I’m sitting here in my hotel room at the end of my first ever ISTE conference. I thoroughly enjoyed the sessions I attended, as well as the networking I did through Twitter and in person while in Denver. Before I head back to Alabama tomorrow, I thought I’d share with you my thoughts about my [...]
A technology teacher from my district spent the day with me yesterday. She noticed my Technology ABCs and asked if I could share them with her. Of course I said yes, so I figured I’d share them here, too! Here they are in PDF and Word (in case you want to make changes).
I cut them out and put them above my white board, just like a “regular” teacher would. Hope you find them useful. If you look real hard you can see them in this picture.
Received from my Principal:
Teachers’ hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10
months a year! It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for
what they do– baby sit! We can get that for less than minimum wage.
That’s right. Let’s give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they
worked, not any of that silly Planning time. That would be $19.50 a day
(7:00 AM to 3:30 (or so) PM with 25 min. off for lunch).
Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their
children.
NOW…How many do they teach in a class, 30? So that’s $19.50 x 30 =
$585.00 a day. However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! We’re
not going to pay them for any vacations.
LET’S SEE….That’s $585 x 180 = $105,300 per year.
What about those special teachers and the ones with master’s degrees?
Well, we could pay them minimum wage, and just to be fair, round it off to
$7.00 an hour. That would be $7 x 6 1/2 hours x 30 children x 180 days =
$245,700 per year.
Wait a minute–there’s something wrong here! Average teacher salary
$50,000/180 days = $277/per day/30 students = $9.23/6.5 hours = $1.42 per
hour per student. A very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even try -with
your help – to EDUCATE your kids!
WHAT A DEAL….And the parents don’t even have to buy them pizza!
Make a teacher smile; send this to someone else who appreciates Teachers…
The Winter Wonderland Project is now open for registration!
The Winter Wonderland Project is an online project for grades K-3 that includes winter-themed technology activities with reading, writing, and math components. Registration will open on Monday, November 17th. The Project will begin December 1st and end February 29th. Teachers who participate will share student work on their own personal page(s) on the wiki. Suggested thematic activities and resources for each month will be provided. We will have a Featured Activity each month that we hope all classes will be able to complete. We have chosen our Featured Activity to introduce you to some new tools or websites or new uses for tools you already use. We do realize that there may be times when sites are blocked at schools or schools do not have access to the programs or tools used. If you cannot complete the Featured Activity we would still love your participation in the Winter Wonderland Project.
Please visit the Winter Wonderland Wiki to register, learn about the planned activities, or to get more information about the project.
Thank you,
Winter Wonderland Project Coordinators
Amber Coggin, Nedra Isenberg, & Vicky Sedgwick
I love it when students really enjoy the lessons I’ve planned for them. I’ve had some success recently that I wanted to share.
4th Grade- Butterfly Life Cycles on Kerpoof.com
Our 4th grade Science teacher asked me to plan an activity on animal life cycles. I remembered seeing a lesson plan on Kerpoof for butterflies, so I decided that would be the route to take. I spent about an hour creating my own butterfly life cycle so I could make a list of tips and tricks for the students. I’m thankful I did, because this handout turned out to be a lifesaver. The students printed their life cycles in medium card format, then took them back to class and wrote an explanation on the inside of the card.
Click here to see the picture full size.
3rd Grade- I Love Money
The students have been begging to use the SMARTboard in lab class. A few students have had the opportunity to interact with it, but not all since time is so short in the lab. This week my third graders are reviewing counting coins in math, so I checked my delicious resources to see if I could find an appropriate activity for whole group participation. I lucked up and found the CA$H OUT game. The game shows characters in a grocery store setting. The character tells you what item they want to buy, how much money it costs, how much money they will give you, and how much change you owe them. Your job is to give them the correct amount of change by touching the dollars or coins and clicking “give change”. The great thing about this game is that it has 3 different levels. The easiest level works only with coins. The medium level works with dollars and coins, and the hard level works with dollars in the thousands. You can also choose to display the change amount, or let the students calculate the change amount themselves.
After showing them the process, I let the students come up one at a time and add a coin. It didn’t take long for everyone to have a turn, and they were so engaged and excited about getting to interact with the SMARTboard. Once they went to their seat, they had the option of either continuing to play on CA$H OUT or visit the H.I.P. Pocket Change website.
Not much planning for the money lesson, but it was a success nonetheless.
