Palmer Way AM Technology Class

We have started working  on MovieMaker in class. Our new students are learning how the program works, while our experienced students are honing their skills!  Look for student films soon. (PSAs will come first on the Speak up tab).

Don’t forget to practice active listening with everyone you come in contact with. You will be amazed at how much better your relationships are when you show others you care about what they have to say. Teamwork and collaboration will most likely be your future. Why not start practicing your collaboration skills now?  How could it hurt ?

Remember – Do…look at the person speaking to you…  pay attention….show you are interested in what the speaker is saying…ask questions if you don’t understand…repeat what the speaker says to be sure you really understand what he/she is saying… listen  for the feelings of the speaker. Don’t… interrupt…change the subject… or make up your mind before the person stops speaking.

Let’s see Palmer Way become a place where we are remarkable active listeners! Tech team- How can we share this message with the other students at our school?

 Please vist Lead Portal  a winner of the the first place winner of the 2009 ThinkQuest competition. “ ThinkQuest is a learning platform where teachers and students create learning projects,” as stated on Oracle Foundation’s educational site called ThinkQuest. This site has an abundance of information on leadership that was put together through a collaboration of 6 students from Australia, China, and Singapore.  We hope to participate in our own collaborations through the ThinkQuest platform. Stay tuned for more! The links are also listed under resources on the right.

We have exciting changes happening this year! Mr. Ochoa & Ms. Ortiz have joined our team. We now will have 2nd- 6th graders working to learn and become digitally proficient!  2nd graders will meet  in room D-7 with Ms. Ortiz, while 3rd- 6th graders will meet & work in the computer lab (D-7) with Mr. Ochoa and me, Ms. McKean.Our “official” start date is Monday the 28th. Although some of us have already started to work.

You may see your child working on our PB Works wiki/workspace. It is a great way for us to  communicate &  collaborate with eachother with eachother whether we are in class or at home. Only those who are part of the team will have access to the space. Parents, ask your child his/her username & password for the workspace.  They know they should only share the information with you. Those who do not follow the rules for the  workspace  will lose privileges to work on the space.

Comment below if you have questions, concerns,comments about our work or team.

I am waiting for the word from our new principal Mrs. Hernandez to give us the go ahead for our class. I will pass out permission slips to last year’s students first. No matter what ,the class will not start until after Labor Day and possibly  not until the week after Labor Day.

We will be meeting the entire year(Aug-May) before school  from 7-8 AM again. We have room for 30 students from 3rd – 6th grades. We give preference to students that have been been AM Tech students before, then we accept students on a first come first accepted basis. All students are expected to come to class every day. Those that have excessive absences will be dropped from the class. We  work in teams and need to be able to count on everyone being there to do his/her part!

  This year we may be joined by Mr. Ochoa. We will be going back to the basics – working on how to digitally tell a story or to provide information. We will be show casing our work on this site & Palmer Way TV. We will also collaborate, work together, through PB Works websites (wikis we set up for projects). Of course we will  produce  a memory DVD for Palmer Way  and each grade.  This year our digital memory DVD and Yearbook will be better than ever because we will have the use of our digital mobile camera lab for the entire school year (11 still cameras!).

I also hope to find some educational field trips to improve our skills. I  am working on finding opportunities to partner with some professional media production teams.  We in turn will assist our school community to pass on our new knowledge and skills. We will use the knowledge we gain to produce higher quality work  and increase our skills through practice, as well.

CHECK BACK FOR MORE UPDATES IN AUGUST!

This charitable organization donated $3,500 for our PW AM Tech Class to buy a digital mobile camera lab. The lab. has 10 point & shoot digital cameras with 1G memory cards. It also includes a professional yearbook camera and accessories to support the cameras. All of it is in a rolling hard case. Now we will have 1 camera for every 3 students! We will be able to cover the events of our school better!

Please check out the instructional video page. We will update the videos weekly (eventually). Use your internet browser, google searches, how to organize your files on your computer, etc. These are just a few of the instructional video topics we plan to cover. They will be short , easy to follow videos! If you have any “how to” requests, leave a reply on this post.

If you are interested in helping our class, please check out our donor page. We have a message from our class to anyone that could help.

As you know I will be attending SDSU to get my Masters Degree in Educational Leadership starting this fall. This video is part of a contest for a scholarship from the Tea Council of the USA . Thanks for watching it!