Mike Renfroe's Blog

It is almost time to come back, set up your classrooms, and welcome a new batch of students.  With the (eventual) arrival of the new laptops, we are going to have LOTS of training this year- so get ready!!  I’m looking forward to working with you this year to help our students reach their fullest potentials using technology.

Philippe Cousteau presented information on the oil spill in the Gulf through the Discovery Educator Network.  Here is a link to the archived video from his presentation:

Spotlight on the Gulf

Two other fifth grade classes at Varina used Keynote to create review presentations for the other students in their class.  Each student worked in either a small group or by themselves to present what information they knew about various science topics, learning more about their own topic in the process.  They ended up with some great presentations!

Two of the fifth grade classes at Varina used the ActiVotes to review Social Studies content to prepare for the upcoming SOL tests.  We used a simple Word document with questions as our “test” and used the Promethean ActiVote responders to answer the questions.  They loved using them and were VERY excited when they all got the question right as a class (even though it doesn’t look like it in the picture)!

The third graders at Longan used Comic Life to create comic book pages dealing with soil.  They used the pictures and speech bubbles to explain the types of soil.  They really had a fun time making their pages about soil and found soil to be a little more interesting after this project.

The 7th and 8th grade Health class students worked in small groups to create a 30 second commercial dealing with preventable diseases.  The students were assigned groups, brainstormed ideas for their commercial, researched the information, and put it all together using iMovie.  They are not finished yet, but they got a great start…

The fifth graders used Quia to create games they can use for review.  They created their own questions, picked a game template, and added their information.  They had a LOT of fun coming up with their games, and did a great job reviewing each others games for things they would need to edit.

Review games can be found here…

The kindergarten students at Longan reviewed what they knew about by visiting a few websites.  The students used two websites that were created using Keynote that were exported as .swf files and posted on the web (so they acted like a website), and another site that helped them with adding coins to total a specific amount.  They had a great time using the sites…

Here are two of the sites we used:

http://teachers.henrico.k12.va.us/etrainers/whitlow_s/money.html

http://www.toonuniversity.com/flash.asp?err=569&engine=

The fifth graders in Ms. Hubard’s social studies classes used Keynote to tell us about what they knew about the five regions of Virginia.  They created two slides for each region and told us about the region and the products and industries found in the region.  They created their presentation from scratch and learned how to use transitions and builds to get the presentations how they wanted them to be.  They did a great job!!

The second graders at Longan used Keynote to present information that they knew about Ancient Egypt.  The Keynote was set up so that when they finished adding their information, the presentation would be complete with transitions and builds already set up.  The students can use the presentation for review when testing time comes.  They loved using the program and really seemed to have a good grasp on how the proram works.

Click here to download the project… Egypt