Computer Education at Union Elementary School

Overview

Goals of Computer Education at Union

News from the Computer Lab

Choosing Software for Kids

Montpelier Public Schools Acceptable Use Policy

More Information on Technology

Contact Information

Union's Lab of 22 eMacs

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Overview

The computer program at UES focuses on familiarizing students with computer uses and vocabulary. Instruction is designed to help students develop their facility with the computer as a means to present knowledge, to research and analyze information, and to solve problems. The addition of the Computer Lab has increased the opportunity for all students to use computers for graphics, writing, publishing, and telecommunication. Students in Grades K-5 have 45 minutes of instruction per week of instruction in the Computer Lab with Mr. Jarrad, the Technology Teacher.

The Goals of Computer Education at Union

Computer education at UES is intended to address multiple goals:

To support, extend, and enhance the general academic curriculum. For example, the K-5 Everyday Math curriculum includes units on data collection and the interpretation of charts and graphs. These skills are supported when students learn how to compile survey data on spreadsheets, create bar, line and pie graphs, and interpret the results.
To teach a computer lab-based skills curriculum. The spreadsheet skills needed to extend the math concepts described above; keyboarding; the ability to navigate programs; search the World Wide Web for useful information; to plan and create multimedia projects; and write reports in a word processing program are examples of the skills students are expected to learn by the time they leave the school.
To provide support and professional development to the faculty.

How to Schedule the Laptop Cart

In order to achieve the goal of providing our students a full and useful education in this constantly-changing society, teachers themselves need support and training.Increasingly, technological competency is becoming an integral part of what is expected of a competent teacher. I meet with classroom teachers on an individual basis and through small workshops to provide them assistance and training.

To facilitate the integration of technology into the general academic curriculum.This is the most difficult, yet rewarding goal. In a fully integrated unit, students use technology to assist them to create and present new knowledge that is linked to the curriculum, but the emphasis is not on the technology itself. For example, the goal "Students will learn to use Inspiration software" is a computer literacy goal. The goal, "Students will use Inspiration to brainstorm the significant events in the life of a famous person" focuses on the social studies goal. I believe that computers are fantastic tools that can assist students to be engaged in active learning to create their own knowledge. This is called Constructivism in education, and is not limited to computers. Click here for links to more info.

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News from the Computer Lab

1st-2nd Graders are learning the tools of a drawing/painting program called Kid Pix. This program is used through 5th Grade to create slideshow projects, books, diagrams and other class projects. Second graders are creating maps with directional compass rose. Mrs. Hickey's 4th graders are writing and illustrating their own folktales.

3rd Graders are studying the States. They plan their projects in Kidspiration and learn WWW browsing techniques to access pre-selected web pages for their state project.

4th Graders are introduced to multimedia through a project intended to convince their fellow students to travel to "their" chosen town in Vermont.

5th Grade classes are split between independent projects and an internet safety project.

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Choosing Software for Kids

Thousands of titles vie for market share and software companies use all the flash and dazzle they can, and embellish their products' descriptions with phrases like "Help your child get ahead" and so on. The current marketing hook is to include some reference to the amount of testing required by the Bush Administration's No Child Left Behind education legislation, with suggestions that your child will do better with the company's software. How does one make reasonable choices in the midst of the marketing barrage?

In the Lab, we use a number of free programs from Edmark, which was bought by Riverdeep. These are offered for both PCs and Macs and are small pieces of their full programs. Edmark felt that their programs were so good that if people tried a small part, they would want to pay for the whole thing. Riverdeep has some very good programs. Check them out.

Click Here to Go to the Riverdeep Website

(If that link gives you problems "No jtml editor configured") then click HERE, look on the lower left frame for Free Demos and click that.)

There are many organizations that review software for children and/or have given awards to specific programs. Here are a few. If you know of others that are particularly good, let me know.

Association for Library Services for Children (American Library Association)

ComputeEd Gazette's BESSIE Awards

Children's Software Review (subscription site)

Kid's Source

Boston Museum of Science

SuperKids Educational Software Review (private company)