Campus Voices
Middle School
My role as an Academic Technology Specialist at BB&N Middle School is to provide technology leadership, direction, and support to teachers and students, with an emphasis on the integration of technology into the campus curriculum. In my second year, I continue to be impressed with the thoughtful and creative ways that teachers are thinking about technology and its use in the classroom.
In the summer of 2009, Middle School has renovated its technology space at the Carriage House. Faculty and students can now take full advantages of the wide range of new educational technology tools that are available to enrich curriculum at the Middle School. These tools allow us to:
• Extend classroom conversations and collaboration using Blogs and Wiki environments;
• Create a wider range of authentic projects that incorporate teaching and learning with multimedia;
• Explore the tools that allow kids to get a deeper understanding of a subject matter, express their knowledge in multiple ways, and learn how technology can support their learning.
Below are some of the projects we have done during the last two years:
Science
To help introduce chemical bonding, eighth grade students work in groups to create a 10-minute presentation that explains their assigned chemical bond to the rest of the class. They create a stop-motion animation that visually explains how the chemical bond works. Each animation is accompanied by a narration. Students use many interesting props such as string, clay, Legos, and a whiteboard.
In the fall, eighth graders create a series of video logs for the Science Fair Project; they use the Wiki collaborative online environment to organize their research, share resources, and get feedback on their experiments.
The Middle School Library webpage is a wealth of information on a number of Science, History and English topics. In the 7th and 8th grades, each Science, History, and English research topic has a unique webpage created by the school librarian; before each project is introduced, kids learn how to use online databases, e-books, and other electronic resources.
History
Seventh grade students create an interactive Latin American Country website using i-Web publishing software. Their country pages include a historical overview with a photo collage of images set to music; an animated hand drawn flag; an embedded map; an interactive map with “hot” spots to provide more information about specific points of interests; and a game designed to teach and test others about their country.
Another seventh grade project is a Country Project Virtual Trip in which students assemble a web-based virtual trip to their country, as if they had traveled there for a week. They use Google Maps to create a virtual trip that includes travel itinerary, a hotel reservation; geographic and cultural places to visit; music, videos, and a collection of images in their presentations.
In the eight grade students create on online Wiki on a unique subtopic within the Civil War unit. They use a format and layout similar to that of a Wikipedia page. Their pages include information detailing the background behind their topic, contrasting perspectives, role their topic played in the War, etc.
Each eighth grade class uses a classroom Blog to exchange ideas about current events, post and write responses to teacher posts, and to create their own post for others to comment on.
English
In the Radio Essay Project, seventh graders create several autobiographical pieces of writing for their Family Portrait Sketchbook Album. For their radio essay, students choose one of their autobiographical sketches, rewrite it completely, record it, edit it, and mix it into a 3-5 minute radio essay. Recordings are done as an MP3 sound file using GarageBand software. Students listen to excerpts from This American Life and read various written examples. In converting their writing into the spoken word, students learn strategies that include imagery, figurative language, word choice, and sentence structure.
In the Poetry Multimedia Project, eighth graders work with partners to compose a series of creative interpretations of one poet’s work. Using iMovie and iStopMotion software, they create a multimedia interpretation of a single poem, using images to enrich the tone, sound, and meaning of the poem.
Grade Eight students use a class Blog to extend conversations and literary analysis during To Kill a Mockingbird unit.
Multimedia Broadcasting Club
At KNBC, we are taking on the world of new media and exploring some of the technologies of the 21st century. We have built the site to host our multimedia projects. Along with short films and audio commentaries, students produce audio and video commercials, text articles, and student photography.
Technology Study Hall
During Technology Study Hall, seventh graders use computers to:
• Create a web page for a History class;
• Use YouTube or other websites to find an appropriate video for a country project;
• Search online science or history database during research projects;
• Use Quia.com to make a game;
• Play a game from Quia.com to practice skills;
• Use an animation website to animate a hand-drawn flag;
• Use GarageBand to record audio for the webpage;
• Use Quzlet.com online games to learn vocabulary in English or History;
• Play online stock market games for Math.
Eighth graders use computers to:
• Record a video log for the Science Fair using Wikispaces, iMovie, and GarageBand;
• Search online science or history database during research projects;
• Use a class Blog to write a response to the Current Events Blog;
• Search the news websites for the Current Events Audio or Video logs;
• Use Quzlet.com online games to learn vocabulary in English or History;
• Play Green Globs game to better understand algebraic graphing in Math;
• Post a comment to a class TKaM Blog in English;
• Create a PowerPoint presentation for the Science Project;
• Watch “elements” online informational videos for Science.
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