Week 36: Creating and Sharing Your Information Product

Homework for the Teacher
The last few weeks of TechKnow Park offer special opportunities to foster the inventive spirit in your classroom. Look for and recognize children who used their projects to make a difference. Give them a place to see their work published and share with authentic audiences. Inspire excellence and look for the "amazing" in every child. As you know, it is through the realization of this potential that children will be able to live more productive lives.

Have you inspired an exemplary multimedia project? Enter it for an award at Multimedia Mania or encourage students to enter ThinkQuest!

Archive students’ multimedia products in network folders that can be accessed by teachers in the upper grades. In doing so, you will provide a digital record of their accomplishments, while creating rich opportunities to add to the presentation all the way through middle school. Future teachers can allow students to add one new "card" or "slide" or "file" to represent each content area. Imagine the benefits! If students add photos, maturation is documented. Later in the students’ school careers, they can reminisce with friends while reviewing multimedia documentation of earlier learning experiences (think: ePostcards from the Past). From the field of brain research we can learn that students need opportunities to debrief, reflect upon, and review material in order for new information to be stored in long term memory.

Now is a good time to visit the NC 5th Grade Test Item Bank and print questions related to the multimedia objectives. Contact your local Media and/or Technology Director for the user name and password to access the item bank. Please retain the security of this test to maintain its validity.

Reading Strategy Spotlight
Empower! Help students use a variety of "fix-it" strategies to repair comprehension breakdowns independently. Listen to students describe their reading problems and then respond by modeling techniques to address the problems. Ellin Keene and Susan Zimmermann, authors of Mosaic of Thought, describe reading problems that go beyond the failure to decode words and understand their meanings. Refer to their chart, on pages 201-204, to understand the more subtle features of reading obstacles and to see examples and practical classroom solutions for each of those problems.

Student Activity Sheet
Download a sample Reading Conference Form developed by Cheryl Sigmon to assist you in the identification of your students' reading obstacles.

BBs: Weekly Nuggets of "Best Practices" and "Brain Research"
Take a brief online survey to reflect on your experience with Kaleidoscope this year. Your honest input will help to make Kaleidoscope the best it can be in years to come! Thank you.

TechKnow Disaster Preparedness Page
Printable Computer Skills Mini-Posters & activity sheets for those times when the network crashes or equipment is unavailable. You can print a different page each week.

Check your progress with copmuter and information skills.

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