Friday, October 23, 2009

A Little of This and That

That just about describes this week of Instructional Coaching. Monday was my very first Professional Development that I personally planned for as an instructional coach. The topic was on the basics of using the Flip camera as well as classroom applications. Fortunately, I had to address the PowerPoint issue last week (see previous blog), so I was prepared for that. Some had the Flip Ultra, and others had the Flip Mino--which I would highly recommend purchasing the Mino because it can be charged through the USB, while the Ultra goes through batteries like candy. (Unless you buy the rechargeable batteries from Flip which cost $24.99) So, the cost is ultimately about equal. Layne did show me some of the features of the iPod Nano (which also records video) and stores music, pictures & records voice. I think I like that even better.

Tuesday and Wednesday was spent with Jeff from Learning.com reviewing their products (which we have purchased) and how we can map this into our language arts & media curriculum. Compared to our current Plato product, I prefer this much better. It is more user-friendly and has so many different components in a web-based format. I recall thinking on Tuesday, if I was still in the classroom, I'd totally create all my plans in their "My Curriculum" section. The ability to differentiate with this is there as well.

I worked on a "lesson plan" for next Monday's Professional Development involving teacher web pages. My goal was to create a PD session that modeled everything we are asking for in our own teachers: infuse our technology, strong content knowledge, rounded out with differentiated instruction & sound pedagogy.

Friday brought me back into the classroom & I must say I love the engagement with those first graders. We worked on Plato Focus in the lab. Amazing how tech-savvy those little babes are! Even more amazing was watching them interact with Emma Reedwell (the teacher on their monitors). They were counting syllables, words in sentences, and engaging in lessons that reinforce basic phonemic awareness. Good stuff.

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