Technology@Coonley

It has been a great first year for me at Coonley Elementary School. Special thanks to the administration and all of the teachers that took risks and learned new ways to incorporate technology into their classrooms. Looking forward to a bit of technology professional development over the summer and new ideas for next year! -Nicole Zumpano

Mrs. Zumpano, Ms. Malhiot and three of her 4th grade students traveled to Springfield in May to demonstrate how they are using technology in their classroom. This technology advocacy program is sponsored by Illinois Computing Educators. Each year students from around the state apply to present to legislators in the State Capitol's rotunda. Ms. Malhiot asked interested students to complete essays. The students selected stayed after school to prepare their presentations and display boards. They were fantastic! Mrs. Zumpano blogged about the experience here.

During the final quarter of the school year several 4th-6th grade students participated in a coding club. Mrs. Zumpano held a Tuesday morning session where students came bright and early to have some storytelling coding fun while Mrs. Schultz and Ms. Lewin hosted after school sessions. This 8 week program is sponsored by Google, who sent headphones for us to borrow and student passports to document learning. Next year Coonley will participate in a coding pilot program and students in all classrooms K-8 will have the opportunity to learn how to code.

Can you sum up your entire year in 6 words? Coonley students were asked to do just that! Many thanks to teachers and students in grades 1-7 that participated in this fun activity. Students were given four choices to write about: Coonley, an activity this year they enjoyed, writing about themselves, or giving advice to someone else. The 6 word memoirs were all complied in one giant slideshow (with over 470 slides!) and 3 a day were chose to be featured on our Twitter account! You can see the final slideshow here: http://goo.gl/vIMZs0

During the 4th quarter fourth graders learned about the American Revolution. To document their learning students used the iPad app Pic-Collage to create an artifact about a specific event. They summarized the event and used the iPad app Audioboom to record their audio. If you look closely at their Pic-Collages you'll see some familiar faces- students embedded themselves into history! Mrs. Zumpano blogged about the project in detail here.

Technology Highlights is published by Nicole Zumpano, Technology Coach

Email: nmzumpano@cps.edu
Website: http://zumpanotechlab.blogspot.com
Location: 4046 N Leavitt St, Chicago, IL, United States
Phone: 773-534-5213
Twitter: @nmzumpano