Gnets Project Begins

I went and did my initial evaluations of the teachers on Monday at GNETS. The whole experience was very positive. I got to meet with four of the five teachers that I was scheduled to meet with. One seemed slightly reluctant, one was overjoyed, one was interested, and one was grateful for the help with technology. I am very excited to be a part of this project. We talked about their subject content and how I could help integrate the Smartboard into their classrooms. Now my responsibility will be to help them begin creating lessons and ideas for the parent breakfast presentations in May.

For Mrs. B, I will be creating a lesson about geography focussing in central or south america and/or Europe. Mrs. B brought up the interesting issues about how these students will not read or do homework, so powerpoints and technology cut out a lot of the fluff and excess that just confuse these students and do not increase their understanding of the concepts. She has also found that the Smartboard technology that is available is geered towards the elementary level of entertainment. I am going to work to make the lesson appropriate for middle schoolers, and I am going to look into the pre-made lessons that I found the other day to see what is available on the internet for 6th grade curriculum. The pre-made lessons would also fight the teacher's fear of the Smartboard taking too much time out of her day in planning.
On my initial evaluation, this teacher can turn on and preform the basic concepts (level 1). I do not believe that she is at a point where she is capable of using the Smart Notebook technology to its full extent. So we will be working for Mrs. B to be on level 2 very soon. I actually could see her going beyond level two very quickly and becoming a media rich teacher at level 3.


For Mrs. J, I will be working with her on a science lesson. She teaches life science, earth science, and physical science. I am going to look into dissection programs for her to use in her classroom. One idea she had was to have her students build a machine on the Smartboard. Her 5th graders are also learning about the solar system right now. I found and showed her a solar system program that came with the Smartboard technology. She is surprisingly just a beginner on the technology. I was very upset to learn that she is one of only two teachers in the building who has access to the Smartboard in her classroom but did not have the software on her computer to use to plan lessons. She had no idea how the Smartboard actually worked except for as a projector. Her Smartboard was not actually in her room but placed in a side room. She is also interested in learning other technology programs like webquests. I would also love to introduce her to the idea of Webspiration which would be so cool on a Smartboard! I took the time to load the software onto her computer and show her how to run a few basics. I asked her to play around with the programming at home some this week so that she will be more familiar with the technology next time we meet. As for her level rating, she is truly going to need a lot of help to get to level 1. We need to start with the basics with Mrs. J. She was so excited about everything I showed her and we talked about during our time together. She hugged me, told me that I was the best, and said that she loved me. I definitely won her over for sure.

(8 hrs, 10 min)