Technology in Our Classroom

As you may have seen from my posts over the weekend on Twitter and/or Facebook, we have 24 new friends in our class beginning this week.

Let me explain.

Our district has a partnership with ThinkTV that led to us receiving grant money that is being used to purchase Chromebooks. I am not on the committee, so I do not know all of the details, but from what I understand, next year, every kindergartner and first grader in the Piqua City School District will receive a Chromebook laptop to use at school and at home. ThinkTV is producing educational content that will be accessed by the students to help further their reading scores. To help roll this out, several teachers were selected to "pilot" the program, and I was lucky enough to be one of those teachers.

The teachers were notified last Thursday that the computers were ready, and would be brought to our classrooms sometime within the next week. Ours came yesterday, and I may or may not have let out a squeal of delight when the tech department appeared at my door! While the students were in music class just after lunch, I started to set up the computers with each student's individual login information; however, due to a slight snag with an untimely Chrome software update, I was unable to do so. Now, if you know me at all, you know that 24 computers in my room that I can't do anything with is a horrible tease! :-) Well, in true Piqua tech department form, they came today, and whisked the cart away (just to the cafeteria so they'd have room to work without tripping over 22 kindergartners), worked their magic, and returned the cart before school dismissed for the day. Yippee!

I spent about an hour after school setting up everyone's accounts, and tomorrow we will begin using them. The kids are so excited - several of them asked me today when we were going to get to use "our new computers" - I told them "as soon as they get them ready for us!"

Now, you might be wondering how I plan on using the computers with the kids during the day. Some of you may be saying to yourselves, "my kids plays video games enough at home, I don't want him or her playing all day at school, too!" Well, I have been researching and reading up on how other teachers are using technology with their students, and have come up with some pretty cool lessons and activities.

Here are some of the ideas I have brewing for using our computers all day long for more than just games:

1) Students will use the webcam to take a picture of something, and then will write or type about their picture. We will have to start small, but my intention is to eventually get them to write and publish their own "informational text" or story for their family and other students to read.

2) I would like to replace our current paper math journals with digital files, which would eliminate pages being ripped out, notebooks constantly falling out of our seatsacks and onto the floor, those silly wire spirals being used to poke our neighbors, pencils being lost inside those aforementioned silly wire spirals, etc. They can also be saved (theoretically) forever.

3) I plan to create personalized "digital word walls" (like a kindergartner's dictionary) for each student, based on their individual level.

4) We will do our annual animal & habitat research projects on our computers. We will even create our animal books as e-books!

These are just some of the ideas I have, and as I continue to do my research, I am sure more will come! This is definitely a wonderful time to be a kindergarten teacher, and I am excited to be on this journey with your children.