of school for this?  No, and hopefully they will become more tech savvy as we go along so I don't have to.  We also had individual glitches with each program; things such as not being able to see photos from iPhoto in iMovie when attempting green screen.  We did have limited success with green screen (really, green project paper taped to my wall - but hey, it worked!), but it can be greatly improved.  My project now is to record our successes and struggles to convey at our next tech meeting and use my colleague resources to help me celebrate and solve.

Moving forward... what am I going to do next???