Scott Hacke - Media Production Specialist

Hearing what Scott Hacke has to say and seeing the kid made videos he shared with us was inspiring! How great to give students a creative outlet such as the Beaverton Signal-to-Noise Festival! He got me thinking that maybe I could work with my third graders to create a Portland Bridges video in collaboration with Sharon Wood Wortman this year. What could be more motivating and engaging to get a student to learn than knowing he or she will have an opportunity to share what they've learned through a form of media.

Ted Video: Sugata Mitra-Can kids teach themselves?

Remoteness and the quality of education: Sugata Mitra discovered the correlation to why standard test scores went down the more remote a community is, was in direct proportion with teachers wanting to move to urban areas - the more remote the community, the higher percentage of the teachers in those areas wanting to move closer to town. This tells me that when teachers are unhappy, their feelings are reflected in their ability to be effective teachers. I'm not surprised that teacher satisfaction affects performance, but it was interesting that so many teachers - 65% - were not happy living/teaching in remote areas. I would like to know more about why this is too.

I was facinated with Sugata Mitra's additional research called "The Hole in the Wall." He found that even children who had never seen a computer, nor spoken English, were able to do both just by experimenting and teaching each other - after 3 months with no adult help, they could speak 200 words that were computer related. For example: file, exit, save ... They were also using these words in their normal speech. This tells me that children need more opportunities for discovery learning to build/construct their knowledge, and that teachers should never take all the credit for what students are learning.

http://www.edutopia.org

technology use at my school and its impact

I'm grateful to be at a school that highly values technology and has received thousands in funding due to our SES and grants. Teachers use Elmo's, Smart Boards, and computers in their classrooms. We have a full-time technology teacher and two labs for all grades, K-8. Recently my students learned to use Kid Pix as a way to share their understanding of plant growth. These 3rd graders will start learning Power Point, so they can then share their understanding of Portland History. Students also learn keyboarding, Word, Internet Research and Safety, Excel, and more.

Technology's impact on learning is an increase in student engagement, and in rigorous, relevant instruction for the 21st century. As teachers, with the use of technology we are better able to address varied learning styles and our students' multiple intelligences. For example, I find it much easier to provide visual instruction than I did previous to Elmo's and Smart Boards. Before, over 80% of my instruction was probably auditory, unless the information came in a book with pictures and photos. Now, I believe that my purely auditory instruction is down to 50% or less.

I'm looking forward to increasing my curriculum development skills with the use of the Smart Board. Not only will my lessons become more engaging, I'll have more fun designing the lessons.

What I Do and Don't Love About Technology

I love that technology is a creative, brain challenging outlet for me. There are never-ending ways to be creative and challenged. I get great satisfaction when I am able to solve a problem. I enjoy how easy it can be to share a photo with a friend, but get very frustrated when I'm told that the photo(s) are too big to send.

I don't love that some tasks that should be simple can take for HOURS to figure out, and that on-line manuals never work as well as I think they should. The "HELP" buttons should always lead to user-friendly help. I get frustrated when I'm on hold for long periods of time, even when I still have "tech support" for my hard or software.