I recently had the opportunity to visit a middle school (grade 8 ) classroom at Claremont High School, where many of the resources and technologies featured in this blog recently are being used every day.

An interactive whiteboard was installed in the classroom at the beginning of the year, and the teacher, Kirsty Sing, uses it constantly with her students. There are four desktop computers in the classroom, augmented by two banks of 10 wireless laptops that can be booked when needed, making it possible for students to individually follow-up collaborative work done on the interactive whiteboard.  

 
Create Your Own

Kirsty makes extensive use of online resources and makes them easily accessible to her students. She says, “I tend to now present most of my major tasks on a webpage made with Microsoft Word. The students can view it on the large screen but can also re-visit it later if they want to re-read instructions or follow links. It’s also useful for students who have been absent. I am now playing with edublog as a way to present this work online (instead of being stored on a school drive).

 There are some learning objects from The Learning Federation that I have used during whole class instruction. One of the students will have control of the pen while the remainder of the class help solve the problem an/or work through the object. This is also the case for some of the objects on Shodor and the Virtual Manipulatives site. ”

 Kirsty uses the online resources in a range of ways, e.g. she has downloaded and printed  resources from the Writing Fun site and put them in a folder for student reference so they can be used offline, as well as online. She says’ “This is an excellent site. I use it for teaching text types and constantly revisit it to help students structure their writing better.”

  As well as using a range of free online resources, the school is considering subscribing to online materials; in particular the animated movies on the Brainpop web site. “It is a website made of 3-5 minute cartoon movies that explain concepts easily for students in an interesting and engaging way. I have shown many of these to my classes – some topics include “Simile and Metaphor”, “Fibonacci Sequence”, “The Periodic Table”. There are hundreds of topics to choose from. A free trial can be gained from the site for 5 days. “