Tech Happenings @ LvHS

Students are gradually moving to their new LouisMail accounts. Information out to faculty early October Included in Tech News to parents Informational newsletter to students Students formal intro in English classes, during October Tech Skills learned: Email management/sending/receiving/reply Email etiquette using formal school email Accessing LouisMail easily via My Louisville

Google Apps, including LouisMail for students, launched last week. I will visit all English classes for 30-45 minutes to intruduce their new email and Google Docs. Tech Skills learned: Signing in to network, My Louisville, and LouisMail - reset passwords. Learned to manage inbox, compose, send, reply Intro to Google Docs, but more needed

Google Earth was a requirement this year as part of their "Country Presentation." Each student had an assigned country to research, then present for the class. The Google Earth requirement was to incorporate it as they choose, either a .jpg on a slide, a print on a poster, or a .kmz movie that launches Google Earth and records movement and place markers. Tech Skills learned: navigating Google Earth software, saving images, setting places, and recording short tours. saving in different formats, saving to flash drives making technical choices to fit their creative needs. Benefits: Students were visually engaged and excited about what they were seeing far beyond a map in a book Students gained visual geography skills like locations on a globe, relative location to surrounding countries, land features, housing, etc. Challenges: IPrism needs login/password for full function, some skipped and then were locked out. students shared computers, so not all got hands-on practice

Excel was used in a graphing activity during Integrated Science (regular level only). Students gathered data, input the date into a chart in excel, then graphed the data using the Bar chart tools as well as pie chart tools. Tech Skills learned: Excel introduction, data entry simple sum formula copy/pase/paste special graph tools and formatting the graphs Benefits: Introduced and reinforced graphing in Excel 2007 prior to graphing in a formal lab report. They were great at helping each other out, and worked cooperatively with the teachers. Some students emerged as leaders and mentors who would not have participated as leaders in a traditional lesson setting. Challenges: Some students did not complete the exercise and had to finish on their own. Space in the lab is minimal, so movement for teachers is a bit of a struggle.

I will post here the technology skills that either I or teachers introduce/reinforce during lessons taking place across the curriculum. This way we can know what is being taught at different grade levels, and when. We can also see how they are being applied. I am a big advocate of using technology skills in assignments both in and outside of the classroom. Students can practice skills, while seeing the application of those skills to their studies.