Thing #18

We have 22 new laptops coming for our grade level in the fall. We were told that there's a good chance that the district will not be loading Microsoft Office on them. It was recommended that we use either Open Office or Google Docs, instead. Needless to say, I was really curious to see how these programs will work for primary kids, how to set them up, and how they will work with the existing programs on our old computer equipment.

Here is a link to Google for Educators, which has information for teachers that I found very helpful. It explains how to use Google docs in the classroom and how to set up classroom accounts. Each child needs an individual e-mail address.

Unfortunately, Google says children have to be 13 or older to use Google Docs. So it looks like this won't work for my students.

It can work for the teachers, though. The only downside I could find is that it cannot upload the animation features from PowerPoint presentations.

Open Office is a lot like Microsoft Word, only not as fancy. It does not automatically come with clip art. There are free clip art add-ons, but they don't even come close to Microsoft when it comes to quality and selection. I wonder if you have to add the add-on to each individual computer? I think 2nd graders will have no difficulty using Open Office.

Thing #16

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE WIKIS!!! I used one for the first time this past spring for our bird study and quickly got a case of wiki-fever! The kids loved it, too!

We used our 2nd grade wiki primarily as a way to display student work (written, drawn, recorded, and videotaped), to promote student discussion, and to set up links to kid-friendly research sites. Since only the kids are invited to join the wiki, it is a very secure site.

Here are some pictures that show how it was set up. This is an example of one of the research link pages:

This is one of the discussion pages. Granted, this particular discussion about hummingbirds was not very deep, but it shows how it worked:

This is a page that shows how student work can be displayed.

The kids asked me to never delete their wiki. They have even been contributing to it over the summer! I am hoping that my team can put together one or two special grade level wikis this year (homework, book talks, etc.)