Working with Catalina

This morning I felt as though I had a very productive meeting with Catalina, our Lower School Spanish Teacher. It was fabulous to collaborate with someone and really begin to flesh out some plans and goals. It was also a reality check for me. I have a personal goal of creating a full calendar for the coming year. The hope is that I will know exactly where I am going to be every day and have a common purpose with teachers. I knew that when it came to a schedule like Catalina’s she sees every student in lower school, I would only be able to begin the process but it made me realize that my goal is actually to map my year by the end of these three weeks may be a bit…too ambitious?
We reviewed a great project that she does with the fourth grade. The students study different city designs in the United States and other countries and then design their own city. The design is labeled in Spanish. In addition to vocabulary skills, the students discuss and form ideas about how the design of a city reflects the needs and priorities of a population. We discussed ways in which technology might enhance this project and whether this was even a necessary place to add a technology component. We decided the student creations on paper were better than having them use design software for two reasons:
1. Students had complete freedom of design when they were designing on paper; they weren’t limited to a program.
2. The skill level needed to operate a design program effectively may not be worth the investment of time.
What we decided was that each student’s design could be scanned into the computer and the class could view it together on the Smart Board. This would allow room for supporting both of the main goals of the project:
1. Vocabulary development both spoken and written
2. Design of space based on needs and priorities of the population.
A copy of the scanned designs could be edited to remove the labels and the class could then work together to label the buildings and spaces created. Also, the students could write a short paragraph explaining how and why they designed their city and the class could review the design to see if they could discover the priorities of the designer.
From this discussion we moved on to Skype. Catalina is hoping to connect some of her classes with Spanish speaking countries from around the world. Previously I had checked out Around the World With 80 Schools, a ning established to connect teacher who are interested in Skype, and found a class of 8-12 year olds in Barcelona, Spain. Catalina is in the process of joining the ning and connecting with this class. I also asked her if she would be interested in creating a Twitter connection with this class. The fourth grade could create a classroom Twitter account and follow the Barcelona class throughout the school year. Besides having authentic purpose to use their Spanish, we may even discover opportunities to collaborate on other projects.
A final topic we covered was digital portfolios. Catalina agreed to pilot the use of portfolios for students. Our goal is to have students choose something twice a year to demonstrate growth and understanding. The first target is December. We will be starting them Prek-5 this year. We both understand that this will be a learning process for everyone involved. Catalina sees great potential for sharing during parent conferences. The tool that we are considering now is Google Sites. Each student already has a site so this seems like the perfect space.
This afternoon did not feel as productive. One of my goals was to create a menu of items for teachers to choose from when they are considering using technology. I want this list to have several features including:
1. Tool type
2. Tool name
3. Pre-requisite skills, or what they need to know to hit the ground running
4. 21st Century supported skills
5. Common Uses
Does this make sense? Every time I try to establish this list, it seems too simplified. Would teachers want something like this available? I could create a list that would continue to grow, since new tools are becoming available all the time.
Thoughts?