Keeping up...

I am really enjoying this course. I must admit that at times I am intimidated by the knowledge of others, but at the same time I realize we each have a different area of expertise and bring different focuses to the Forum.
The challenges I have are: our school equipment is older and simple programs like Kidpix and not working. They freeze as soon as they are loaded; we are an elementary school so we do not have the more intricate programs in use that a middle school or high school have; and I want to try and do it all successful and there are just way too many good ideas.
In the meantime, I focus on what needs to be done to meet the needs of the classes that I teach with the equipment that I have. I am more fortunate than many as I rallied for a SMARTboard and we now have 3 in our school. The students love the SMARTboard and it is so interactive that it motivates the students to learn.
In the lab, the Grade 4s have been doing a lower level Blooms activity. They have been locating provinces and territories. It always amazes me how quickly the IEP students and other struggling students learn these when all they have to do is point and click. This unit expands in second term and the students go on a webquest. So as you can see, we start out with the thinking and knowledge component first term and at this time a lot of guiding and modeling occurs. Then second term, the students start applying the knowledge to complete a webquest and third term is more open ended and students are expected to research and use their knowledge to be creative.
We have finished our Social Studies in the lab for this term and now move on to Data Management.