Ideas
for Using Technology During the First Days of School
As a new or renewed teacher, you have the opportunity to spice up
those first few monotonous days of school with a tool the students will
enjoy...Technology! Consider these ideas to get your students going and
enhance your first few experiences with these new students.
- If you have a computer lab
available for teacher sign-out, chances are there will be no problem
getting in the first few days of school. Take the plunge!
- Instead of spending days on
monotonous "housekeeping" items right off the bat (i.e.
distributing textbooks, icebreakers, syllabus), use a discussion
activity like this one to wake sleeping
student minds.
- Make it Fun! Spending a day or
two learning the features of a computer program or graphing calculator
will not only entice students, it will start their year off with a
favorable impression of technology. Here are some specific ideas:
- Use Inspiration software to
have students create a web about a topic from the summer (i.e. a
special trip or activity), or have they create a timeline web
explaining what they did over the summer.
- Use AppleWorks, Microsoft
Excel, or some other graph making program to graph the amount of
time they spent eating, sleeping, traveling, etc. over the summer.
- Internet Scavenger Hunt: (my
example) Get them into Internet research right away! Give them
a 10 to 20 question scavenger hunt like this one that allows them
to document their travels on the Internet and their
thought-processes.
- Provide resources online.
Create your own teacher web page complete with rubrics, links and
your email address so that students and parents can get to know
your class right off the bat.
- Put your classroom
expectations online (my
example) and take students to the lab to read over and accept
it. This will help students with their tracking skills while
reading online too.
- Try an activity like "Callab-o-Write"
that allows students to start, finish or add to an existing story
created by students around the world. This will get the creative
juices flowing.
Helpful Resources:
http://www.creativeclassroom.org/
http://www.ticalc.org
http://www.nctm.org/
http://www.education-world.com/
http://www.4teachers.org/
http://www.thewritesource.com/index2.htm
http://www.eyesoftime.com/teacher/index.htm
http://library.thinkquest.org/2626/
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