October Entry
Another Ingalls

I have always gotten " in to"  books and their characters myself,so having this in mind Stacy and I had worked though lessons on how authors 
develop a character.  I believe that focusing on the characters is a primary comprehension strategy. 

     "Another Ingalls" was designed to put the students into the story early in their reading. We chose a specific event that most children would have no experience encountering,i.e. the family crossing the frozen Mississippi River as they begin their journey West.  I have established work stations in the reading classes this year to better facilitate small group work  "Another Ingalls" was one of the work stations the week after we had read the chapter in which it occurs. 

The students response was positive.  It's funny to me that they will do something in a small group that the would groan about if asked to do it 
in a large group!  They love doing stations, even if it is a worksheet.  A few students did need guidance to keep their response in the realm 
of reality.  They had to be an additional member of the Ingalls family, not a fantasical figure.  The purpose of the lesson seems to have been met, they needed to understand the seriousness of the situation and try to understand how the children would have felt. 

November Entry

     In the last four years, my colleague, Mary John Atherton, has provided our team of fifth and sixth students with a class paper that gave an update of the previous week's activities and lessons.  The Cyber Exchange has provided a better way for the students to participate in the process!  Mrs.Atherton takes care of the composing, editing and publishing in her classroom during English classes. In my Reading classroom, the same students have the opportunity to think about items they would like to include or reasearch for the future editions of the newspaper. 
     The students are thrilled with the results thus far.  There have been three editions that have included news about the Red Ribbon Week (Drug Awareness) balloon launch, our first student to reach 100 points in Accelerated Reading, and other things that were important to the student's experiences at school. 
     The Cyber Ambassadors are scheduled to help in other classrooms in third and fourth grade.  They also serve as messengers/couriers for the fifth/sixth grade newspaper. 
     My Internet project will be the Postcard Exchange.  We are in the planning stages and my tech coordinator will be linking us to this site. 

January Entry

     After attending the last session on e-mail, I was able to set up a folder for the Postcard internet project we are setting up.  All mail that comes from this project will be placed in the folder.  I will  begin using my Cyber Ambassadors, Tyler, Brianna, Colin Shea, Hannah, and Kaitlyn to create a user list of participants including, of course, their e-mail addresses.  I was also able to add more teacher e-mail addresses and am in the process of setting up lists for various e-mail purposes, i.e. Cyber Teachers, county wide fifth grade teachers, teachers in other systems etc. 
     I have not gotten to the laptop as yet, but I am next on the list. I hope to use it at home to do some work on powerpoint presentations which I see as a powerful tool that has been opened for my use through this program. 
     Our five Cyber Ambassadors are working with the lower grades on powerpoint presentations and webpages.  They are also still involved  in the newspaper project. 

February Entry
     This last three weeks I have installed, updated or helped setup ICQ on four other teachers' computers.  I have also had contact with a teacher in Wisconsin who saw an article about the Project and wanted to know about the Internet projects related to Cyber Exchange.  In responding to her I asked her if she had ICQ available for her use.  She responded that she did not and wanted to know all about it.  I directed her to our county website for Connie's tutorial in ICQ and the information on how to download the program.  She has given the information to her coordinator and is waiting approval for use.   I told her we would love to chat as soon as she is installed and ready to go.  She also signed up on the Postcard Geography Exchange that she initially asked about. 
     Other uses of ICQ have been messages, chats and file transfers with several other teachers.  I have set up all Cyber Exchange teachers in my ICQ to better communicate on projects, etc. 
     The five Cyber Ambassadors have been hard at work creating PowerPoint Presentations with the fourth grade teachers.  Their presentations are on the website.  They are also still involved with the newspaper in Mrs. Atherton's room.  I am have them setting up a data base for their respective homerooms for the Postcard Exchange.  We were able to get a network connection for the laptop installed in our room so they have used it to put the addresses into a Word database and to "e"mail participants that we received their card.  The classes will all do a different type of response to the Postcard project, i.e., one class is sending to the foreign participants, another will send a least one card to all 50 states and the third will respond to the ones we receive cards from.  We are designing some cards, using some Jefferson County Chamber of Commerce Postcards and may use some electronic cards.  So far the best cards have been the "real" postcards!   I have prepared a booklet on the fifty states to go along with this project.  I hope to have them do a powerpoint presentation related to the states. 
     Students have been doing research for Science Fair Project and a research paper in Mrs. Atherton's room.  They have had to read and transfer information to graphic organizers for the Science fair and for their DARE essays.  We will utilize this technology more and more!! 

