Integration Basics

Technology integration has several components. One of the goals of seamless integration is to ensure that the computer works FOR you and provides you the greatest functionality in the classroom. When the computer is making your classroom management and presentations easier and more efficient, then it becomes easier to use it for increasing student academic success.

So, to begin the journey towards seamless integration, one of the first steps is to make the computer a real tool that helps you in your daily work and lesson presentations. In this course, we will focus on tips and tricks to increase functionality with your laptop. After using these tools for a few days, you will likely see that you are "seamlessly" moving between tasks during classroom time. That increased time may be used for increased teaching and learning.

Resources

Searching for resources can be a daunting and time-consuming task. We will focus on netTrekker today and share some tips and tricks for increasing the liklihood of finding excellent resources for classroom use as well as cut down on the time required to find those resources.

Follow these steps for this process:

     1. Login to netTrekker at www.nettrekker.com.

     2. Once logged in, determine a topic that you would like to investigate for possible online interactive activities. For our example today, let's choose nouns as our topic. Type the word "noun" in the box next to Keyword and click search.


     3. You will see a number of resources in the next window. In fact, there are 176 items. Whew!


     4. However, we are really hoping to find great interactive activities and sites so to narrow the search, click on the "Learning Exercises" tab.

     5. This will narrow the choices down to activities that are generally ready for the students. You may read the short description and take note of the "Overall Rating" information since these sites have been reviewed by other educators.

First, let's look at the choice "Harcourt School Publishers: Noun Dunk" since the description states there is an interactive game. Generally, websites listed under "Learning Exercies" will also have child-friendly lessons to support their interactive activities. Once at "Noun Dunk," you can see the site is great for student interactivity. And, if you click on any of the words on the left (common noun, noun, or proper noun), students and parents are provided ith a colorful definition of the word(s) with picture support. Therefore, this activity would not only provide a fun way to have the students practice this learning concept, their parents could also support the lesson at home and play the activity with the student, as well. Also, did you notice in the top right corner, there was a drop-down box with choices for various grade levels? So, if you were not looking for a third grade activity, you can choose from a variety of other grades for appropriate activities and resources.

Now, let's go back to the netTrekker page where our search results were posted and see what else is available. If you liked the previous Harcourt website, you might want to check out the other Harcourt site listed as it is likely that it, too, will have good resources for the classroom.

As you do this, you will find that you will locate excellent resources that you will begin to visit over and over again. Like a "top ten" list, you'll learn where the great resources are and, over time, locating them will be a very quick process. It's a good idea to add the list of resources to your webpage for future reference. You might want to add a "Useful Links" page and simply follow the menu and add the website address and name to collect the great resources.

Of course, this serves several purposes since you have easy access for future use but so so parents and community members who would like to support the learning in your classroom.

     6.Another great time-saver is to click on the "Learning Games" tab. Let's do that from the netTrekker page now.

Learning Games will provide interactive games for students. Sometimes, the links will be the same resources as were found on the "Learning Exercises" tab. However, sometimes, you will find additional interactive activities for use with students.

Generally, the "Learning Exercises" tab will provide TEACHING and LEARNING activities while the "Learning Games" tab will usually provide only interactive activities without interactive lessons.

Your task: Before the next session, find at least five excellent websites for use in your classroom. If possible, add those five links to your SchoolCenter website.

Colorful Tabs

Tabbed browsing is a wonderful tool available in many popular browsers In Firefox, you can load websites in separate tabs of a single browser window, so you can jump between them quickly and easily. Perhaps you're showing your students an excellent website about the rainforest and would like to take attendance without losing your rainforest website. With tabbed browsing, you can do this without filling your desktop with new, unorganized browser windows. With drag and drop reordering, you can also rearrange your tabs however you like.

Firefox also has a nice feature because you can add no extra "extensions" that allow your to modify the browser to suit your own requirements. A great feature that enhances efficiency in the classroom is an extension called "Colorful Tabs." This feature uses the tabbed browsing component of Firefox and enhances it by automatically giving each new tab a different color. Now, when working in your classroom, it is even easier to remember which tabs contain which sites. For example, you may remember tha the pink tab was GradeSpeed and you just need to click on it to instantly find the GradeSpeed program.

Let's walk through the process of tabbed browsing as well as adding the Colorful Tab feature.

Tabbed Browsing

To use this feature, you have two choices. You may use the Firefox Toolbar or you may use the tab symbol.

Firefox Toolbar Method

To use this process, follow these steps:

  ·  Click on "File." A drop-down box will open.
  ·  Click on "New Tab."
  ·  A new tab will open in your browser window. Click on that tab.
  ·  Visit the website of your choice.
  ·  Repeat the process to open more tabs.

Tab Symbol Method

To use this process, follow these steps:

     1.Click on the tab iconin the browser bar.
     2.A new tab will open.
     3.Click on that tab.
     4.Visit the website of your choice.
     5.Repeat the process to open more tabs.

Colorful Tabs

To add the colorful tab extension to your browser, follow these steps:

     1.Click on Tools.
     2.Click on Add-Ons.
     3.A new window will open. Click on "Get Extensions" in the lower right corner of the new window.
     4.A new window will open.
     5.In the "Search" box, type Colorful Tabs. Click Search.
     6.Click on the title "Colorful Tabs" in the window. A new window will open.
     7.Click "Install Now."
     8.Click "Accept and Install."
     9.Once installed, you will need to restart Firefox for the extension to work.