PART ONE: Effective Communication
The most important rule of communication is very easy to remember. It is simply, "communicate." How can teachers communicate with students, parents, and the community? What were your experiences? How can students communicate with teachers, peers, and the community? How can technology make the communication more effective?Why is communication important in a classroom? What types of things are communicated? What needs to be included in a parent newsletter? Don't forget - your newsletter should be 2 pages. Here's a template if you're having trouble downloading from the Microsoft template site.
PART TWO: FINDING ADDITIONAL TEMPLATES AND ACTIVITIES
To find a template to customize, there are two useful websites: Discovery School Teaching Tools and Education World. Another interesting place to find a template is at Vicki Blackwell's website. Just make sure that you select a template that can be used for your subject area/grade level. Don't just print out a template that you find - make sure to customize it.
You can also choose to learn about a tool and provide an example of your practice work. A good link to use for tutorials is Education World's techtorials.
PART THREE: WRITING YOUR REFLECTION
The final portion of your assignment (worth 15% of your grade) is the reflection.
Here's how you go about doing it:
Go to your portfolio: http://pages.google.com/ and login. Open the page you created for productivity tools. On this page, below your classroom layout reflection, respond to the questions listed in the reflection portion of the assignment description. You'll want to include links to all of your productivity tools work samples (except for your classroom layout, which is already on your page) within your responses to the questions. DO NOT make a list of links to your work samples at the end of your reflection.
There are two good places to go to find sample lessons to answer the question about student activities with productivity tools:
1. Georgia Learning Connections (select your grade level, select "technology integration" for the subject. Click the "Search QCC button". Then click the "Productivity" link)
2.Microsoft Lesson Plans
Remember that lower grade levels may use tools like Graph Club (for spreadsheets/graphing) and KidPix (for multimedia presentations) instead of Excel and PowerPoint - but you can use these as examples for your reflection.
For Tuesday:
- Review the assignment description to ensure you are completing all portions of the assignment.
- Print out your newsletter, attendance/gradebook, and the 4 other templates you chose.
- Complete the reflection and link to your work samples on your productivity tools webpage.