March Entry
     The powerpoint presentations on the Cyber Exchange for Educators site are available for anyone to view.  We have not used one of those just yet, but have plans to include them in the preparation/review for Terra Nova testing.  One of our Cyber Ambassadors, Colin Shea, made a powerpoint presentation on the Temperance movement as part of a Social Studies assignment.  I made a powerpoint presentation of the Science Fair winners for local use only. (Pictures and names are included!)  The students helped chose the best photos taken of the projects and themselves.  I have plans to let the Cyber Ambassadors work through a ppt of just the project photos for the school site. 
     Our Cyber Ambassadors have many things to be working on and time restraints have slowed us down.  Our internet project, the Postcard Geography Exchange, has suffered from a busy schedule , but we have started working on the laptop again having them continue to build a database using Word and Works.  I wanted to let them create their own labels for some cards, especially the foreign addresses.  The whole class will compose our paragraph to be run on labels and affixed to the message portion of the card. 
      Our Cyber Ambassadors were interviewed by phone for Kids Speak. 
      Students are beginning to see the benefits of technology in the classroom as they view websites for information (used extensively in the Science Fair projects), and for "entertainment" with an educational purpose.  We had two classes take the George Washington Quiz online and we viewed several sites on the removal of the Cherokee Indians.  The purpose was to develop an opinion letter on the treatment of the Cherokee by the government.  We can include this in our web pages we will develop today. 
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April Entry
The Cyber Ambassadors are back on a working schedule with the third and fourth grade teachers.  They are doing various things in those classrooms for the teachers and the students.  I am still using them in their individual classes to assist in word processing and on a few tasks having to do with the Postcard Exchange. 

The laptop is set up on the network when in use in my room so they can do AR tests, word processing, and emailing. 

Our classroom web page is currently showing info and student work on four pages.  The fourth page I added to be our permanent electronic postcard.  We can then use this in the Internet project again.  We will finish our postcard project this week!  We will then create our hallway display of postcards.  We have not heard from over half the participants. 

Using the word processing, emailing, writing for the web page, reading from web pages and sites are all part of the reading process and their experience and comfort levels are increasing.  Since Mrs. Atherton and I will have the same students next year, we can continue to build on what we have learned and share even more with these students that have been introduced to the program.  The students will always benefit from exposure to technology.  As I become more knowledgeable and comfortable with using it, I become a better teacher and role model. 

We have about five weeks left of school…we are now at a point to more fully utilize the skills we have learned.  We are making some exciting plans! 
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May Entry
I did not have access to the Internet in my classroom until Cyber Exchange for Educators gave me this opportunity.  I chose to use the Postcard Geography Exchange as our classroom project.  After collecting cards and the data from the project site, I used the Cyber Ambassadors in each of my three fifth grade classes to go through the list of participants and choose  some by regions/states/countries.  They began to develop a mailing list for their individual classes to use.  We used Microsoft Word  on the laptop computer to create these lists. One ambassador was in charge of sending a quick email to the participants who mailed to us early in the project. I then realized we were supposed to send cards to all registered participants.  We changed our plan!  Every student was given one or two received postcards to which respond.  Out of the two hundred participants we heard from aprox. seventy-five.  Many opted to send the ecards, but students enjoyed the real postcards the most.  We did prepare a class web site postcard which we are sending to all other participants that we did not hear from.  The students are using individual maps to locate their postcard recipients. 
The students gained knowledge about : 
      different states; facts, geographic descriptions 
       learned how to address a postcard, 
       using an atlas to locate places on a map, 
       using the Internet to access electronic maps to locate places. 

