Welcome to Pioneer’s Tech Blog! This blog is intended to be a forum for our community to learn more about our technology class. You can ask questions or leave comments that you may have about your student’s experience in my class.
One of the main first steps that all students at school have to deal with when they work on a computer is login in. This "simple" process can actually be quite challenging for students, especially the younger ones.
Kindergarten students are now able to browse Pioneer's website and find hyperlinks with activities that we practice in class. These activities are also available at home. You will just have to help them arrive to Pioneer's website and they will do the rest. Many first graders are starting to be able to login into their computers and Google accounts fairly independently. Second grade still has a few students that struggle with this task, but most of them are able to login both into their computers and Google accounts successfully. Login into Google is especially important for our students because they use web based software that is linked to Google, and therefore, they need to access this platform in order to use those programs. I just received a comment from a third grader who just transferred to Lafayette Elementary who told me: "I am the fastest kid signing in at school!" :) Third, fourth and fifth graders are very independent and able to login into different accounts on their own. This week we are starting to access Google Drive, and we are working in organizing their Drives in order to keep their files neatly put away. We are almost in October and students from 1st to 5th grade are still working on their "digital citizenship" presentations. First and second grade are using a program called Wixie to input their information about how to be good digital citizens. Our lower grade Chromebook cart has arrived to first, second and third grade, and students are using this great resource during their regular classroom time.
Kindergarten students are making big strides and are now able to use the mouse in an appropriate manner. After finishing their testing, this week our focus is to learn how to navigate Pioneer's website to get to Kindergarten's web page, where they can find fun and educational games to practice their mouse skills. This week, third grade is learning the basics of Prezi. You can check out what we are learning by visiting our software page, where there is a video that gives you an introduction to how Prezi works. Fourth and fifth grade have already worked with this program, but we are revisiting ways to get the most out of this software. Lastly, the focus for fourth and fifth grade this week will be learning to manage their email accounts. This goes perfectly with our digital citizenship unit. This week we are going to tackle a theme directly connected to Digital Citizenship: Digital Safety. Students tend to look for shortcuts when they are done using their computers, and sometimes they don't log off from their accounts. Our objective for our lesson will be "Reviewing logging off procedures in order to be safe Digital Citizens". We will talk about common daily life situations, such as what can happen if we login into our bank account and we don't log off correctly. 4th and 5th grade students will be the grades working on this task.
Younger students, 1st through 3rd grade, will be reviewing the procedures to use Chromebooks. We have a cart with 25 Chromebooks that will be shared by these grades to complement their regular classroom lessons and activities. We are starting the year with a unit on Digital Citizenship. This is a great way to kick off the school year. The main objective of this unit is for students to understand the implications of using technology, with its advantages and possible consequences if it is not used correctly. I show the older grades my own Prezi presentation on nine different topics related to digital citizenship. You can see the presentation yourself by clicking on this hyperlink: What is Digital Citizenship? The younger students, kinder through second grade, get a simpler version of this presentation. After we talk about this topic, Students will show their understanding creating their own presentation titled "I am a Digital Citizen" (Soy un ciudadano digital).
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AuthorAlberto Gaspar Jiménez Archives
August 2017
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