Arlena De Nauer
Technology Teacher (Digi-Lab)
About Me
19-20 was my first year as a Technology Teacher. Previously I taught 3rd Grade for 5.5 years and 1st Grade for 5 years. I have also taught 2nd and 5th grades, and a year as an intervention teacher for K-3.
This is the first year my STEM Magnet school has had a dedicated Technology Teacher. Classrooms have access to a variety of devices: Macbooks, Chromebooks, and Ipads, plus a lab outfitted with Mac Desktops. The amount of technology used in the past has varied greatly with teacher competence. Technology has been used fairly consistently by students, but there has been no real guideline to technology pathway K-5. AS A RESULT, student understanding and performance varies widely. They have played games, used educational websites like Teach Your Monster to Read, MobyMax, and Readworks, in addition to using the internet to research, typing reports in Google Docs, and giving presentations with Google Slides.
My goal for this first year is to work toward getting norms established for each grade level's performance expectations, catching students up to those norms, and showing teachers more innovative ways of using technology that complements grade level curriculum and standards. Part of this goal is providing teachers with professional development and encouragement to attempt these innovations while they struggle to teach grade levels standards and perform all the time consuming demands of day to day teaching. I am not teaching technology in isolation, but in collaboration with classroom teachers.
Example of Student Profile Pixel Pictures
3rd Grade students learning Word Art, Formatting and arranging images, and text tools.
3rd Grade students learning Word Art, Formatting and arranging images, and text tools.
Student created "How to" videos from 2017.
4th Grade students created animations depicting knowledge of the Rock Cycle in Scratch Jr. They did screen recordings and finished the videos and added audio using imovie.
2nd Grade
2nd Graders learned to import and resize pictures for their animal reports.
Kinder
Kinders learning to use Google Slides and practicing counting. They know how to get to their Google Classrooms and how to open classwork. They can add and resize shapes, delete what they don't need, and how to move between their slides.
First Grade
1st Graders used Google Slides and learned multiple skills. They learned to navigate slides, cut and paste, resizing images, and how to use text to write sentences.