The focus of my curriculum is  reading and literary skills.  I used my lesson with all three of my 5th grade reading classes to improve their comprehension of an episode in the book "Little House on the Prairie".  They were asked to react by putting themselves in the story by becoming "Another Ingalls".  I have also used several lesson plans from the Internet this year. I have discovered a wealth of resources for us to use! 

The opportunity to stay in contact with others in education is such an asset to sharing ideas and concerns.  I have used email to stay in touch with teachers in other areas as well as my own district.  I have used ICQ to contact other classrooms  to do some creative writing activities.  I have not done any video conferencing yet since I have just learned how to do that.  I look forward to more fully incorporating all of these electronic communication tools.  I hope we can continue to have training sessions on these tools. 

Since I was a novice at using most software, I have not gotten to use them as fully as they warrant.  I  have become more comfortable using mS Word myself and have been able to show the students how useful the word processing can be.  There is still so much to do and show them!  I am fortunate to have the same students two years so I hope to continue using Word for some lessons and projects.  I love Powerpoint!  My students helped me create a Powerpoint presentation illustrating our School Improvement Plan and the 5th- 6th Science Fair.  Several students were able to create presentations for Science and Social Studies.  I want to have students involved in PowerPoint presentations on the books we use in the Accelerated Reading program or possibly put some simple books on Powerpoint for the younger students. 

Our classroom webpages are a great tool for school home connections.  The parents who are online at work can access the pages and even email me if needed.  Of  course the pages are linked to the district site where there is a wealth of information and help for students and parents.  I used the webpages to share student writing, to report notable progress in Accelerated Reading, to give students an outlet to share their opinion on books they read, and to create a  class postcard page for the Internet project we did and will continue next year.  Mrs. Atherton and I shared the same students and we divided the Language Arts curriculum.  She focused on the mechanics and writing skills, so the newspapers were created through her class activities.  Our pages are linked just as we strived to link our curriculum and activities. 

These sessions have been a delightful necessity!  I have already stated that I was a novice to this process of integrating technology into my very traditional mindset!   I could not have given the project any justice and my students would not have had the benefits of my learning without these vital sessions.  Continuation of training is vital to growing from what we have started. 

I love the laptop provided through the program!   I have let my students use the laptop to word process and to email.  I have used the laptop to work on Powerpoint presentations.  It is an invaluable tool for easy access and portability.  I look forward to using it for the video conferencing and letting the students use it more next year as well.  The only drawback is having just one to share. 

The CA's have followed a regular schedule out of my class time to help in the lower grade Cyber Exchange classes.  They have helped in the Internet Projects and have assisted others in using the laptop for word processing. 

Students have been able to see technology at work in the classroom as a potential connection to others in their world.  They have been able to understand that students in other areas of the US have similar interests and  opportunities.  They have seen first hand the importance of accurate communication skills in reading and writing and how the whole process of communicating outside their daily routine can effect them and give them an opportunity to grow. 

The most beneficial part of this program has been a personal benefit.  The better teacher I become the more my students can gain from me.  I have been thrilled and inspired to continue learning more, doing more, using more and sharing more with other teachers and my students.  The training we have received has been invaluable and enjoyable.  I look forward to working harder at trying to incorporate more possibilities for my classes.  I want to learn how to get more technology in my classroom through grants and projects. 

The very first experience I had with true sharing was with a teacher in Wisconsin who had seen the project in an online magazine.  She contacted me about the Internet Project we were doing and I was able to share the site with her.  She signed her class up to participate.  I also have continued to email her and have tried to set up a creative writing project through email.  I sent her the informationa dn the ICQ program, but her technology coordinator was not as recptive to the program.  She did load the program I sent her anyway but was not able to get it to work properly.  She was glad that I had shared it with her and hopes still to get it to work.  Locally, I have been able to share this experience with my team member Mrs. Atherton.  We share and collaborate on all of our planning and activities and this program will be continued in our curriculum next year. 

It is vital that this project continues next year.  We need more training on the communications progams and more training on incorporating all aspects into a one computer classroom.

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