Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Our First Coffee Talk

Thank you very much to our parents who were able to attend our very 1st Technology Coffee Talk on Tuesday morning!

We had some great conversations which I hope will continue at future meetings, but here are some follow up items:

1. Websites to use at home with your child
Visit the Chets Creek website and click under the link on the left side that says: Parent Atlas. Scroll down a little on the page and you will see literacy and math websites for you to visit with your child.
FCAT explorer is also a great website for your child to use for testing practice. One specific website request given was phonics and letter blends: Starfall seems to be the most popular website for kids to practice phonics and for explanations to help parents understand the blends look here. Remember that the media center is available before or after school for parents to bring their children and access the internet with their child if needed. KK Cherney is our media specialist and will be happy to assist you with that.

2. Chets Creek Blogs
Our school blogs can also be accessed on our school website by clicking on the page called: Websites, Blogs and Wikis. Blogs are meant to be for conversation, so click the comment button at the bottom of the posts where you would like to leave comments. Many questions were asked about blogging at home. I would be happy to host a session on "how to start a blog". If you are interested, let me know in the comments.

3. Technology Optional Projects
Giving students the option to complete projects online as opposed to 3-dimensionally was discussed, as well, in our coffee talk. I will suggest some alternatives to our teachers. The benefit in doing this would be the audience for the project would change from our school to....the world. In the meantime, I do think it is important to give kids great things to do online instead of just playing games (not that games don't teach - they do! ) so a future topic might be "what my kids should do online.

Whether you were able to attend or not, I hope this Coffee Talk got you thinking like it did for me! Please let me hear from you about what you'd like to know more about next!

Mark your calendar. Our next Coffee Talk has been tenatively scheduled for Thursday, January 15th. See you there!

1 comment:

etalbert said...

Very interesting post. I liked the school web site also with all its useful learning resources.
Had a quick look at the principal's blog. Most impressed, with the start made.Elaine