Blue Ribbon Technology

Teaching Pre K-8, Feb 2004 by Lindroth, Linda

Blue Ribbon Technology Technology tutorials, software for handhelds and science data collection software are highlighted this month

BoxCars, PiCoMap and HOBO - sounds like the ingredients for a mystery story! In truth, they're all a part of this month's software reviews. Your science curriculum may never be the same again.

Growing with Technology

Prepare students for using technology with the Growing with Technology textbook series from Thomson Learning. These books for grades K-5 provide students with the skills they need to meet the National Education Technology Standards (NETS). Step-by-step tutorial activities are software generic, which makes it easy to adapt them to the software your classroom uses for word processing, graphics, spreadsheets and presentations.

All basic computer and technology concepts are supported with hands-on tutorial lessons that incorporate curriculum topics for that grade level. Every chapter has "Apply Your Knowledge" activities that apply the skill to one of the application software tools, to help reinforce the learning and help with assessment. The Teacher Resource CD-ROM has a scope and sequence and correlation grid matched to NETS, assessment rubrics and a test bank for grades 3-5, all the data files needed for activities, and certificates to give students upon completion. The detailed Teacher's Manual has lesson plans, curriculum integration ideas, troubleshooting tips and extension activities.

The website at http://growing.course.com supports the textbook series. Just click on your grade level to get an interactive desktop full of technology activities such as the Time Machine, a computer history activity that shows computer parts of today and asks students to drag the part into the Time Machine to see what it looked like decades ago. Click on the globe for Internet activities, a student chart for spreadsheets, a pencil box for graphics and so on. The website also offers extra resources for teachers.

For more information, contact Thomson Learning at 800-824-5179 or visit Thomson Learning at www.course.com Call for pricing.

Handhelds for Teachers and Administrators

Getting started with a new handheld device? Had your handheld PDA for a while and now you want to use it more in your classroom? Tom Snyder Productions' new Handhelds for Teachers and Administrators is a perfect addition to their Workshop Book Series.

Like other books in the series, this one includes a spiral-bound book with 179 pages and a CD-ROM with more than 70 programs for handhelds. The workbook covers Palm OS 4 and 5, Pocket PC basics, strategies for classroom use and management, hardware and software reviews and even an appendix with a glossary and a resource guide for funding. There are also tutorials for many of the tasks you and your students will be completing on the handheld.

Last, but certainly not least, are the lessons for integrating the handheld into the curriculum. There are dozens of ideas from teachers and administrators. Each lesson idea gives a list of application tools used (from the CD-ROM and the Internet), a summary of the activity and the standards/objectives met by the lesson. Contact information for each author is given to make it easy to get more information.

With high-stakes assessment coming in the spring, the ability to assess and record student learning "on the go" is a key factor in the use of handhelds in the classroom. Quizzler, a free program on the CD-ROM, allows teachers and students to create multiple-choice quizzes to review daily lessons or as a content review for testing. What a great way to integrate technology and assess student learning.

Another software tool on the CD-ROM, PiCoMap, is freeware. After reading a story about a topic, beam a PiCoMap template to students to help them categorize vocabulary in a graphic organizer, then let students use PiCoMap to create their own graphic organizers as a prewriting activity on the topic. Another freeware program on the CD-ROM, Sketchy, is a great illustration tool.

For more information about this book or for more titles in the Workshop Book series, visit www.tomsnyder.com or call 800-342-0236. $35.

BoxCar Pro 4 and HOBO

No, this is not about trains or stowaways. HOBO is an exciting new science probe the size of a matchbox that allows students to gather data onto a logger that plugs into the computer. BoxCar Pro 4 is the software that collects the data from the HOBO logger and allows you to manipulate the data in charts and graphs. My students tested a HOBO H8 that collected data on temperature and light. We could even add an external temperature probe to collect data for two temperatures.

BoxCar Pro 4 lets you decide what data to collect - temperature, dew point, RH or absolute humidity. Once the HOBO logger is plugged into the computer and launched it will read and record data every 0.5 seconds automatically. Once the data is unloaded, it can be manipulated in various graphs to view or print out.

Using BoxCar, you can simplify the data collection for younger students or make it sophisticated enough for graduate classes. It's a great tool for tracking weather changes or for testing the amount of light in a corner of the classroom. There are even more ideas for using the HOBO at IScience Project - you'll find more than 100 free classroom labs in PDF format for elementary, middle school and high school science classes. Each lab lists the necessary materials, hypothesis and theory - also included are related websites for background research, detailed procedures and questions for analysis.