5 posts tagged “technology”
Specifically: "how technology helps people, how food gets from a farm to stores, how builders get wood to make [a] house, [and] ways to communicate."
So I'm going to go in there and show off my laptop. I'm going to (show &) tell kids about all the cool things that can be done with computers when you use them as communication tools. I'll probably even show them a video or two I'll make just for them, because I can.
It's going to be like a conference presentation, but with an audience of 1st graders instead of teachers. (Ok, the classroom teacher will be there as well. I'm sure she'll be listening in.)
But I need an art component to this art lesson, don't I? That's the part that makes me unsure.
I'd like to have my students "build" their own laptops. Sure, it'll be construction paper, glue, and a preprinted keyboard (I am NOT having 1st graders draw qwerty keyboards when there are free, printable versions available), but it's what's on the screen for their fictional video chat that will be important.
If you could use computers to talk to any (living) person in the world, no mater how far away, who would it be?
I anticipate a lot of "I don't know" answers here, but I hope to get them thinking.
And drawing.
And that, in an oversimplified nutshell, is my job.
Those of you who know my program know that I'm supposed to teach art lessons that reinforce the lessons my kids are learning in their other subjects.
My first graders right now are learning about "how technology helps people."
As a tech geek I think this is awesome, but now I have the difficult job of picking which technology to showcase. There's so much cool stuff!
Steve, Rachel, Cristi, and I just finished recording Episode 2 of Teachers 2.0, and other than Cristi's ISP being a pain it was a good show.
Over the weekend I'll be taking the 40+ minute file and hopefully editing it down to 30 minutes or less to make it "commute friendly." We have enough idle banter throughout the show to make such an edit possible, I think.
That being said I think it was much better than our first attempt, which seemed to be plagued with both hardware and software problems that plagued our audio recording capabilities.
Ok, I'm far from finished building the site (I'm still not happy with the color scheme, and I haven't installed anything to improve it beyond Drupal's basic functionality), but thanks to Chris Craft the Tech Education Network is up and running!
...or at least that's what I'm calling it until someone thinks of a better name. Seriously, I'm open to suggestions. Once we have a good name I'll register a domain name for the site. Until then you can find it here.
Please check it out, kick the tires, and let me know what you think. If you like it, please pass this along to others who might be interested. If you think something should be changed, then post something in the forums or send me an email at theartguy@gmail.com .
... and please, don't judge it by its current color scheme template. I'm still working on that.
