President Obama's Inauguration and You Tube

Students and teachers at Elda were able to watch our new president be sworn into office as well as his inauguration speech on Tuesday. Since the event actually happened around 12:00 we were unable to catch it live. 12:00 is right in the middle of lunch at the elementary. However, thanks to our principal, wireless internet, You Tube and a few other staff members the whole school gathered in the gym at 3:00 and we were able to take part in the historic and educational event.

There were a few challenges getting everything ready but our technology equipment and access provided everything we needed! It amazes me how far the internet and communication have come! Our first challenge was having access to the video coverage of the event. Elda does not have any access to television stations (no cable or antennas). We have TVs in every classroom, however we use them with DVD/VHS players and classroom computers (use a presenter cable to show the computer screen on the TV). So, there was the question of, "How can we record the event?" Many of the news stations provided a live video stream so online viewers could watch just as they would on a TV. This was great except for the fact that we didn't have software (or at least not that I am aware of) to record a live streaming video from the internet onto the computer or CD/DVD to watch at 3:00. This is where You Tube saved the day! Many of the news station websites provided clips of the president being sworn in, however I couldn't find any video clips of the entire inauguration speech until I searched You Tube. A helpful viewer recorded the CNN live video feed of the speech on their computer and posted it on You Tube. So, after setting up a wireless router to provide internet access to the gym we were able to use a laptop and projector to show the entire school our new president being sworn in and his speech straight from You Tube.

This was a great learning experience for our students! They were able to witness President Barack Obama's inauguration through the use of the wonderful technology we have in our building! The fact that the entire oath and speech were available to view online only minutes for the oath and a few hours for the speech after it happened live was amazing!

Working with our new Pro-Ohio and Clicker Software (CCI)

Teachers have been using Turning Point with students since last year to assess student achievement. I have heard a lot of great feedback from teachers and students! Turning Point is a system that combines software based in Power Point with hardware that resembles TV remote controls (we call them clickers). Questions are shown through a computer and projector and students get to 'vote in' their answers. The class gets immediate feedback once all the votes are submitted. A graph displays what percentage of students voted for each answer choice. Teachers can create their own questions or use the questions from our Pro-Ohio test practice software. Teachers can quickly and easily see how the class is understanding concepts and use the results from the graphs to guide instruction and discuss each question. Students have fun with the clickers and feel like they are voting in on a game show! It is a great way to motivate students to participate!

We have a new software program to use with our Turning Point clickers and Pro-Ohio. It is called the CCI Application and it is connected to the Pro-Ohio testing database. CCI stands for 'Classroom Clicker Integration'. In the past, we have used Turning Point software with pre-created slides containing questions from the Pro-Ohio tests. It has been a great way to quickly assess student comprehension in a whole-group environment. The only down side was they way the reporting worked. Teachers needed to run reports from Turning Point to see the results from the tests as well as run reports from Pro-Ohio to see how students were progressing using their individual accounts. Since the questions were the same in Turning Point as they were in the Pro-Ohio individual accounts, teachers would compare the two reports to look at progress. The new CCI Application sends the whole-group test results directly to the Pro-Ohio database. The software tracks answers from each student and imports them directly to individual student accounts. Teachers no longer have to worry about saving test results and going to multiple places to see them. Now, all they have to do is log into Pro-Ohio to see how students are progressing with the standards. Teachers can still use the Turning Point software to create their own questions, however the CCI Application will make using Pro-Ohio questions a much smoother process.

Both Morgan and Elda are just getting started with the new CCI software. They will use a combination of the clickers and individual computers/log ins to help students prepare for upcoming tests. I have worked with several teachers in the past few weeks and have more on my schedule for the upcoming weeks. Everyone is doing a GREAT job jumping in with the new software!