Lesson Accelerators

Any time that I encounter new technology or ideas I try to figure out how it would fit into my classroom and teaching. The search options within Atomic Learning made it very easy for me to narrow down their list to the projects that I could apply in my classroom. I was able to select the grade range that I teach and only chose the applications that I have access to at school. Don't you hate when you learn about some awesome, new technology or lesson and then realize that you could only do it if you had a specific software that you do not own? So to shield myself from that disappointment I chose two projects that I knew I could implement easily.

Internet Safety: Be Aware!

This lesson would be the perfect project to use at the beginning of the school year. It combines teaching the basics of internet safety with the basics of using Word. The students create a 'Be Aware' poster to publicize internet safety. In this lesson they learn to create text boxes, insert graphics, edit and crop graphics, and much more basic functions of a Word document. I currently teach with numerous older teachers that are very apprehensive with technology. I am sure that all of these teachers are able to use Word for basic typing however are unfamiliar to do some of the other functions shown in this project. I believe that they would benefit by just watching the tutorials. I think that this is a great project that could be modified for every subject level. In reading, you could teach character analysis by having the students create posters of characters from novels. In math, you could teach fact families and have students create a poster of the fact family in their house. I can think of numerous ways to use this project science and social studies. 

A Frog's Life: Sequence It!

This lesson could not be more perfect for my class right now! We have been studying amphibians in science and I would love to have them complete the stages in a PowerPoint presentation. I am going to pull up these lessons for my students on Monday. The project covers the basics of using PowerPoint and how to insert graphics, text, and background colors. I think that my staff and students could both benefit from the tutorials given in this project. I would probably modify this project to include slide transitions and possibly audio files or hyperlinks added to each slide. Also the teacher overview gave an idea of extending this project by putting the slides out of order and having the students sequence them. This would be a great project for sequencing a story in reading or exploring cycles in science.