Kinesthetic Computing and Books with Byte are presentations that I have created as an Instructional Lead Teacher for Technology and as a former elementary computer lab instructor.
Kinesthetic Computing
As a computer lab teacher I was concerned about the number of hours young students spent at the monitor. While I wholeheartedly endorse computer use in the early childhood classroom, I believe that we need to be careful that we are not giving students too much screen time.
That is where the concept of active computing was born. Children need movement. They also need to use several modalities in the learning process. What better way to have the best of both worlds in the lab than an active computing curriculum?
Books with Byte
Another topic that has loomed over my head is Digital Citizenship. What better way to incorporate the concept that with literature that is relevent to the young student? Over the past decade 100's of titles have entered the literary market with technology as a theme.
Using books as a way to introduce a topic serves as an advanced organizer, launching activity and way to summarize what the students have learned. Reasearch as repeatedly shown that we learn best when we can tie new ideas to old and we have a story to anchor it in our memory.
In the lab I collected several titles to help lauch units that I'd developed. I would then place them in the reading center for students to use at a later time.
Over the next several weeks I will share my favorite titles along with some of the activities.
You can also click on my site
http://www.k12bookswithbyte.com to learn more.
Happy Active Computing!
Sabrina
