There are so many technologies out there and new ones coming out all the time that we have a superabundance of resources, often at our fingertips, to help diverse learners. The one-to-one (in theory at least) laptop program at my school provides me with access to a multitude of web-based resources in addition to the software on the macbook itself. One of the greatest tools that technology has given me is flexibility. I like to have my students tap into their creative side to help them think about the science we are learning. I used to give an assignment and that was it. Make a poster about..., some would create works of art and some wrote some words on a big piece of paper instead of a piece of notebook paper. Now, when i do the same assignment the students can create a poster, an animation, record a song or skit, or anything else they gt approved by me. One student, who is a bare minimum type of guy, will spend hours at home creating an animation of a physics topic using doink.com (a free animation creation site on the web).
I would really like to get more Vernier probeware to use in labs for my classroom. To get a class set of any puts you in the hundreds of dollars range, so I buy a little each year. Vernier does a good job of keeping their older stuff usable while the improve and come out with newer versions.
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Another resource I was introduced to this week that has a lot of potential is . their tagline is Poster Yourself. You can create interactive posters with music, images, text, video. It is like a blog in many ways.
ReplyDeleteYou are so lucky to have the one-to-one laptop program at your school! I would love to have that in my classroom, even though I only teach second grade. It can allow students to work at their own level and I love how you mentioned ways that your students use it to show some self-expression in assignments. I can't just turn my second graders loose with several websites and tell them to pick one and make a project out of it, but I do have them use technology regularly to create original works, but in a very controlled environment. My three favorite websites for my students right now are Prezi, Make Beliefs Comix, and Blabberize.
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