Computer Lab Time

The computer lab room at my school is great (when everything is working properly). I went ahead and booked the time for the lab in order to show students how to access their student portal, and then view their grades, textbook, and other electronic resources from the web. The lesson went grade with my smaller classes as I had about 20 students, but for my larger classes of 30 and 34 (inclusion classes), it was a bit of a nightmare. There were only 22 WORKING computers and then not enough individual chairs, so I had to use student desk chairs for the remainder students to use while they waited for their turn on the computers. After the dust was settled, all of the students were able to log on successfully To their portal.

We then began to go over proper procedures to use a USB flash drive. Every student has their own as it was on the classroom materials list, thus becoming a great tool for each student along with a great method to saving paper. With the SMART board as my friend, I showed the students how to create their own science folder within the drive and how to use the 'save as' function on their programs. This will be used to have the students save their science current event papers along with any lab reports that they construct. The idea is to then grade their papers from their external hard drive, so that they may view comments and their grade. I would of ours then save their paper in their class file for myself, to keep record of their grades/comments.

Well, these are just a few ways that I use te enology in the classroom, at least for the beginning of the year.

~JA Lorente-Pico

Technology Tools in the Classroom

Wouldn't it be nice to have a classroom full of all your technology "wish" items? Well, I'm sure we all dream of what we would like, only to not even get half of what we want. Imagine my surprise, when I was surplussed from my old Elementary school to my new Middle School last year. I walked into the classroom and saw I had a desktop computer for the classroom, my own lap top, a SMART board, surround sound in the room hooked up from both the TV and the computer, and even an audio microphone system to use in class. I may not have found those amazing CPS "clickers" that I love to use, but I sure got a lot either way. So, imagine my surprise, when I go to one of the first faculty meetings and our technology person asks another faculty member "I have all these items in the room that I don't know how to use...". My jaw nearly dropped to the floor! I couldn't believe that this was the technology person in our school! This one act alone, left me thinking of how many teachers must actually be confronted with this same dilemma simply because they do not know how to use their equipment. I am sure the school had some type of orientation the first year it opened on how to use the classroom tools, but that was 4 years ago. From then to now, there have been many teachers that could use another type of refresher class, and even introduce the programs that the school also pays for, such as: GIZMOS, FCAT Explorer, UnitedStreaming, and BrainPop. This is actually something that I have tried to tackle on for one of our upcoming non-opt teacher workdays. Here's to crossing our fingers!

~J.A. Lorente-Pico