Learning with Laptops @ Randerson

For the past two months students at Randerson have been working on laptops as part of the #SD68 technology initiative.

Ms. Burnham's Gr. 3 students are using World Book Online Kids to research structures in science.

Mr. Rosenau and Mrs. Aitken's classes are using World Book Online Student as they research West Coast First Nation Peoples. 

Students are learning how to take notes from webpages including taking key facts from each passage without copy and pasting the paragraph.  They are creating wonderfully descriptive paragraphs using their own words, connections and ideas. They are also learning how and why to cite their work. 

Grade 5 students in Mr. Nixon's class have become experts at Webcat finding fiction, non-fiction and specialty resources.  They are also becoming more independent learners by searching what books they have out and when they are due. 

Mr. MacKinlay's Gr. 6 class is using http://www.tagxedo.com to create word collages based on their novels. Today's lesson was student lead with one boy showing the class, including me, how to create a word design. 

Mrs. Radcliffe's Gr. 7's are working on the laptops for their Ancient Egypt Inquiry project.  Our most recent lesson focused on website citations.  I've been impressed with that attention to detail the Gr. 7's are demonstrating in creating their reference lists. 











  

iPads ~ Discovery and Exploration at Every Step

Last year Randerson was fortunate to be one of the pilot schools for a technology strand of learning.  For six weeks we had iPads in the school and as previous posts show, they were a huge success.  Student engagement was tremendous, creativity shone and teachers and students were learning together. 

It was through this success that teachers at Randerson opted to pursue iPads for our school.  We were able to purchase 9 iPads for Randerson through Mr. McKinlay's milk program, Project Succcess initiatives (technology and inquiry strands) along with backing from student support services. I'm excited to say the iPads are now ready for use.

I would like to thank Mr. Rosenau and Bob Martineau for putting in countless hours in getting the iPads ready for use.  Thanks to everyone at Randerson for their support of this technology initiative.

                                                                                   Challenges amd Triumphs:
                                                                                    iTalk for iPads
We will be blogging about our successes and challenges as we move forward.  One challenge we encountered while loading apps was how to get iTalk on the iPads. In the app store iTalk is only available for iPhones and iPods.
Solution: We downloaded the iPhone/iPod app to the iPad.  It still works it is just a lower resolution on the screen.  In the bottom right corner press 2x to increase the size of the visual for the app.

Day one of iPads
The students were so excited to embark on discovery through iPads.  A grade one student came up to me and said " Mrs. Martineau we have it all figured out, first I do one page then my friend does the other page. We are good at sharing."   One thing I love about iPads is how they naturally lead to a collaborative working environment.