Tech Without Tears: Feeling Lucky!

I just realized that the title of this post is a button on Google search . . . :) BTW, did you know that you can toggle over the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button and it spins like a slot machine for another "I'm Feeling . . . " tag.

Anyway . . . to my post. A couple weeks ago I created a survey and asked teachers on TPT if they'd take the survey. Many graciously did so. What I learned was that we are very lucky in our district. Very lucky. We have COWs (Cart on Wheel) at our schools, every teacher in the district has a MacBook, every school has a computer lab . . . the elementary schools have iMacs . . . I think the high schools have PCs labs, but I'm not sure. We have very robust Internet in our schools, we have a fully manned Help Desk, we have staff development opportunities (not as many as in the past, but still) and we have SO MUCH MORE than other schools.

I think that I do pretty well in integrating technology into my curriculum, but I think I can do better. When I helped create the Juniper Technology Magnet School plan, one thing that we heard over and over from "the experts" was, "Don't do anything with technology that you can do better the traditional way," and, "Do with technology what you cannot do the traditional school way."

So . . . I'm going to remind myself that I'm really lucky to have so much access to technology . . . and then make the integration happen!

On another note . . . I'm working at integrating more and more of the Common Core Standards into my daily lessons and I thought it would be helpful to have some slim little posters with the target skills written in kid friendly language.

What I was up to this weekend . . . I'm trying to ease into the Common Core Standards and wanted a way to let my kids in on the secret. :0) I've created planning documents and that's helping. I also created posters for posting the standards that I'm using in my classroom. The posters ended up being too cumbersome so I streamlined them into slim and trim "I-Can" statements on legal-sized paper. I think that they'll take up less room on my already crowded walls, and I'm hoping it will help my kids internalize the purpose of the lessons they are attached to.

I've created the posters for all of the fifth grade ELA standards. The images below are linked to my TPT shop.