Tech Talk: How are our students thinking with technology?

In an earlier Tech Talk on how students think using technology I identified the many ways our students are thinking through technology.  This week is no exception as our 5th grade students have been thinking using information literacy.  Mrs. Schallhorn and Mrs. Samuels students worked with phrase searching and boolean logic to understand how to communicate with popular browsers like Google, thereby yielding more relevant results when they do research on the web.  The second part of information literacy has the 5th graders discriminating reliable websites from questionable ones.  They do this through assessing a sites validity through investigating its author, source, domain name, and content.  We started by investigating the endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.  Our 4th graders have been doing some conceptual thinking using Inspiration to map out ideas involving natural resources.  Mrs. Hemeyer and Mrs. Parks have encouraged their students to visually design a concept web starting with general topics and making connections to specific ideas.  3rd Graders have been spatial thinking with Google Earth as Mrs. Feland reviewed landforms around the world and had students building a catalog of place marks to mountains, lakes, rivers, and peninsulas.  Mrs. Hughes is starting a global thinking unit where her students use ePals to connect with other classrooms and students both domestic and foreign.  Our 2nd grade students have been getting acquainted with the basics of using a Mac Mrs. Nichols, Mrs. Jennings, and Mrs. Stansbery's students worked with Dashboard, Launchpad, the Dock, and starting a formatting exercise using line spacing in Word.  The 1st Grade students in Mrs. Peterson's classes have been thinking with iPads as they did interactive word blending and spelling with phonics using ABC Alphabet Phonics.  Mrs. Keener paired up her first graders on the iPads in the commons so they could compare sums in a fun competitive app called Top-It.  While they were competing to match the highest sum each pair was able to share their work with the class on the AppleTV.  All in all there has been a lot of thinking and learning with technology happening this week in the Lower School. 

Christian Rogers