High School Technology Newsletter
Volume I – January 2013
IT’s happening:
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Teachers Corner
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Ms. Jayanthi Ramakrishna, our physics teacher, uses Technology to conserve the most precious students’ contact time to do the lab work and discussions as a group. Virtual labs and activities to enhance the student understanding of the physics concepts. Google forms as a tool to do survey of conceptual and non-conceptual nature.Flipped Classrooms are her favorite. Ipads with their myriad of applications came in very handy to prepare lessons in the form of movies that could be sent to the students to be studied over the weekend. The classes in the subsequent week could be devoted entirely to inquiry, doing labs and activities since students already had an overview of the lesson. To make students commit to the learning at home, they were asked to prepare notes and to prepare questions that could be asked of the teacher later in class. Their work was graded using the necessary rubrics. The lesson that would primarily take a certain amount of time could be completed with some effective learning in about half the time. Explain Everything and Dropbox are the tools which help her make her Flipped Classrooms happen.
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Ms. Lakshmi Vijayaraghavan is proud of her instructional Video on YouTube which had more than 12,000 viewers. It motivates her to make more instructional videos as these are tools useful not only to our students but also to the students outside. Her Audio Lectures and Videos are posted on Moodle and they are helpful to students to review the concepts outside the classroom. She has explored making online quizzes through Moodle, Googleform and Socrative and feels that these are the best tools to get the instant feedback. Read More...
Ms. Angelia Crouch’s students created a wiki about a World War One topic for their Modern World History 2 class. The goal was not only to teach and check their understanding of a World War One topic, but to assess their proficiency in 21st century skills. The objectives of the project were; first, to work collaboratively in groups to create a unique, synthesized project, second, to analyze and assess primary documents using the DBQ method, third, to produce a secondary source based on primary sources (the work of historians!), and finally, to use Web 2.0 tools to construct and share out a collaborative project. To create the project the students used various digital tools including; Diigo (social bookmarking), Wikispaces, Google Forms to conduct peer and self-assessments and Google Docs to organize notes and components of the project. The finished project then is viewed by peers, students from other classes and potentially from other schools. The comment feature is a great avenue for students as well as teachers and even parents to share feedback.
e-portfolios:
At the end of each quarter students use blogger to create e-portfolios where they reflect on their proficiency in various skills. This quarter students posted a reflection on notetaking, collaborative work, document-based questioning, digital tools and essay writing, as well as an overall assessment of the the quarter ("What was the most significant thing you learned this quarter?") with a goal for the next quarter. For each post, students include a piece of work which exemplifies the skill in the post. Blogger is very easy to use. Student already are set up with accounts and it is included in the Google suite of tools. I find the e-portfolio is a rewarding experience for students as it forces them to look back at the work they completed over the quarter, semester and eventually the school year. They feel proud of the progress they've made and are able to set goals to improve in certain areas. Additionally, the activity is helpful to teachers as a survey of student progress in their class, as well as snapshot of the various learning styles. I have found students make very thoughtful suggestions about the ways in which they learn best, which helps me develop future lessons and activities. Finally, e-portfolios are a wonderful tool at conference time to share with parents.
Mr. Widi Sumaryono got his students into the habit of writing blogs. Examples of his students’ blogs:
Why use Blogger?
Students can use Blogger to;
- Keep a reflective learning journal throughout the school year
- Post messages, photos, and videos from a family vacation
- Share schoolwork with their peers, parents, and others.
Teachers can use Blogger to;
- Post resources, lessons, and homework assignments
- Keep parents up-to-date on class happenings
- Reflect on their own teaching practices and share their ideas with other educators.
source:
Ms. Debora Zerneri: Yearbook photo sales have gone completely digital this year, thanks to a lot of support offered by the I.T. support team. Finally we have mastered the skills of uploading photos on Picasa and sharing it with the school community with the appropriate privacy settings. Yearbook is exploring the use of more features of the on-line publishing site including selling the book via internet.
--Lunchtime opportunity: Bring your lunch and technology questions to Room No. 2707 on all working Fridays.
--Reminder: Don’t forget to attend Mini Tech Training (You will soon hear about them for this semester after my individual meetings with you this week). If you are not attending because you already know what is covered during that time, kindly let me know. Your friendly Integrator, will be happy to work out an individual plan to cater to your needs.
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Student Corner
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'AISC Tech Gurus’ -- our High School Technology Club equips itself to help the school community, thanks to Ms. J.S. Lakshmi and Ms.Geetha Venugopal. The members are: Regina, Mathieu, Jia Ying, Kethan, Vinny, Quinlan, Nihaal, Tadeas, Jacopo. Team welcomes Calder and Vishal as the newest members of the team. The club had their first audio engineering lesson from our very own Audio Engineer Nethaji. We have a blog which is very informative. http://aisctechgurus.blogspot.in. Thanks Vinny for designing a wonderful digital ticket for the Jan Jamboree. Many of the members have volunteered their time and effort to archive the Cabaret, 2012.
Moodle Pages of the Student Council, National Honor Society and other student activities are maintained by our responsible student leaders.
Nithya, Regina and Vinny have agreed to conduct ‘Robotics’ - ASA for elementary school students. Kudos to their commitment of Wednesday evenings from Jan 28th to May 31, 2013.
Visvarath, Caleb, Wesley, and Sofia are part of a discussion on Social Media and user responses led by our I.T. Director, Mr. Kevin Crouch.
Kavin, Kethan, Nihaal, Sofia are student leaders in 1-1 Advisory Group which is led by our I.T.Director. The team is engaged in drafting a project plan to get mobile personal computing devices in the hands of our students. This plan will account for the present realities of our school while forming a vision of how this program can facilitate the type of transformation necessary to achieve our school mission. Thank you Kevin, for giving the students the leadership opportunities.
AISC 'Voice' Student Newspaper has gone digital, thanks to our Voice Team headed by Samvitha and Aadhavan. A big thanks to all the student members and the media managers (Ms. Indrani Verma and Ms. Geetha Venugopal) of the Voice Team Link: http://voiceofaisc.blogspot.in/,
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