Home School Mom's Positive Review

The Internet is an amazing place!  In the interest of keeping up with technology and education, I created a Google Alert with the words "Teaching Technology" (With an alert, Google will email you when an article on the web matches your key word alert.)  After weeks of learning new and helpful technology tidbits, imagine my surprise when an today's alert mentioned my book!

A fellow blogger and home school mom wrote a rave review of Teaching Technology Through Interest Projects!  Thank you, Lisa Keva at Home School Circus for your positive words!  Check out her review: http://www.upatdawnreadytowork.com/2012/12/teaching-technology-through-interest-projects-review.html 

Great Teaching Technology Sites

Start the week off right 

by learning something new!  

Let's face it, technology will outstrip us in the great race if we don't stay in touch with new developments each week.  In my never ending search for excellent sites for students and teachers, I have found few that I would like to highlight each Monday.

I'll start with some free stuff:

Free Tech for Teachers delivers excellent news on the latest in technology and how to download some freebies.

Free Scratch Download works on practically any computer and any computer operating system.  Scratch is the best critical thinking activity for ages 7-97 that I have found on the Internet.  Created by students at MIT (that's Massachusetts Institute of Technology- one of the most prestigious universities in the world), SCRATCH makes computer programming as easy as stacking Legos.  Use your stacks to program custom animations to tell a joke or teach a class about your Interest Project.  I love this program so much that I included it in my Teaching Technology Through Interest Projects resource book.  Click to see a sample Scratch Interest Project.

Student Documentary - Interest: Guitars

Here's an excellent example of a fifth grade student using his interest to motivate learning.  

• See how he researched his topic using the Internet and books.  
• Watch as he synthesizes his newfound knowledge into a documentary movie - with planned preproduction of shots and written narration script.  
• Finally, he demonstrates his understanding of technology through the application of iMovie to produce his video.  

Excellent work, Wyatt!

How Do You Teach Technology?

I was an educator for 15 years in a school system that invested millions in technology.  Day after day, I witnessed exactly the same uses of technology: drill and practice for state tests.

In my grades 3-6 gifted and talented classroom, I chose to utilize the power of technology for more.  Differentiating based on student's individual interests, I allowed my students to research independently to become resident experts on any topic of their interest and develop innovative ways to share their expertise.  My job as facilitator was to teach the students how to research on the Internet (finding reliable sources and correctly cite the sources) and to introduce them to innovative presentation technology such as documentary movie making and animation programs like MIT's Scratch.

The creative and informative work they produced with topics ranging from "The History of Dragons" to "The White Rose- Opposition to Hitler within Germany" could not have been possible without the freedom of student choice.   I certainly wouldn't have assigned the latter topic to a fifth grader, but she chose to assign it to herself. (To be honest, I had never heard of The White Rose Society before my student's presentation and learned much that day- a perfect example of the power of the Internet for education.)

My book, Teaching Technology Through Interest Projects, was written to share that power with other educators- public or private school teachers and home school parents.

Interesting Choices

Zulu Children in Africa- An Interesting Choice of Topics

For the past two weeks, I had the pleasure of working with a terrific group of fourth grade gifted children at Bascomb Elementary School in Georgia.  They were enthusiastic to learn about interest projects and downright thrilled when they discovered each would get to choose his or her own topic.  I am always amazed by students' choices because of their varied subjects and how much their interests reveal about them.  To understand my point, here is a sampling of some recent interest project topics:

Neil Peart - A nine-year-old girl really chose the drummer for the rock band Rush as her topic.  Very interesting!

MIT - A boy thinking ahead to college chose the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

African Americans Living in Africa - One confused boy actually chose this and I had no idea what he meant.  After our one-on-one meeting, I discovered he wanted to research an African tribe, but didn't know the name of any and so wrote down African Americans living in Africa.  I tactfully explained that if they are from Africa and live in Africa, they are just Africans- not Americans.  I suggested several tribes and he chose the Zulu.

As I continue to share my curriculum with more schools, I will share more INTERESTING CHOICES.

What are Interest Projects?

What are your interests?  What inspires you?  What do you do when your work is done?  What gets you excited about learning?  Is it something old, something new, hands-on, visual, or auditory?  The answers to these questions make life worth living and can make school an exciting place to be.  Rarely do we ask these questions to students, but the answers can be used to guide our instruction and influence the learning capacity of our students. 

In my book, Teaching Technology through Interest Projects available at The Critical Thinking Company(http://www.criticalthinking.com/), students will have the freedom of choice to explore their personal interests and learn correct uses of technology for research and presentations.  Their interests may be life-long or only for a fleeting moment, but the introspective experience of making their own choices on which to base their learning will allow the students to grow not only intellectually, but also, emotionally and socially as they share their interests with others.