Cris West & Marissa Clark LS Launch Grant: Pre-K Digital Portfolios

Marissa and I applied for a Launch Grant to spend the year determining the best platform to help us create digital portfolios for each of our students. Our goal was to pilot something that could easily be used by all classroom teachers and Specialists in the Lower School.

Portfolio entries are currently kept in binders in the classroom and the children can access them anytime. We wanted to keep this same format with the digital portfolio, putting greater emphasis than before on making the student work come alive. We wanted to focus on the "child as documenter" and find appropriate technology for them to capture their own work and reflect on it.

One of our successes is finding much ease in using the Pages app and it's templates. Moving away from using MS Word, Pages affords us easier ways to format and layout portfolio entries in a functional and aesthetically pleasing way. One challenge that we are still faced with is the use of Haiku as the platform to digitalize our portfolios. We decided on using and exploring Haiku as a way to digitalize our portfolios because it is already an existing app that parents log into weekly and our Lower School faculty is using it as well. We think it will have the best chances at getting the most "foot traffic." Specialists will also be able to easily access each child's page and include content as well. In the process, we found loading portfolio entries into Haiku cumbersome to do. Uploading each file in each child's digital folder in was a multi-step process that required a lot of teacher time. Moreover, we continue to question whether children will want to look at their portfolios if they are digitalized vs. if they are hard copies on binder.

As we continue to work on this, we hope to continue working with children in reflecting on their work through their own documentations using the Seesaw app and/or Blogger Jr.. As this becomes a practice we hope to devise a system or a flow that children can easily engage in and become fully independent.

Beginning to Understand Technology

While it is fantastic to innovate the classroom via technology with new gadgets, sometimes it is also good to re-establish roots and understanding of all the technology already available.

In this vein of thought, the Diigo Education Group focused on the article: Technology 101 by ProfHacker, a website under the purview of The Chronicle of Higher Education. First, they mention ThatCamp (link here: http://chnm2011.thatcamp.org/about/). This is an "unconference" which is held every year at the Center for History and New Media from 2008 through to the present. The topic of this year's conference contained a theme of "back to basics".

This return to understanding the basics of technology includes such gems as Google's Teach Parents Tech Form (one can only send 12 videos at a time; however, the videos are available on the site) and focus on the importance of building a foundation to facilitate utilizing technology with greater ease. The ability to use technology is important not only for the ability to actually use one's phone, but it is important for teachers in order to better integrate technology with the classroom.

Items that some people take for granted, such as copy/paste may seem too "beginner" for some, but it is important to know. Are there keyboard commands to do copy and paste? (The answer is "yes".) What about passwords? Is your password secure? (If the password is a sequential string of numbers like "12345678" probably not.) A password is important because even if your security software that protects all internet interactions is top-notch, if your lock is the equivalent of a piece of yarn then it negates the security. Can you search the internet? (If the only bookmarks in the browser are links that a friend sent, the answer is probably "no".) How do you turn off that annoying spell check? (The alternative question is how to turn it back on after one too many homophones slip by.) How do I know a link goes to the same place the face of it tells me? (Hint: hover your mouse over the link, but do not click! You can read the address of the place it is attempting to send you.)

Hopefully, the link to Technology 101 article (posted again here for your convenience: http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/technology-101-the-basics-no-one-tells-you/33844?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en ) will help answer these questions and help give a solid foundation in the basics to all who read it.

The Search for Useful Technology in the Early Childhood Classroom

As early childhood educators we are constantly trying to solve the riddle of how we as teachers can invite technology into our child-centered classrooms. We want technology that expands on the children’s ideas about the world, not have their ideas confined by teacher direction. Children at this age explore the world around them through communication and manipulation. They learn through controlling movement and interactions between objects in their environment.

This year the BSR classroom was thankful for the permission to purchase a Smart Table through BB&N’s LAUNCH Grant Program. The Smart Table is a multi-touch, collaborative technology instrument for students at the primary and elementary grade levels. Teachers can customize activities so groups of students can create, explore, and problem solve together by manipulating icons on the table with hand gestures. We feel that the Smart Table shows great potential as an integrated technology piece in the early childhood classroom. It allows groups of students to observe videos, view themselves in classroom photos and short clips, and to use one of the many ready-to-go lesson activities found online in the Smart Exchange. Stay tuned for further updates on the Smart Table in our classroom.

Shera and Anthony
Beginners Teachers

The Bee-Bot in Beginners and Kindergarten

A new piece of technology we have at the Lower School is the Bee-Bot. It is a great tool for teaching sequencing, estimation, problem-solving, and just having fun. The Bee-Bot is already being used in Beginners and Kindergarten. Students in both grades are solving maze-like problems, sending the Bee-Bot from one point to another, sometimes going under bridges or around obstacles. Kindergarteners are also using the Bee-Bot to study rhyming. The Bee-Bot starts on a square with a picture and a word on it. They then have to guide the Bee-Bot to another square that has a picture and word that rhymes with the first. The students are having a lot of fun with the Bee-Bot!