Week+6

This was a very eventful week. The team is offically sending back their Dell laptops. Everything has been packed up. This puts everyone in an unproductive position. I apologize right now if my teachers don't get their wikis completed. We are taking the next step and ordering new macbooks. I will be encouraging the team to experiment with their macs over break. Although their is lack of technology in the classrooms, all the teachers are making an effort to visit the computer labs with the students. Students appear to be engaged in learning and excited to participate in webquests or online activities.

On Wednesday we had over half of the students take the student assessment survey during class. After checking our data in Survey Monkey we only had two responses actually collected. We are experience an error and I not sure why. This will push our data analysis task until next week. My team continues to experience technology frustration and I have my hands-tied in helping them. In addition to student assessment surveys I suggested to the teachers the option of giving the students a survey to assess their teaching and learning experience in the classroom.

In the classroom we continue to focus on 21st century learning skills in the classroom. I am encouraging my teachers to provide the students collaborative learning experiences, critical thinking opportunities, and application to real-life experiences. We are using the computer labs as part of the technology integration. We are pursing the opportunity to have students work on projects all next week before Christmas break. Math is having students work collaboratively to create a test and test key to challenge their peers with. In Social Studies we are using the labs to send the students on a Google Earth journey through Egypt.

Our team continues to explore opportunities to "put students at the center of learning". We find ourselves still taking responsibility for the teaching and not allowing our students explore learning and thinking. Project based learning is going to develop over the next 2 years. I would love to have access to resources with lesson ideas for middle school subjects. This is what I have found so far: [] [] []

Hi, I am sorry that you guys continue to run into trouble with the technology! Can you please shoot me an email when you get the surveys finished! Let me know if I can help! Teresa