The Blog of Ms. Mercer

http://flickr.com/photos/stuckincustoms/352382915/
Reflections on the school year
This was a year where I was perhaps overly ambitious. It was my first year in the computer lab, and I had a blast, but I was like a kid in the candy shop, in that I wanted to try it all. Here are some highlights, with cautionary tales:

VoiceThread - Group [...]

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Another crazy-arse week for me. As you can see I’ve been keeping a low online profile, which dates back to the week before. I don’t know if I’ve shared about what a crazy place, in a good way, that I work at. Lots of stuff happening all the time. These last few weeks were even [...]

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Sorry dear readers that I have not been writing about what I’ve been doing with students recently. A number of things have conspired against this. First, I’ve been administering state tests (I have a small group doing the modified assessment). My big project that I’m finishing up is the Revolutionary War Timeline project. That has [...]

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So, I promised to reflect on how my lesson on coordinate graphing with VoiceThread went. It was not great, but there are two things that I can attribute this too, poor planning/prep on my part intersecting with the challenges of one of the most off the hook classes in the school. For one fourth grade [...]

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dy/dan » Blog Archive » Dodging My Tech Coordinator
Noted edutech skeptic, Dan Meyer, talks about his experience using technology in the form of an Excel spreadsheet, and reflects on how it went.

We can debate the merits of my state’s content standards, fine, but you can’t ask me to defy my employers, simultaneously setting my students [...]

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It was a multi-tasking, task-switching kind of week

from Idleberry’s Photostream on Flickr
(copyright used with permission of artist)

First, I skipped work for a field trip with Leroy’s class on Tuesday (click for slideshow):

Okay, back to work…
Links for Third Grade: VoiceThread This is a Voice Thread that I’ve done for the third grade Money unit in Open [...]

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Wednesday January 30, 2008 in a Sentence
Today was an inverse sh*t sandwich: my desktop o/s was fried last night when the server crashed, so I had to be reimaged; the school day went great; I got my cell phone lost/stolen at the end of the day.
Tuesday January 29, 2008 in a Sentence
The high today was [...]

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There are many things that I’m doing with the kids this year that I planned on (and they are working well):

I have all my upper-grade classes blogging on a regular basis
I am doing instruction based on both standards, and themes/units they are working on in their regular classrooms. I am communicating well, and regularly with [...]

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Sadly this week, I had to say goodbye to the AmeriCorp tutors who have been working for the last 2 months at my school. They were the most fantastic group of workers, and I will miss all of them (especially the one working in my lab) a lot.
Friday January 25, 2008 in a sentence
via [...]

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I was asked to create a PowerPoint to show off what I’m doing in the computer lab to parents. There is a ~monthly meeting the principal has with parents. I said I thought I could do a short video (2 minutes) about as easily as the PowerPoint.
Rather than start work on that over break, I [...]

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