Elementary School Observation

I spent Friday at Colham Ferry Elementary School in Watkinsville, GA. I spent the day with the Library Media Specialist Kathy Graham. I began the day by watching the Elementary School students prepare and produce the morning announcement. Mrs. Graham showed me how the broadcast takes place.  The next part of the morning several classes came in to check out books. Mrs. Graham explained how her flexible scheduling takes place.  She currently does not have a para-professional and the students check in and check out their own books. I was able to observe this process.  I helped two  classes look for books on biographies.  I am not used to working with Elementary school students but this was a very positive experience for me. I was very nervous but I ended up having a great time and learned a good deal with the process. I  even did story time and read to a 4th grade class.  During the day I was able to do a training with the Art and Music teacher on using Voki and voice-stream in their classes (Lesson plan is embedded in my wiki)  both were very appreciative and look forward to incorporate using them in the opening of their lessons. In the afternoon I did a team teaching activity with the LMS about using citation machine with a 5th grade class. The LMS discussed with the class how to use citation machine with books and I covered using Citation Machine with websites. I also shared with the students how to evaluate websites and used a few hoax websites for students to evaluate. This was a very eventful day and I learned a great deal about how an Elementary School library works.  Time 8 hours

Afterschool October 27th

Today is the day before a student Holiday. I only had 2 students in my after school group. Though we had a small group these gentlemen made a phenomenal video interviewing each other about bullying. Some of the best advice for the week. This will make a wonderful video for all students to see. I was really proud of both boys. The videos were very heartfelt.

Media Specialist Meeting

Today I attended the Clarke County Media Specialist monthly meeting. There were several things discussed at the meeting. The first thing discussed was the use of Destiny in the CCSD media center. Several Media Specialists reported that they were having difficulty with using Destiny.  ALso discussed was what might happen with SPLOST funds for the Media center. This really caused me to think and reflect on the most effective way to use funds in the media center. I am a technology guy and really excited about the use of e-books in the classroom. Several Media Specialist discussed concerns, and ideas about new school and media center construction.

1.5 hours

New videos

I have many new students who started to partake in my Digital Club. Today I started off my lesson by playing a Get to Know you game as an Ice Breaker. It's pretty cool that I have had several students approach me in the hall asking if they could join the Digital Literacy Club. Today we brainstormed several new videos and practiced shooting video.

After School October 18th

Well,
We finally did it. The students were able to successfully edit, put in music, and produce TWO videos for the morning announcements. I was very happy and excited for my students. They did a fantastic job.

Observed Lesson Reflection

Today was my scheduled observation.  The students in my afterschool group particpated in my lesson on copyright music. I thought that it went very well. By the end of the lesson many of the students in the class were able to add music to their digital video. I was really proud of my students @ CMS.

Time 2 hours

Webinar

Tonight I took part in my first ever webinar on learncentral. The webinar that I took part in was called the "mini-geek fest"  this was appealing because well, it had geek in it. This webinar is run by two teachers in Arizona and it was billed as a place to share ideas.  I shared my blog from my independent study and many people enjoyed it.  The thing that I took away the most from this webinar is the doc scanner app for Ipad and Iphone. This is amazing. Basically it is OCR software and you can scan anything with the camera feature on your Iphone/Ipad. This was a very worthwile webinar and I am sure I will take place next month as well.



Time Spent 1 hour

After School October 6th

Anti-bullying continues. Today the students were able to edit the videos that they made. The students were able to create title slides and place the video into windows movie maker. I had to be really patient with my students today as there were many steps to this project. I walked the students through the project using my computer and the Smartboard. I wish that I would have printed out a handout for the students to reference.