Teachers’ Technology Survival Tips
Teachers’ Technology Survival Tips
Terry Smith 2007
For Classes & Materials:
Resource Area For Teachers or RAFT at
RAFT is an incredible place in Santa Clara near I880 at the Brokaw Road exit.
They recycle all sorts of materials donated by companies and sell them cheaply to teachers. In addition, they develop activities utilizing inexpensive and recycled materials. Their teacher workshops are cheap, or free, and very high quality and you leave the workshop with a bag full of materials to offer the activities the next day in your classroom. They also put together kits for great science and math activities and sell them very cheaply. For example, I bought a kit to make hovercraft out of CD’s, bottle tops and balloons that my kids just loved, and I think the whole thing cost me less than $10. Their computer classes are top-notch (that’s where the Powerpoint Jeopardy game from). They also sell recycled, refurbished computers for less than $100. This place is worth a special trip actually many special trips.
Classes:
See RAFT above
Computer Technology Workshops for Educators
These workshops are given during the summer on the Lawrence Livermore Lab grounds and are free to educators. They are taught by 2 high school teachers who are very tech-savvy. They focus is on Photoshop and web site creation using Dreamweaver. Sign up early, they book fast. You can also just go the day of the class and hope someone doesn’t show up. I once spent the day sitting on a file cabinet in the back of the room, but got to stay and learn the material.
Contra Costa County Office of Education – CCCOE
Offers classes in technology tools. A bit more expensive and not quite as good as RAFT, but a lot closer. You can often find grant writing workshops and lists of grants through the county office as well.
Online Tutorials:
I recently took a class at RAFT taught by one of Google’s senior researchers. He suggested that when you have a question on a software program, to Google the title and topic plus ‘tutorial’. For example: ‘powerpoint video tutorial’ This has worked well for me in a few cases so far. It sometimes takes some digging, but there can be good information on the net in these cases.
Adult Schools:
Local adult schools often have technology courses on common software.
Professional Organizations;
CUE – Computer Using Educators
This statewide professional organization also has local branches. They hold large conferences twice a year, and local groups also sponsor activities and workshops.
ISTE – International Society for Technology in Education
Good publications and journals and annual conference.
Software Sources:
Educational Resources -
This company specializes in educational software and offers a lot of free trial downloads of popular programs like Inspiration, Kidpix and Math Arena. They sell lab packs of software and generally prices are good.
Web Site/Publications
CLRN – California Learning Resource Network
Searchable Database of reviewed educational software/sites etc.
Technology and Learning -
Magazine and web site which evaluates new software and talks about trends in educational technology.
Superkids -
Provides some reviews of educational software.
Tools:
Video Editing:
Mac Platform: iMovie
PC Platform:
Windows MovieMaker – free download from Microsoft
Somewhat limited but a good place to start.
Pinnacle Studio (current version is 11) – about $80
I do a lot of video editing and have used Pinnacle Studio since version 6, both for myself and with students on projects, with great success. You get 1 video track, 2 sound tracks (very useful) lots of transitions and special effects. It’s very intuitive and easy to use.
Adobe Premier – expensive – premium tool for video production
There is also a newer ‘Elements’ version which is less expensive and seems comparable to Pinnacle Studio in features. You can download a trial copy from Adobe.
Streaming Video:
Ed1Stop – Contra Costa County Office of Education (subscription by district)
username: ed1demo password: candycorn
United Streaming – Streaming videos on many subjects
BrainPop – short cartoon clips on educational topics
Grolier’s Online encyclopedia
NASA – Streaming Video
NASA SciFiles – complete units with streaming video included
KSNN – short newscaster type clips
Steve Spangler Science – Videos showing great science experiments
Tried and True Math Programs
Math Arena - A great set of many games focused on specific math concepts
How the West was 1 +... A great game strategizing with number expressions and learning order of operations
to download a free copy:
Windows:
Macintosh:
The Factory Deluxe – Students must use logic and sequencing to figure out these challenging spatial puzzles.
Fraction Operations – 4 great games which really show what is involved in adding/subtracting/multiplying and dividing fractions
The Incredible Machine – I’m not sure if this is math or physics but it engages students in building complicated clever contraptions to accomplish tasks.
Math Facts Practice
Practicing math facts is a necessary evil and these sites provide some varied ways to do it. This is not a great innovative use of technology, but many of my students liked these more than flashcards so they were more willing to practice. Math facts automaticity is essential to understanding concepts by grades 4 & 5 ...
Science Tools:
Heart Rate Monitors: Reebok Cardiosport Impulse Strapless
Requires no cheststrap and ‘remembers’ last 20 readings
Stethoscopes – kits from RAFT (see above)
MP3 Player for music during PE
Be sure you have a boombox that will take input from the MP3 player and
Either power available on the playground or lots of rechargeable batteries
Clean & Cool music for PE
Radio Disney CD’s – can find them used on
Beth’s Rock Collection – science songs good for stretching
Digital Microscope: Proscope
Mind Tools:
Inspiration/Kidspiration
Download a 30 day free trial version
MicroWorlds version of LOGO programming language
Download a 15 day trial version from LCSI
Finale Notepad
It’s a free music composition software, which is different that Garage Band (available on the Macs).
Kidpix
A drawing and slide show program used frequently in primary grades.
Web Site Development
Scholastic Homepage Builder – gives you a variety of ‘teacherly’
options…
School Notes – More limited but I know several people who use this..
Google will host free pages with a free gmail membership:
A nice interface and quite a few options…
a sample by a Josh Wang – DTE 2009
Hot Chalk is designed to be a teacher forum site as well.
Web Authoring Tools:
Frontpage - by Microsoft is/was an easy to use way to publish web pages with kids. Microsoft has discontinued it, but you can still find it on older computer and/or purchase it. It has been replaced by a by Expression Web which seems to be more robust, but also more complicated...
Broderbund Web Page Builder
A relatively inexpensive choice from a reliable software company:
DreamWeaver – powerful and widespread tool but steep there is a fairly steep learning curve to this software. If you are interested, check out the classes offered by Computer Technology Workshops above.
Word – you can save word documents as html file – that may be the easiest way to go initially with kids...
Some other possible resources:
Electronic Whiteboards
Promethean
Smartboard
Online Software:
Literacy Center:
Primary Activities with shapes, letters and colors:
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