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Upper grade teachers can do so many cool technology projects with their upper grade students. Often, K-2 teachers (and their students) get left out of the super fun educational technology projects. Here are a few ideas to get you started as the new school year begins.

Typing Practice

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/levels/level1.shtml

Typing isn’t the most exciting skill to teach, but it’s one of the few things upper grade teachers want kids to be good at (on the computer). This site makes typing fun, and has many different levels.

Kid Pix

Every K-2 students loves Kid Pix. Lessons could be free choice (make something cool), guided practice (here’s what the stamp tool does), or give them an assignment (make an AAB pattern using frogs and flies). Kid Pix is also a great reward if a student finishes an assignment early.

Tumblebooks

Tumblebooks is like an interactive narrated book online. It’s perfect for beginning (or non-)readers. It is a paid subscription to access it, but there are plenty of small libraries (like the Oakland Library) that offer access to Tumblebooks through their own public library site.

Basic Computer Skills

K-2 students need to learn basic skills like copy and paste. I like to teach them the shortcuts (command+c to copy). A fun lesson could be to draw something/anything in Kid Pix, copy the picture, paste it into Word, type your name, and print. Those are many, many skills, especially for a kindergartner, but it makes for several great computer lab lessons.

Podcasting

example at http://www.billselak.com/pt/archives/category/group-1
I’ve podcasted with students as young as second graders. The above link is for 20 podcasts from second graders. During summer school, they researched an aspect of life in Italy, wrote a script, and recorded it. They chose photos for a slideshow, and I put it all together. There are much simpler versions of this–students can read a story they write, or sing a song they’re practicing for a winter performance. For kinder kids, they could count, say their ABCs, or describe a photo. As long as you publish it, it’s a podcast!

I hope that helps. Please add your thoughts and ideas in the comments.

Being a teacher in this social networking era is a balancing act. Do you want to find old friends? Do you want all your students (and their parents) to see “what’s on your mind”? Do you have 3 accounts for each social networking site? I’ve heard of two extremes:

1) Share everything (hide nothing).

I have friends that are quite candid on Facebook. You know really personal things (which can be good and bad). Some of these friends are teachers, and they share everything… from they can’t wait to get out of class to drunken photos from Saturday night. If you do this and you’re a teacher, don’t add your students as friends.

2) Hide from the world.

I have friends that join Facebook, but are impossible to find–friends like beachgoer05. It’s impossible to find them online, which sorta defeats the purpose of being online.

There’s got to be a better way! Maybe, teachers can be online, but remain professional. They can share photos of family events without their students commenting on their outfits. So, here’s what I propose: do not add a k-12 student as a friend on anything. If you want to keep in touch, create a teacher account, where you do nothing personal.