Digital Learning Awareness Week

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!

FaceBook: Hawthorne School Library

Twitter: @HawthorneReads

web: www.mcpsmt.org/HawthorneLibrary

Gathering and Display of Data

Last year, one of my former students was engaged in research for her senior project.  (although how she became a senior so fast, I don't know!)  She had prepared a questionnaire for this purpose, but it was in printed hard copy, which I found disturbing.

In this day and age, it is ridiculous to be gathering data on paper.  First of all, it's terribly inefficient and a waste of resources.  People will misplace the form either before they fill it out or after they fill it out. Trying to get the completed forms back to the originator can be a problem as well, and that is all before  the data is "crunched" in a spreadsheet, or worse, tabulated by hand.

It's so very easy to create forms online to gather data.  I LOVE Google forms, and the different ways I can author and finesse the behavior of the questionnaire is amazing.  There are also lots of sites online that allow a student to create simple polls without any sort of account.

This week, my students will be taking a poll called "My Voice"  from Pearson Education. I would be willing to bet that my district paid quite a bit for this 50 question survey that I could have put together in  less than an hour on Google forms, and I could have customized it... no generic questions.

When my students finish the poll this week, I plan on showing them how they too, can create online forms to collect data.  With luck, none of them will be issuing paper questionnaires for their senior projects, or any other data quest that they may need to do in the future.  I will have them embed their forms into their blogs.  I know they will love this activity and hopefully understand how the tools can be applied in real life.