Digital Native? Digital Immigrant? Digital Dinosaur?
Which one describes you?
Which one describes your students?
'Screen Time' is a much debated topic in the world of technology these days, especially concerning young children. I personally feel that screen time should be limited, but children should have tech time that encourages creativity, challenges their ability levels and provides educational opportunity (whether it be review, maintenance or acceleration).
My students have computer time several times a week, for both reading and math. During our small reading groups, students use LEXIA, Accelerated Reader and a MENU of online games chosen by me for their content (which ties to our Houghton-Mifflin reading curriculum). I am fortunate to have 5 Mac desktops for use in the classroom.
This is our anchor chart:
Another thing I sometimes have students do is explore a science or social studies topic through watching an online video (that I have pre-watched and bookmarked on the toolbar). BrainPopJr is a fantastic website for this! A few weeks ago I had my students watch 3 BrainPopJr videos to get them ready for doing a class Science Fair experiment. I created and maintain my class website using iWeb and often create a new page on my website that hosts something I want students to see or play. Here's a recent example from our Chinese New Year learning and celebration:
And that's how we do Computer Time
Up next...sometime soon...it's all about Reading Games!
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