The Six Traits of Writing Published in Powerpoint or Word

Seventh Grade Language Arts students used one of these two applications to publish a piece of writing that was developed in the classroom according to the Six Traits of Writing guidelines. The assignment took one class period, and if students needed more time, they emailed themselves the document and finished at home.

Essay Writing with Six Traits and Garage Band

Some of the 6th Grade Language Arts students used Garage Band to record their written essays, so they could be evaluated from a different perspective. After the students recorded their essays, they exported a copy in mp3 format to their public folder. At that point, another student accessed the public folder, opened up the essay, did peer editing, and recorded suggestions on a new track in Garage Band. The peer editor exported the copy with suggestions as another mp3 file to their own public folder. Finally, the author listened to the comments, made any necessary adjustments in a new audio version of the essay and added appropriate sound effects before exporting again and dropping the final work into the teacher's drop box. This assignment took four class periods to complete.

Essay Writing and Google Docs

The 8th Grade Language Arts students worked on thesis statements by applying what they learned from a teacher-made Powerpoint to their drafts in Google Docs. Students took three classes to finish this assignment. The students took two class periods to finish this assignment. They also worked at home.

Fractions and Excel

The 6th Grade Math class used Excel to examine concrete graphical representations of the abstract concept of fractions that they were studying in class. Students made two worksheets: in the first sheet, they constructed a calculator that could add fractions (as long as the sum was less than one) and display the addends and the sum with pie charts. On the second sheet, the students made a slider that showed the difference between pairs of fractions which added up to 50/50. The students took one class to finish this lesson.

Carbon Footprints

The 6th Grade Science classes used the web site called Carbon Footprint to calculate the greenhouse gases produced from air and car travel. The air travel figures are all calculated from Santiago (SCL) and the students could choose whatever make of cars that they wanted. The students used an Excel worksheet to gather their data. Once they made the corresponding graphs, the students dropped the assignment into their teacher's drop box. Most students needed three days to complete the assignment.

Exploring Isosceles Trapezoids in Geogebra

8th Grade Geometry students used an open source program called Geogebra to explore tech integration possibilities with their geometry lessons. The students constructed points, lines and angles. After studying the relationships between the length of the lines and the measures of the angles (as Point D varied along line b), they attempted to formulate rules about the diagonals of the isosceles trapezoids. The students needed one class to complete the assignment.

Battle of the Books and Filemaker Pro

Some of the 6th Grade Language Arts students remotely accessed a Filemaker Pro database that was designed to store information for a contest. Once the students had logged on, they created records that were basically questions about the different Jerry Spinelli books they had read over the semester. Once this question database was compiled, the teacher was able to evaluate the individual students on how well they each completed the assignment, as well as conduct the Battle of the Books contest with 100% student made questions.