District Administration - June 2007 - (Page 65)

Eighth-graders at Becker Middle School in the Becker Independent School District 726 in Minnesota study a PowerPoint presentation on author Will Weaver. Teacher Preparation and Learning Technologies in Montclair, N.J. “We have this pressure to use technology for teaching and learning. For the last 20 or so years, it was a top-down pressure from the administrators, the boards of education and the taxpayers who funded the programs. But now the pressure has shifted. It’s more of a bottom-up pressure; the students want to know why the teachers aren’t using this stuﬀ and why they don’t have access to it.” Multimedia Integration in Action Current technology tools have countless applications in English and language arts classrooms, such as the broad array of free and fee-based online curriculum resources in the “Integrating Multimedia: A Cross-Curricular Concept” sidebar. For example, students can try their hand at writing their own poetry, posting drafts on a blog so that their classmates can oﬀer constructive criticism online. After they Deahl, who teaches freshman and honors junior English at Alhambra High School in the Phoenix Union High School District in Arizona, has her students submit their poems for publication online at sites such as TeenInk.org. “It’s not enough anymore just to watch media,” says Scott C. Kinney, director of the Discovery Educator Network. “Kids want to interact with it; they want to produce their own media. The skeptics say, ‘They learned how to use iMovie and made a digital story. So what?’ But what people are missing is if you look at that process, it’s the same demonstration of knowledge as it is in any other form. To get to that point, they had to go out and research topics, synthesize information, put it into a sequence that made sense, “Kids want to interact with and produce their own media.” —Scott C. Kinney, director, Discovery Educator Network have a ﬁnal draft, students can use podcasts to record themselves reading their original work of poetry while focusing on emphasizing their own key words and then create a PowerPoint slide presentation with embedded multimedia and their poem’s text to present results. Carrie write and review a script and then communicate that script. It’s not absent of all those wonderful things that we’ve always done; it just gives them ownership.” Other online applications can serve as instructional tools as well. For instance, to begin a unit on Arthur Miller’s The pictures, maps, educator-approved Web sites from Homework Central, and audio/video content. The curriculum edition, which educators can also search by standards, includes access to ProQuest Learning: Literature, which features more than 180,000 searchable works of literature from medieval times to the present as well as author biographies, contemporary criticism, reviews and multimedia resources organized into more than 3,000 author pages. Fee: Costs vary. TeachingBooks www.teachingbooks.net An online collection of multimedia resources about K12 authors and illustrators, the site features video clips of author interviews, audio clips of authors pronouncing their names and , reading their books , links to the authors’ and illustrators’ ofﬁcial Web sites, and an educator area that provides access www.DistrictAdministration.com to numerous other resources. Fee: Ranges from $315 for a single school where more than 50 percent of students receive free lunch, to $4,400 for a large school district. FREE American Memory Project memory.loc.gov/ammem With its sound recordings, still and moving images, manuscripts, maps and sheet music, the project contains a digital record of American history and creativity culled from the collections of the Library of Congress and other institutions. AT&T Knowledge Network Explorer www.kn.pacbell.com This site provides multidisciplinary technology-based lessons and WebQuests, as well as information about videoconferencing. BBC Interviews www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/ professions This includes links to audio clips of interviews with prominent people in a variety of professions, from writers and cartoonists to scientists and architects. Edutopia www.edutopia.org This has an extensive professional development section that focuses on strategies for integrating technology into classroom instruction. Google Earth earth.google.com View satellite images, maps, terrain and 3D buildings of virtually any location around the world on this site. June 2007 65 http://TeenInk.org http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/professions http://memory.loc.gov/ammem http://www.edutopia.org http://www.teachingbooks.net http://earth.google.com http://www.kn.pacbell.com http://www.DistrictAdministration.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - June 2007

Contents
Editor's Letter
Letters
News Update
Security Update
Technology Update
Curriculum Update
Inside the Law
Admistrator Profile
District Profile
Refreshing the ISTE Technology Standards
Action Teams
RE-Construction
Professional Development for the New Century
Multimedia LIT
New Products
Leadership Books
Problem/Solution
Online Edge
Speaking Out
Supervisor's Opinion
Professional Opinion
Research Corner
Calendar of Events
Understanding the Times

District Administration - June 2007