Teacher Spotlight – Ms. Edmonds
At mid-year and the end of the year I fill out a report to evaluate how my schools are progressing with technology and 21st century learning. In order to have some data to work with, I go back through my calendar and see what kinds of lessons I’ve taught in each classroom and I check the student folders to see what kinds of projects they have been working on with their teachers. The goal is to have a balance of both. Many teachers are doing a fantastic job, but one teacher that really shined in my mid-year report was Ms. Edmonds from Trevvett. She’s not only doing many cool projects with her students on her own, but she is having me come to her classroom to help them with new types of projects that she hasn’t tried yet. She’s been doing a lot of review for the SOLs and one of the projects she did on her own was make review vests (see photo). Each child made a paper bag vest with review facts on it from all different subjects then she took pictures of them with a digital camera. The students love looking at the photos of themselves, so it makes for a fantastic self-motivated review. One of the projects she asked me to come in and help with was making review movies. She assigned each student a SOL review topic, then we used PhotoBooth to film them. As the students watch their movies, they are having fun and reviewing at the same time! You can check out an abbreviated version by clicking here. Way to go, Ms. Edmonds!
I know many of you have created classroom websites in iWeb this year, and that is fantastic! If you haven’t created one yet, or if you’d just like some inspiration, check out 
This week’s teacher spotlight is Mrs. Hilton. She’s been very enthusiastic about using technology in her second grade classroom at Trevvett. Her students created a podcast in Pixie all about themselves with an awesome “Funkytown” soundtrack. You can see it by clicking 
Ms. Salmon, a 2nd grade teacher at Holladay had a great idea that I wanted to share with you. To keep parents entertained at back-to-school night or during parent conferences, you could have your students create quizzes for their parents to find out how much they really know about their children. Ms. Salmon instructed her students to take pictures of themselves in PhotoBooth, paste the pictures into a Keynote document, change the font and size of their name, and then write questions about themselves for their parents to answer. This gave the parents an opportunity to use the Mac computers and see what the Keynote program is all about. I took screenshots of some of the quizzes and put them together using a cool website called 
Ms. Stewart, 3rd Grade teacher at Holladay, found a creative way to share a fund raising project with the staff at her school – she created a podcast in GarageBand. In the video she uses photos, voiceovers, and animal sound effects to show teachers how to collect money for Maymont’s Animal Appreciation Program. You can see how much more effective this is than simply sending an email or making an announcement. Emily, thanks for going above and beyond the call of duty for the sake of Maymont’s animals! You can take a look at her podcast by clicking 
Mr. Golden, 4th grade teacher at Trevvett Elementary, jumped right into using technology with his students on the second week of school! They made “All About Me” Posters using Photo Booth and Comic Life. First they took pictures of themselves using the special effects in Photo Booth and dragged those into the center panel of the Basic Fives Template in Comic Life (Mr. Golden would like to remind you to be sure to save your comic before you close Photo Booth or you’ll get the spinning beach ball). Then they found pictures of their interests with Mr. Golden’s help and dragged those into the four surrounding panels. Finally they added text boxes to describe their interests in complete sentences. It was a fun way to get to know each other and motivate his students to start writing. Way to go, Mr. Golden! (You can see Mr. Golden’s comic by clicking