August 24th, 2011 Written by Mrs. Haugeberg · technology
Well, another summer is officially recorded in the books. I spent some time with my family with a lake trip to Minnesota and we took care of several home improvement projects. I saw a couple of Cubs games and a couple of great concerts. I saw Bears training camp last week and finally visited Lincoln Park Zoo for the first time, even though I have lived in the Chicago area for over 20 years!
Welcome back to Avoca West! I am really excited to get to know my 1st graders and get back together with those awesome 2nd and 3rd graders. We are “taking care of business” these first couple of weeks. We discuss the classroom rules and what being Respectful, Responsible, Safe and Kind look like in the computer lab.
We have a new lab of 24 iMacs (actually they arrived just after spring break last year) and we are really looking forward to using them for some great projects. They really are quite beautiful and they are just as powerful as they are pretty. I’m really excited about the built-in camera and all the other bells and whistles.
We have some great ideas for this year so make sure you check back here and visit your child’s blog to keep up with what’s going on with technology at Avoca.
May 24th, 2011 Written by Mrs. Haugeberg · Uncategorized
The looming end of the school year always brings on a rush of project finishing in all of the Encore Tech classes. We have been doing some amazing things.
1st Grade
My youngest students just finished with their first experience with VoiceThread in a project that tied in with a cross-curricular unit on Fairy Tales. Each student created an alternate ending for a class-selected fairy tale. These students also made dioramas, drew a scene from their favorite fairy tale and created an invitation to their evening musical performance using Pages.
Ms. Holinger’s Class reimagined the ending to Rapunzel.
Ms. Chapko’s Class created alternate endings for Hansel and Gretel.
Currently, all the first graders are using Kidspiration to create an “All About Me” project that will introduce themselves to their second grade teacher for next year. We are exporting the pictures as a picture file (.jpg) and uploading them to GoogleDocs as part of our continuing effort to go green and reduce printing and paper costs here at Avoca West.
2nd Grade
In second grade, we worked with Wordle for the first time, creating a word cloud to accompany their biography project. Make sure you check out your student’s blog to see their project. We also used Numbers to create a chart based on the number of Skittles they had in a snack size bag. They customized the colors in their chart to match the colors of the skittles and then took a screenshot of their chart and posted it to their blog.
Right now, the second graders are using ComicLife to create their “All About Me” project to introduce themselves to their next year’s 3rd grade teacher. These projects will not be available to view online due to privacy concerns.
3rd Grade
Third grade Encore Tech works a little different than many of the other grade levels. One of their main areas of focus is creating a sculpture using PicoCrickets and then making that sculpture come alive with computer programming. There are 3 basic ways to animate their sculpture, lights, sound, and motion. Each sculpture has to incorporate 2 of the 3 methods. We only have one class set of PicoCrickets so we rotate that unit from class to class throughout the school year. Another major unit is Digital Photography with editing in both iPhoto and Photoshop Elements.
Currently, all 3rd graders are creating their “All About Me” project using GoogleSites to make a webpage that their 4th grade teacher will be able to view. Their webpages will only be visible to the teachers who have access within our Google domain.
March 4th, 2011 Written by Mrs. Haugeberg · Uncategorized
Here is the presentation for my new NLU friends. I enjoyed talking with all of you. If you have any other questions, please email me or leave a comment on this post.
Does your child like Webkinz or Club Penguin? What about letting them play in a virtual world of educational games? iLearnTechnology.com describes BrainNook:
“BrainNook is a virtual world for kids where they can develop math and English skills while playing in the free online playground. There are over a hundred education games packed into theBrainNook virtual world, all of them are based on foundational math, English, and grammar concepts. The math games cover concepts from single digit addition to 3D spatial visualization. English games cover everything from building simple sentences to counting syllables. The games are all woven into a fun virtual world that students can explore and unlock. BrainNook also strengthens students reading, reasoning, decision-making skills, analysis, and computer literacy. Students choose a character (alien) and name, when they enter BrainNook for the first time, they are dropped onto Earth where their spaceship has crashed. They are greeted by an earthling named Bella who teaches them how to navigate the world, and earn stars by playing games. The stars that are earned can be used to buy back spaceship parts. Students can travel to several locations within the virtual world that are based on real-life regions of the Earth Students learn about each region through trivia, question popups, and local artifacts. In each world students can play math and English games with other players in the safe online environment. As they build up their skills, new worlds will be unlocked and they can buy items from the local market or work on assembling their spaceship by assembling puzzles. The games in BrainNook are scaffolded so it adjusts to students ability level as they progress. Games can be played individually or in head-to-head competition. Because this site is geared toward elementary students, no personal information or personal messages are included in the virtual world.”
November 1st, 2010 Written by Mrs. Haugeberg · Uncategorized
Third graders are well into their projects in Encore Tech. 3 of the 4 classes are working on digital photography. They have all taken their photos and uploaded them to their computers. We were very lucky to have some gorgeous October weather while we were taking our outdoor photos. They will now be using iPhoto and Photoshop to edit their photos. Airbrushing anyone?
Mrs. Rick’s class is the first group to work with the PicoCrickets. These are programmable building pieces that can move, light up and make sounds. They are much like Legos and can even be combined with Lego pieces to create larger projects. The students will be creating their project plan in the next week and may also need to bring some objects from home.
September 14th, 2010 Written by Mrs. Haugeberg · Uncategorized
There have been a few big changes in the Tech Department here at Avoca West. Gail Soriano accepted the Technology Facilitator/Technology Coordinator position at Marie Murphy and I am now at Avoca West FULL TIME! It has been a bit of an adjustment (mostly figuring out when I am going to get all of my “home” stuff) but I am really excited to be here on a daily basis.
Encore Tech is finally getting back into the swing of things here at Avoca West. We have been getting reacquainted with the computer lab and the expectations during Encore Tech class.
2nd grade is currently MAP testing during their Encore Tech class time. They will be working on keyboarding and word processing as soon as we can get back to the regular curriculum.
1st Grade is learning about Internet Safety and how it is much like the safety rules they follow in their homes or here at school.
3rd Grade has been getting adjusted to the laptops that they now get to use and they have been doing a few “maintenance” tasks that will make things easier when we really get going next week.
April 6th, 2010 Written by Mrs. Haugeberg · Uncategorized
We have been very busy in Encore Technology classes.
1st Grade has been doing some research online for a location to which they would have a flat version of themselves sent, ala Flat Stanley. They used a webpage that contained links from our district website. They learned how to use the various buttons on their browsers to navigate the web pages. Next they will be creating a podcast about their travel as their flat selves. Make sure you check out their student blogs where they have written about using laptops and posted a picture they created of 100 things using the stamps in KidPix.
2nd Graders have posted on their student blogs about the animal they researched for their Africa project. They have also posted a Wordle about a famous person on which they did a biographical research project. We are currently getting ready to use Pages to create a table of data and then use the same program to create a graph from that data. They did have a lot of fun collecting their data… they are graphing the number of each color of Skittles they found in a snack size bag of the candy.
In 3rd Grade, the students are finishing up their projects in Photoshop, they have learned how to use the crop tool, the text tool, the brush select tool and the move tool. They also got to modify a picture using whatever tools they wished. They are in the process of posting those pictures on their student blogs so make sure you check out the awesome creations they made using Photoshop.
