Class Session Report

Daily Reporter – Jana Miller
Tuesday, June 13 (1:00 to 4:30 pm)

This is the last day of these handheld classes.  The class started off today with each person working on their lesson plans or working on a palm program/problem that needed to be sorted out. We did that for about an hour or so.  People were asking questions and helping each other with various aspects of the palm and different documents they were trying to beam or convert to another program. 

The next part of the class consisted of each participant giving an overview and a small demonstration of their two lesson plans.  Each teacher took a turn presenting their information with “Elmo”; a camera that allows what is on a Palm to show up on the "big” screen.

First up was Tara Engelhart, the reading teacher from the Discovery Team, who presented one of her lessons based upon the book, The Orient Express.  Tara had a very nice Sketchy (one of the programs on our Palms) of the Orient Express.

The next presenter was Denise Rutherford, history teacher from the Endeavor Team, whose lesson was on the Civil War.  Denise converted one of her lessons she teaches to be incorporated with the Palm.  The use of the tables in her Palm was most impressive.  Denise, when do you show the movie Glory? I will bring the popcorn!

 Bill Rogers, special services teacher from the Discovery Team, did both of his lesson plans on reading.   He used several Palm applications to gain the student’s interest.  Nice job, Bill!  See, you can teacher an old dog new tricks! :)

The special services teacher from the Endeavor Team, Datha Peters, demonstrated the difference between fairy tales, folk tales, and tall tales.   She also handed out a paper copy of Spelling Battleship to each teacher.  Datha, thanks for the activity.  I hope to use it in the future.

Becky Stanton, new kid on the block, is going to be the math teacher on the Endeavor Team for the upcoming year.  She did a nice job presenting her lessons on geometric shapes with a poem by Shel Silverstein and another lesson on graphing using m&ms. Becky, thanks for the m&ms!  They were delicious.

John Patton, another teacher from the Endeavor Team demonstrated the elements of a story using PiCoMap software on the Palm.  He did a fine job especially with the story element of climax.  Way to go, John!  His other lesson was on compare and contrast which as most teachers know is a hard concept for students to grasp.  John’s use of the Palm should help to gain student interest in the area of compare and contrast.

Our local weatherman commonly known as Alan Twilligear highlighted two lessons dealing with tracking hurricanes and moon phases.  Alan is a member of the Discovery Team, most days that is.  Sorry Alan.  I need six hundred words for this thing!

Julie Lancaster, member of the Discovery Team who teaches Language Arts, modeled one of her lesson plans on political cartoons.  She downloaded the cartoons from the Internet.  They showed up very nicely on her Palm.  Her other lesson was on poetry.  She placed most of her documents in Docs To Go.  Her poetry unit looked very nice in all of its “Docs” glory!

The math teacher from the Discovery Team, Holly Mahl, presented her lessons on integers using the four mathematical operations of add, subtract, multiply, and divide and solving one-step and two-step equations.  She passed out Hershey bars to some of the participants (while others did not get ANY Hershey bars!) to show dividing with equations.  I bet the candy bars were really good Holly!

Doug Brown, history teacher on the Discovery team, showed a lesson on the Bill of Rights. The search and seizure part should be very interesting.  The other lesson on investing with “older people” is from his career and economic class.  What is with this older people thing?  (Doug, tell your mom hi from me.)

Jana Miller, fading math teacher of the Endeavor Team, presented lessons on classifying triangles and angles.  She demonstrated the use of several applications from the Palm including Sketchy, Spell IT, and Quizzler, her favorites.  She also took pictures of her colleagues working in class.

I really felt like I accomplished a great task using my Palm.  I learned so many different applications and ways to access information.  The different ways to present information to students is numerous.   I am excited about this new dimension in learning.

The participants in this class are professionals and did a great job with their lesson plans.  All of the eight grade teachers worked well together.  We also did a great job of laughing together.  Everyone was very helpful and willing to share.  Teams, keep this flowing right into the next school year!  You all are great to work with. I hope to get over to the school now and then.

Stan, as always, you did a great job of teaching the class.  Your patience is legendary!  We could not do this without you.  Thank you again for all of your help and endless energy in the world of technology.

Jana Miller

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