Friday, January 22, 2010

What would you like to learn?

We recently polled the staff of SCSD, asking "how interested are you in learning more about..." and "how comfortable would you be helping a colleague?" 44 staffers answered at least one question. The results are collated in this presentation.

Click on the square at the bottom of the screen to view in a larger format.

There is lot of individual interest in improving skills and gaining knowledge about the resources we have and there are many individuals in our district eager to help. We just have to get those two groups together!

In the meantime, there are many online resources for teaching ourselves how to negotiate our software and web resources:

Atomic Learning - available through Iowa AEA Online. Tutorials galore!

Apple Support - All kinds of self-teaching materials and FAQs

GWAEA Professional Development - Look for the webinars

Iowa AEA Online - Tutorials for using AEA Online resources

Monday, January 18, 2010

M M M Mimio


Lakeview teachers were introduced to IWB (Interactive White Board) technology Friday January 15 to conclude their half-day in-service.

Our presenter, Travis, started with the basics and quickly had teachers up experiencing the features and asking questions.

Most staff had downloaded the software and signed up for mimioconnect.com in advance so that the focus could be on classroom integration and hands on participation.

The district currently has 10 Mimio sets (6 at SHS, 2 at SMS and 2 at Lakeview).

Check out Tom Barrett's slide show "Interesting Ways to use your Interactive White Board in the Classroom".

Monday, January 11, 2010

Blabberize almost anything


Here is a fun and educational website that is only limited by your imagination! Blabberize allows you to animate an image so that it "talks" or "blabbers". Jan Johnson in 4A had her students record a few sentences about a body part and then applied that audio file to the image. Its humorous, cute and educational. The kids loved the final product.

In this case they used GarageBand to record their sentences, then converted those files to .mp3 files for Blabberize.


Link to their Blabberizing body parts at:

http://www.solon.k12.ia.us/~jan_johnson/4A_Website/Human_Body_Blabberize.html

Just think of all the interesting objects that you could have students animate (historical figures, rocks, places, planets, etc!)