Teaching Keyboarding

One of my main goals this year is to help my students improve on their keyboarding skills. With a new standardized test, complete with writing prompt, all to be completed on the computer in their near future- keyboarding is an essential life skill for them!

Here is a site with LOTS of free sites to help teach keyboarding. I use some of these with my students when we visit the laptop computer lab once a week. Enjoy :)

NETS and Reading- Double Dipping

If you're anything like me, you are CONSTANTLY stressing over your students reading progress and development. In an attempt to stay calm and keep my head above the water, I am always looking for ways to "double dip."  Here you will find some great iPad apps that are reading specific.  Hitting both reading standards and NETS all at once :)

Too Young for Technology???

In this day and age, does it make sense to argue that preschoolers, kindergarteners and first graders are too young for technology? This is definitely something I used to think. However, now that I have become more confident in my own technological abilities and have explored many of the great resources that are available to young children, I have to say, I think my mind has changed. It's really quite amazing at the amount of programs and resources that have become accessible to young children and their families. Something else that also ccontinues to prove my previous notions and sentiments wrong is watching my 4 year old nephew use an iPad with greater ease than some adults! 

While I think I still encounter aaccesssibility issues in terms of enough computers/ipads for individual student use, it is still great to have some go to resources for those breif opportunitites and for eager parents as well. Starfall is a GREAT resource to have on hand for both parents and teachers. It's a resource that caters to those early readers. Visit both the web and  app version of this wonderful resource :)

Thinking about new literacies and NETS

New literacies is a term that is hard to define. Just as the term literacy and what it means to be literate is hard to define. One of the biggest reasons for these difficulties is because literacy and what it means to be literate is constantly evolving and changing. A literate person needs to be able to read, write and navigate the world around them. New literacies requires students to utilize a variety of different mediums to report out on and access a wide range of information. Students must now be literate in the are of technology. And within the realm of technology, there is a revolving door of changes that are constantly being made, causing the term literacy to change. Overall, new literacies is and should encompass all parts of the world, not just more traditional technologies.

NETS for students requires students to be more than familiar with technology. It also requires students to know more about the technology and resources they have available to them on a deeper level. Students need to be technologically savvy. They need to be ready, willing and able to navigate the online world that is constantly growing and changing around them. Students need to be able to acquire foundational computer and technological skills that will help them search, find, evaluate and synthesis all that they have at the tips of their fingers.

NETS for teachers requires teachers to have the same technological "savviness" as their students and then some. Teachers who are comfortable and confident in using and teaching with/about technology will help reinforce that same sentiment in their students. Its is the teachers role to integrate this imperative part of literacy into the current curriculum so students can become literate in all senses and meanings of the word. The successful implementation of technology education will breed success in our students.