Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Plugging Along

I wrote a grant and it was funded. I bought the headphones with a microphone. This way the kids can record their voices, stories, etc. As soon as they are in, we will have Katie come and teach us how to use them. I wish that these little babies were macbooks when I could do most of this on my own.

We finally made it through keyboarding so now I am going to start having the kids do journals, spelling and stories on them. Wish me luck!

We took a math test from Pearson on the computers and it worked beautifully!!

New problems- I got another new student and her password took a week to get activated. Then Sami had to come in and work on it because when she got on her computer there was nothing showing. Sami had to take this in to be fixed. This is now the third computer taken to be repaired.

I was also finally able to get onto the school folder but none of the activities would run. IT said that when you save them on a mac it changes the format so the netbooks couldn't run it.  This is very frustrating as my computer aide is the one who finds all our games and activities so now I will need to do it with the netbooks. I tried yesterday and failed. I will try to get some help to see what is wrong.

I do love having these computers in my room but I do wish they were macbooks. These take forever to load up and it seems like we are having all kinds of problems.  I can't wait until we get it all figured out. This is definitely a learning curve.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

We are making progress!!

We have made some great progress the last couple of weeks. We are all up and running and learning to keyboard. Katie also came in and taught the kids how to use the stylus and tablet. The kids were begging me to learn this so of course they loved it. The only problem we really had is that when you laid the screen flat the picture didn't turn so you had to turn the computer upside down. IT will work on this for us. I am excited that kids have learned this so now we can start doing journaling on them as soon as keyboarding is complete. I didn't want them to do it yet since they are still drawing a lot of pictures in their journals and they still need to learn correct keyboarding skills.  Now we have a way that they can make their pictures and write.
I also found a computer that is not working correctly so we have sent it to IT to be fixed.
I have figured out an easier way to plug in the computers. We have "odds" plug in one day and then "evens" plug in the other day. This works really well because we are not using them enough so they don't need to be plugged in everyday and when they are not plugged in they fit nicely into the kid's desks.
The next thing I want to kids to learn is Audacity. It is the equivalent to Garage Band for the PC. Katie will be in coming in a couple of weeks to help the kids learn this program then I will be having them record themselves reading. This should help a lot with fluency.
I am so excited about these computers- I have so many ideas and keep learning more about how the kids can use them in class. Now we need to get through keyboarding and try to find the time to implement all the activities :) Good times ahead!