My Technology Enhanced Lesson Plan

I am interested in doing a lesson with the thermometers like we did in class. In the first-grade classroom that I am in, we are currently doing a water unit. I have discussed with my teacher what my ideas were. She told me about doing water centers. By doing water centers, I wouldn't need to have many computers and thermometers. I could just use one laptop with a thermometer and use it in one of my water centers. Thus, the lesson plan for this center would use a laptop and thermometer. The objective would be to observe and measure characteristics of water. I would have a cup of room temperature water with the laptop and thermometer. I would also have a cup of ice cold water. I have created a worksheet where children can look at a pictures of thermometers and write down the temperature. At the end of the worksheet, they will be asked to read the thermometer and measure the temperatures of the room temperature water and the ice water. Afterwards, they will be free to play with the thermometers as we did in class. Perhaps they can try to write the first letter of their names with the thermometers. I will do my water centers this Friday in the morning. I look forward to this activity as all other activities and experiments done with water were a hit!!!

Technology-enhanced lesson

Right now in my first grade class, we are doing a water unit. The students have had an introduction to water and have learned about the water cycle. The water unit will last for a couple weeks. To enhance a lesson with technology, I think it would be fun to let children use the temperature thermometers that hook up to a computer. (We used these in class.) The students will need to learn about water as a solid, liquid, and gas. They will also need to know how water can change states. Thus, I can teach about water as a solid, liquid, and gas by showing water in each of these forms. Then, we can discuss how water came to be in that form. Afterwards, we can use the thermometers to measure the temperature of water in each of the stages. We can also perform experiments such as seeing how ice, the solid, melts into water, the liquid. During this time we can measure the temperature and see how quickly it changes. Children can also do activities like we did in class and see if they can make fun pictures with their thermometers. In this process, we have taught the content with technology. The teacher can continually teach as she models. (Review what children already know and have learned about water. Introduce different states of water with example so that children can see them. Talk about what happened and why. Model how to use the thermometers. Model and explain how children will do the activities/experiments. Have children make some sort of graph or table or write a paragraph where there show and/or explain their findings.

Tech Inventory

I was quite surprised by the lack of technology that I have at my cohort school. There are many schools surrounding my school, many of which are quite new and very nice, but very lacking as far as technology goes. I was also surprised at how uninformed the teachers are as to what is available. I do not think they know much about what they can do and therefore do not use it. As far as I know, there are no smartboards. There are also no Macs (thank goodness!:-) Every classroom has at least one student computer and one teacher computer. They also have an overhead. I noticed in the technology room that there was access to a projector, TV, VCR/DVD player, and opportunities to visit one of two computer labs that they need to sign up for. One of the labs is normally in use by the students who go there for specials. I hope that schools will continually try to improve in their technological resources as that is becoming more and more useful with time.

My Google Earth Virtual Tour

So, I am not the most computer savvy person, but I put my link under the "my links" on the left hand side of the blog. So, to get to the virtual tour I made, you have to go there and click on it. It will then take you to where the saved file is. Enjoy:-)

Google Earth Plan

Location	Activity	Google Earth Content
1.Grand Canyon (Arizona)	Which river carves this steep sided gorge? Draw how you think this happens.	Terrain tool, Wikipedia
2.Mt. Everest (Nepal/Tibet)	Which mtn range? Heigth?	Wikipedia
3.Sahara Desert	This desert gets its name from the Arabic word Sahra. See if you can find out what this word means.	Wikipedia
4.Angel waterfall (Venezuela)	Write down how tall you predict 3,212 feet to be. About how many yardsticks would that be?	Panoramio
Details of image overlay / path / polygon:	path tool to show the path of our tour.

Content: Standard 3 (Develop an understanding of environment) Objective 3 (Demonstrate how symbols and models are used to represent features of the environment. The technology objective we used in digital storytelling is also appropriate!

Pedagogy/Technology: The content for this lesson is for the younger grades. I was thinking first or second. Thus, I think it would be fun to read a book that talks about different features of the world that are natural. I have not yet looked up specifics though. This will make children more excited and curious as to what the next part of the lesson will be. After the book, we can talk together as a class about different features formed naturally. This will help children better understand their environment. We will then use Google Earth to look up some of the features from the book, and also use Google Earth to do the virtual tour of four natural features that I found. This will be good for children because they can actually go to features formed naturally. Hopefully they can get a good idea of these features and what they look like. They will also have a better understanding of where these features are located.

Digital Storytelling-My digital story!

Here is where one can go to watch the digital story that my younger siblings and I created. ENJOY!

Storyboard

Over the long weekend I got to work on my digital story with my younger siblings. I haven't yet posted my storyboard because I worked on it over the weekend with them. They drew all of the pictures and helped with the taking and organization of the pictures. They also helped me in writing the story. It was quite fun! They are all very excited to see the final product. So, since I haven't yet posted the storyboard, here it is!