SJEDS Tech Connect

This school year, TechConnect was marked by collaborative projects among grade levels, school wide and across subject areas. These were accomplished by introducing web 2.0 tools that foster content, communication, collaboration, and creativity. Through video, audio and written content, produced through different media, students became part of a bigger learning community. Seamless integration of technology and classroom curriculum was fostered through collaboration between classroom & resources and especially our drama teacher.

ELC students pointed and clicked their way through age appropriate websites that foster letter recognition, math practice and global awareness. Their fine motor mouse skills improved with specific activities that built a strong foundation. Free play time on the computer is especially important to encourage exploration and problem solving and increase their comfort level. Please take advantage of following pre-selected links from your student's teacher's blogs.

Meet the first graders, our school experts in PowerPoint. They have been working hard on their Bug presentation. Their creativity is evident in every slide. Images and colorful backgrounds are just a few highlights. Skills such as text manipulation with highlighting, spell check, font size and spacing were practiced without them even noticing. Next time when you are preparing a presentation for work, ask your student to help you!

Second graders in turn have been working with word processing. They are using shortcuts and are getting comfortable with basic skills such as entering and deleting text, spacing, alignment, different fonts and sizes and spell checking. Mrs. Davidson and Mrs. Bennett have created incredibly cute video clips with their students' president puppets. Don't miss out in viewing them on Mrs. Davidson's classroom blog.
Our third graders worked on a Black History project. They created a PowerPoint presentation in TechConnect and learned about basic editing and formatting functions by customizing a presentation layout created Ms. Barnwell. Mrs. Wrenn checked out one of our Neo keyboards and took it to the Tree Hill fieldtrip. Students were thrilled to be “in field” journalists and took us along with them "virtually". Please take the time to read about their exciting adventure on the classroom blog.

Each student in fourth, fifth and sixth grade has received a memory drive that they are taking back and forth from home to school. In the next few weeks before school is out, they will practice getting comfortable with saving and retrieving documents between computers. Fourth graders have been working hard on their explorer unit. Mr. Foster has created a virtual Mixbook for his classes. Each group has been assigned an explorer and is in charge of creating a double page layout, including images and background information. During this collaborative class project students, became aware of copyright vs. public and creative commons images available on the web, as well as practiced saving, browsing and uploading files. Sixth graders have been incredible storytellers by writing the plot and acting in their first documentary. They have used slide transitions, sound and music files, as well as recording skills to edit images into an Egypt story movie clip for their first grade buddies.

Please continue to explore TechConnect's Resource page with your child. You will find many different productivity and entertainment sites and tools that will support and foster your child's technology comfort level.