I am thrilled that Mrs. Stump’s class has completed their PicoCricket projects. They did a fantastic job with their creations. We had visitors at our school today, and they stopped in to see what the students had made. The students were proud to explain their projects and demonstrate them for their special guests. Each student will write a blog post about their project on their blog. There will be video of their project in action, as well as photos of the project and programming they did to make the project work! I hope you will stop by their blogs and check out what they have done. Their blog posts will be up soon. Mrs Stefan’s class has already completed their PicoCricket projects and blog posts. By the end of the school year, all third graders will take part in this fun project.
PicoCricket Projects Complete!
January 21st, 2010 Written by sorianog · Classroom Activities, PicoCrickets
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Collabocon…a success
November 9th, 2009 Written by sorianog · Professional Development
On Saturday, I had the opportunity to participate in our first Collabocon. It was a technology focused conference we planned for teachers of the feeder schools for New Trier High School. It was held at Marie Murphy school. We offered four sessions: Collaborative Presentations, Collaborative Communication, Collaborative Document Creation, and Collaborative Professional Networking. If you click on the Collabocon link, you will be able to visit out wiki about the conference. The sessions were recorded, and you may see what we offered at our first ever Collabocon conference! I am proud of all of the presenters and attendees. We are getting ready to play Collabocon 2!
Student Blogs Open for Comment
November 9th, 2009 Written by sorianog · Classroom Activities, blogs
Please check out our blogs and leave comments for our newest bloggers at Avoca School District 37. Our students in grades K-5 and 7th grade have their own blogs.
To find the student blogs:
1. Go to the district webpage avoca37.org
2. Under District Links, click on the school link of your choice.
3. Under Team Pages, click on the grade level of your choice.
4. Under Navigation, click on the “Student Blogs” link.
5. Find the name of the student you are looking for, and click on their blog link.
Many Thanks!
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Exceptional Professional Development
November 4th, 2009 Written by sorianog · Professional Development
I had the pleasure of presenting at the NSBA T+L conference last week with my colleague Chris Brown. We shared our professional development model at Avoca School District 37, as well as what we learned from surveying other educators from around the country/world. You can check out our presentation below. Also, if you wish to view all of the survey results, click here!
Student Blogging Underway
October 15th, 2009 Written by sorianog · Classroom Activities, blogs
We have begun blogging with students in grades 1-5. The students are really excited to receive comments on their posts and pages. On each grade level page, there is link called “Student Blogs”. If you click on this link, you will see the names of the students in that grade level and a link to each student’s blog. Throughout the year, the students will be sharing some of their work in their blog posts. Although they are not yet open to the public, students are hard at work getting them ready to share with the world.
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Blogs in Plain English
August 28th, 2009 Written by admin · Uncategorized
We are going to begin student blogging soon. Each student in our building will have their own blog. If you are not sure what a blog really is, watch this short video to see what blogging is really about!
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Summer 2009
August 24th, 2009 Written by sorianog · Uncategorized
I spent my summer taking graduate classes, playing with my daughter, and taking a short vacation to California. It was a busy summer. I also trained teachers and prepared computers for the start of the school year. I am excited that the new year has begun. I am looking forward to getting the student blogs up and running. I hope you will make a comment and tell me about your summer too.
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Famous First Graders
May 19th, 2009 Written by sorianog · Classroom Activities
During Encore Technology my first grade class dressed up and pretended that they were famous for something! They played the parts of famous person, paparazzi, reporter, and fan! They even got to walk on the red carpet. It was a really exciting day. During the weeks following our special dress up day, the students got to create a PowerPoint page about themselves. They enjoyed making word art and recording their voice. We turned their PowerPoint slides into a movie. I hope you enjoy seeing my students’ first attempts at using PowerPoint when they were famous first graders.
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Wordle Sample
April 23rd, 2009 Written by sorianog · Tech Tools
I made this at http://www.wordle.net/. Wordle is a great website to use to make pictures with words. You can have your students make wordles about the things you are studying in your classroom. How have you used wordles?
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Dr. Tim Tyson
April 15th, 2009 Written by sorianog · Professional Development
Pictured here: Kim Zimmer, me, Dr. Tim Tyson, and Chris Brown
On April 7th, Dr. Tim Tyson came to our school district for one of my favorite Professional Development days we have had at Avoca! I had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Tyson last year at the Illinois Computing Educators (ICE) conference. It was just a little preview of what I would be experiencing by having Dr. Tyson at our school district for a day. I was really excited to have him come and share his experiences with all of our district. I was not disappointed. I learned about personalizing my blog, and was moved to tears by the projects he shared which were created by students at his old school, Mabry, where he was Principal. You can check out the archived website from Mabry by clicking here! I have learned so much from Dr. Tyson and I hope to share that with my students and colleagues for years to come! Another great part of our day featured special guests from Illinois and Ohio! These special friends came to our district for the day to share some of their technology integration ideas and skills with us. A variety of classes that were offered such as Voicethread, Google Apps for Education, iPod Touch in the Classroom, Twitter, Personal Learning Networks and much more! I want to send a special thank you out to all of our “special friends” who came and shared their special skills with us! We will gladly return the favor!
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