K-8 Computer Lab Teachers

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Cheska Lorena on September 22, 2009 at 11:57am

Hello!

This is great-- I'm glad to find a large group of educators involved with computers and technology in the classroom. I'm currently taking a grad course on lab methods in educational technology, and I'm interested in finding out more about the different roles of a classroom teacher vs lab coordinators in a computer lab setting. Would you mind sharing some of your thoughts and experiences in response to the following questions?

What do you perceive as obstacles in planning and using the computer lab in collaboration with teachers and other staff?
What do you recommend as other ways of collaboration in the computer lab?
In terms of instruction, what do you think are the roles and responsibilities should both parties--teachers and tech specialists--assume?

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Kevin Carter on September 22, 2009 at 12:40pm

Formerly, I taught in a middle school computer lab. I found that there were so many free sites that could be used with students. At first we tried to purchase software, but that was an economic disaster. I tried to vary the sites that the kids saw each session by finding something on English, math, science, social studies etc. The kids could then visit the sites at home to show parents and/or continue the experience. The issue with each site was to provide some assessment tool/opportunity to make the kids feel they had to accomplish something to move on to the next activity or to "free time." There are several online quiz makers that allow you to easily create an assessment. So times I would make them solve a certain number of problems or answer certain questions before moving on.
One example:http://www.mrmyers.org/Math_Mania/ttmult.html
http://www.prongo.com/unitedstates/index.html

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Denise Duffy on December 15, 2009 at 10:46am

Hi, I am a Teacher Assistant in our computer labs and do instruct our 1000 elementary students. Classes come once a week and are accompanied by their teacher. We have a set of lessons in word, power point, excel just to get the students started. I have helped their teachers come up with projects using a number of different apps including voicethread, podcasts, movie maker, i movie. I also have a wiki that I put some of their student work on www.villagewiki.pbworks.com. We use Google Earth, Pixie (alternative to KidPix), and I just started trying to introduce to both students and their teachers Wordle. For the older students I have tried introducing Scratch (a programming language developed my MIT that makes it easy to create interactive stores, games and animations). But it is hard to actually get one of our teachers to commit to doing project, with so much on their plates already. I try to show them a little and hope they get hooked!

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jody Maxey on July 9, 2010 at 12:17pm

I am not a computer lab teacher, but I might as well be as much time as me and my science students use our mobile computer lab. My advice probably goes for any subject, keep it interesting and meaningful to them. Have you heard of
edu.glogster.com? Awesome, check it out. or
http://museumbox.e2bn.org/? Pretty cool, also. I have used the glogs and we love it. Going to try the museum box this year.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Pablo Benvenuto on November 22, 2010 at 10:56pm

Jeremiah,

I would love to get the feedback of somebody like you about my community. My partners and I have developed a new community for teachers and students called StudyBuddyCampus. It is free and it represents our vision of the future for the use of technology in the classroom. Our goal is to revolutionize the delivery of education by combining an interactive game like experience with the latest educational content. We have several teachers and students testing our Beta site at http://www.studybuddycampus.com, and we are constantly releasing new features. Given the topic of your discussion, I thought you might be interesting in taking a look, and if you have the time, we would love to receive feedback from people with your kind of experience.

Best Regards.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by jackmehoff on January 7, 2011 at 1:24pm

You should try using Collaborize Classroom with your students.  Collaborize Classroom is a really useful free online learning forum where you can post topics and activities for your students to respond to.  You can also embed multimedia, video, articles, interviews, word documents etc.

http://www.youtube.com/user/CollaborizeClassroom

• ▶ Reply

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• …
• 17
• 18
• 19
• Next ›
• Page