The first week of February has been designated as Digital Learning Awareness Week. Hawthorne is one of only two Montana schools to have registered as participants on the official website At Hawthorne we are excited about educational technology and are wanting to share our projects and passions!
Our students are celebrating the week with a variety of digital projects. At Hawthorne, we are fortunate to have access to a computer lab, a mobile netbook lab, ipads, and ipods. With this electronic equipment at our disposal, students are motivated to learn new content and share their learning in engaging, creative ways.
Fifth graders are posting their opinions on the debate between keyboarding and cursive instruction on their blogs. Fourth graders are posting about how digital technology has impacted their lives. The kids love to express their opinions and look forward to any comments or questions they receive on their blogs.
Third graders have been learning about biographies. Each student chose a famous person to research, using on-line sources as well as books to gather information. Using the ipads, they made delightful animated “Talking Head” videos of their subject, providing a first-person narrative audio track.
Second graders are attempting to digitize their existing manuscripts, scanning illustrations, importing them into a slide show app (30 Hands), then recording their voices reading each page. The same app allows first graders to take photos to create a digital book talk video to showcase some favorite titles from our school library.
Kindergarteners display their mastery of the computer mouse by creating digital artwork and saving it to a file as directed. With help, they will be able to make a group slide show of their art, accompanied by music and their sweet voices talking about their work.
Hawthorne school will be sharing these projects and many more from our Facebook and Twitter feeds, as well as our webpage. We invite you to take a look!
web: www.mcpsmt.org/HawthorneLibrary
