February Post

Have had a hard time getting on to allow me to post this blog. Chuck

Monthly Blog for February Charles (Chuck) Parker

February has been a very chaotic month! I have finished a professional development series called Instructional Practices Inventory (IPI). This is a course offered by Dr. Jerry Valentine, and is a faculty run system where a group of certified teachers do walkthroughs to determine the extent of student engagement and technology integration. To be certified I had to attend two and a half days of training, in field observations, as well as pass a test with at least 90 % efficiency.
I completed the Intel Master Teachers certification offered by Bodie Folford. This was one of the most engaging and inspiring courses I have taken in a long time. Other than the blizzard I had to drive through to get to Flatwoods, I had a very enriching experience in the weeklong course.
I also attended two Webinar courses, the first one was “The Future of Web 2.0 Technologies and Learning, The Smart Extended Web “presented by Steve Wheeler from the University of Plymouth, UK. The second Webinar was titled, “Encouraging Girls in Math and Science” and was presented by Dr.
The best technology integration that I personally initiated this past month was on our Instructional Support day last week. The math teachers where each assigned a related arts teacher to help with RTI and tutoring with underperforming students. The teachers were attempting to teach the geometrical; concepts of rotation and transformations on a chalk board and lecture. The students were bored and confused. I offered to take the students to my computer lab and have them work independently with math teachers and myself as the “facilitators”.
I had computers set up with the Think-Finity site that I learned about in this course, and the engagement and comments from the students was priceless. The site allowed the students to manipulate on the screen various objects that in turn tracked the movement and helped the students understand these confusing concepts. The final comment from a student summed up the entire day, “why don’t they use that site to help us understand all of the math that we do not get?”..Great question!
The last Webinar that I took in was “” Seeds to success on Classroom 2.0 LIVE, where they talked about the benefits of using Skype in classrooms, they were actual teachers who had their students take turns reading books to each other, making plays and acting out for each other as well as: the OREO their really exciting online project. Two turns to stack as many Oreos as possible in a specified amount of time then determine class averages and then compare to classes in other regions states and countries. They showed stacking via Skype video. They ate them at the end with a licking contest, to time fastest licker. They used a Promethean Board.
Other uses for Skype: compare community weather and culture, temperature, events etc. Personal introductions and interactions. Headset with mike is all you really need. Web tour,
Rehearsing for musical programs, or other performances to help ease fear uncertainty, and shyness.
Graphing favorite fast-food restaurant then create bar and circle graphs etc. no votes in geographical variations, none of them in the local markets and why. Connections. Use with any polling preference and then compare the results live from various geographical/political views.