What Happened To The Time?

I haven’t managed to post in a couple of weeks – getting ready for the school year, planning and presenting about the Activboards we received and the digital cameras we bought for each classroom in our school are reasons, but actually I’ve written numerous comments on other’s blogs and have started to write several posts only to not finish – mainly from lack of time (and sleep). I suspect with the school year started my writing will increase.

In the short time I have been blogging (6 – 7 months) I’ve done my share of ranting about the lack of engagement the vast majority of teachers have with using the newest tools of teaching and learning. Well I’m here to report a bit of a breakthrough with my own co-workers. Through a grant each teacher at my school received a new digital camera. I teamed with another teacher to teach the basic use of the camera, but more importantly the how, when, where and why to use it. We had them download the photo software onto their own classroom computers, take a few pictures and successfully download them, and then showed examples of how we and others have used digital photography to support learning and had them do part of a project.

We have been in school for 3 days and although I have been using my Activboard fairly extensively I have not done anything with my camera yet – but others on my staff have embraced it. A first grade class has already made 3 class books (in three days!!!) illustrated with photos they have taken – one book shows the tour of the school they took the first day with photos of the clinic and nurse and aide so that students will remember who and where they are and similar pages of the office and staff, the library, etc. Other classes have taken photos of each class member to use in various “get-to-know-you” activities and so on. It seems everybody but me has done at least something with their new camera. And guess what? – they’re excited and enthusiastic and ready for more. I hope this signifies a breakthrough! I noticed some of our new laptops arrived today and we have Elmos and various other pieces on the way.

Now if the batteries for my class’s 7 year old laptops would just get ordered (waiting for a disbursement from another grant in late September) I’ll get my 1:1 laptop program going in my classroom including a class blog if things go well – maybe this is why I’m so busy?

Learning Is Messy!