Ruth’s Ruckus

Ok.  So today the entire elementary TRT team was on hand to assist the reading specialists who were the building PALS (Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening -http://pals.virginia.edu ) contacts with learning how to use their new equipment.  Earlier this year, back in October I think, these 14 reading specialists received laptops, presentation carts, and data projectors.  So they needed training on how to use them.  They got an hour of the basics – how to access your H: drive, how to connect to wireless, how to care for the laptop etc. – and 15 minutes on Kidspiration and 15 minutes on how to hook up the data projector.   I spent 3 hours getting ready for a 15 minute presentation.  I’m so glad I was able to give them a resource CD so that they would have something that they could use instructionally as an outcome for the training, since that was my original concern.  We could do all the training in the world on the hardware part, but if there was no connection with instructional use the stuff would never get used.  As it was, several came with the equipment still in boxes.  My supervisor offered our team to give an inservice on just using Kidspiration so that we could spend some time just helping them make templates that they could use and share.  That would be great since language arts it is harder to get technology into the language arts classrooms in our division.  Anyone interested in Kidspiration should really check out some of these sights:

http://www.globalclassroom.org/together/kidspiration.html

http://www.picadome.fcps.net/lab/teacherl/lesson_plans/kidspiration/kidspiration_ideas.htm

 http://www.northcanton.sparcc.org/~ptk1nc/kidspired2002/samples.html

http://www.coweta.k12.ga.us/cweb/Kidspiration/KidActivities.htm

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