A Humble (and Apologetic) Return to Blogging

I've been neglect in my duties as an edu-blogger. Guilty as charged! The worst part is that I know I have missed out on a lot of great ideas. Thank goodness for Bloglines.com. I can get alllll caught up over the next couple weeks! But here I am, back in the game, and really excited about the opportunities this semester has to offer. I am still in my second grade classroom with the same teacher-mentor I had the honor to work with last semester. I have already attended the first day of school and Back to School Night, along with spending a few mornings and afternoons in the classroom each week. This semester will be challenging. I am working on my senior thesis for my Hispanic Studies major, as well as dividing my time among my education courses, my classroom practicum experience, and a job. Luckily, I'm ready (I think!) to step up to the challenge. I hear time management is a crucial skill that teachers need, both in and out of the classroom. So, here we go!

Part of my technology requirement this semester is observing 10 hours of teaching in technology. The 10 hours can also include co-teaching a lesson and teaching my own lesson that incorporates technology. I did my first official observation of technology 2 days ago, and I was actually rather surprised at what I saw! Remembering back to my elementary school days, our computer time was generally game time. Oregon Trail was definitely my favorite. However, this game was one-on-one interaction with the computer. I suppose it could be considered social, because everyone would be bragging about the river they just crossed, or whining about the oxen that just died. However, no teacher instruction was required, and the objective was just to make it through the Oregon Trail!

I observed a second grade keyboarding lesson 2 days ago. The children walked into the room and sat down on the red carpet in front of the Smart Board. The teacher quickly reviewed the "home keys" and "home position." Positioning of the wrist was reviewed, and the teacher touched on how the fingers should be placed. Then, the kids were let loose! They sat at their computers, put on their headphones, and spent the rest of the 45 minutes on a typing program called Type to Learn 3. Most of the kids seemed to enjoy the program, which has levels with typing activities that progressively get more complicated and add more keys. I was startled to find that the teacher was not really required to do anything but circulate around the room, troubleshoot and give a few pointers on finger positions to selected kids. The kids seemed to be in their own worlds, completely detached from eachother and the teacher.

Today in my teaching technology class at college, we reviewed the two most important parts of technology: the two C's, communication and collaberation. In my opinion, this use of technology really did...neither! The kids didn't talk to eachother, nor did they collaberate. It's true, children need to learn to type, especially in this technology focused world. I began to wonder, however, if typing could be more than just, well, typing!

I noticed that Ben, the Tech-Savvy Educator, was struggling with the same questions. How can educators teach keyboarding in a fun, interactive, motivating way? How can keyboarding incorporate communication and collaberation? He suggested chat rooms. I love the idea of online chatting and blogging, but as Ben said, there is always the question of keeping your students safe from the dangers of the internet and public chat rooms. Today, I learned about Imbee.com. I am very excited to get involved with this site. It basically provides a safe, policed environment where students can blog and communicate with parent and teacher involvement. While I myself have not used it yet, it comes highly recommended from my technology teacher, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach. I'm thrilled about this new resource. It is one way for the students to use technology for any subject area, and even more importantly, they get to practice their keyboarding skills and hand/wrist position.

I also decided to take a look around for activities that teachers could use to teach keyboarding skills. I found a lot of fun activities that incorporate technology and keyboarding skills. This isn't the normal "ffff-gggg-let's-learn-to-type" method! Kids communicate and collaborate with these activities, as well as have fun and see a tangible result to their typing!

* Students may plan, process, and produce a classroom newsletter. Once "reporters" have completed their interview and research, they may compose individual newsletter articles at the keyboard. After the finished articles are processed, students may compile their classroom newsletter. The newsletter could include artistic touches such as cartoons that have been designed on the computer. (How fun is this?? It is relevant to their lives, they can share the newsletter with friends and family, and it practices keyboarding skills!)

* Students could pinpoint a certain time period in history and create a newspaper that highlights the tribal or cultural history of that period. They could also "modernize" an older tribal newspaper recreating it with today's technology. (This is fun, too! They are placing themselves in another time period, which involves them examining other perspectives. Great for accomplishing technology objectives plus another subject objective, social studies!)

* Allow students to view a collage for two or three minutes, mentally identifying the objects it contains. Students may key a list of all the items that they can remember from the collage.

More activites from the site I used can be found here.

* Categories: The category title is called out and students have a predetermined amount of time to key in the title and as many items that fit into the category as possible. Another category is announced and steps are repeated. Remind students of posture and hand positions throughout the exercise. Possible categories include: the names of teachers, holidays, items of clothing, presidents, pets, words that rhyme with _____, etc.

* Type that Tune: Play a recording of a song and have the students type as many of the lyrics as possible. Remind students of body posture and hand positions prior to starting.

Want more? I found these ideas here.

For the younger ones, I found this little rhyme.

(Left Hand)
Little finger A,
reach for B,
Same finger C, D, E,
Side by side F and G

(Right Hand)
First finger H,
reach up for I,
J, K, L -three in a row,
M and N side by side,
Use ring finger, reach up for O.

(Both Hands)
Both little fingers P and Q,
R, S, T not hard for you.
Up for U, down for V.
Left ring finger up and down,
Press W and X without a frown.
Reach up for Y and down for Z.
Now you have them all you see!

Students say this while they are typing.

Finally, I found a couple classroom environment things that teachers can do to change things up a little bit and make the classroom more interesting:
* Turn off the lights in the classroom; students get a kick out of the glow from the computers.
* Turn off monitors and have students type for three minutes; have students compare their results, just for fun.

As if that weren't enough, here is one more pdf page with a few activities.

This blog turned out extremely long. I guess that's what I get for not blogging in so long and being excited to start again! But now I have a couple questions for myself. When is it appropriate to begin typing? I've heard it's great to start early, because the children are exposed to technology constantly. I've also heard that students should be more intent on their handwriting in the first few elementary grades. Is there a consensus on this question??

Thanks for reading, it's good to be back :)