December Blog - Janie Spahr

December was very busy as our CTE Lab teacher and I coordinated with all the CTE teachers and gave all CTE 10th, 11th, and 12th grade students the Quick Guide part of KeyTrain in preparation for KeyTrain assignments and the WorkKeys test. All students had to be assigned user names and passwords before the pretest. Since the pre-test we have been showing teachers and students how to do the KeyTrain tutorials at school and setting them up so that they may do the lessons at home also. I found out also that there are printable workbooks from the KeyTrain sites for students who don't have computers at home.
Chuck, Jill and I then attended Bodie's Intel training at Flatwoods. We learned so much and had a great time despite the snow, cold weather, and missing snow days at our schools! Attending that class has helped me in so many areas in so many ways. We even set up our own blogs. I came back to Preston and wanted to do Google Apps with my students and guess what--it was blocked!
I've been helping teachers set up their Webtops and showing them how to use them. I would really like to get this going schoolwide for our students, and get rid of jump drives!
My CSOs require integration of software, so my students have been working on integrating/linking Word and Excel projects.
We had 5 snow days, an early out, and a few two-hour delays plus Christmas break, so we missed quite a bit of instructional time during December. However, I really learned alot at Flatwoods and made some new friends and contacts that should be helpful to me in the future. Next semester, I will be teaching Web Page Publishing. If you have any good resources or ideas for that class, please let me know.
Happy New Year--25 days til FETC!