electronic Contact Assignment

For this assignment I used a young lady named Lindsey Walter. she is a second grade teacher at Mashburn elementary in Forsyth County Georgia. I first contacted Lindsey by phone and then we e-mailed about the technology that they are using in her classroom. The first thing that she told me about was the Promethean boards. Promethean boards are white board that are very similar to smart boards. The teacher can connect their computer to these white boards, they are used for television, Internet, flip charts to teach lessons ect. In order to use these boards you must have a stylus which is like a pen that you can use to write on the boards. These have taken the place of all the dry erase boards.
A second thing that they have is something called an activ vote. They are a voting machine that is in the shape of an egg and have the letters A-E on them. Each student gets their own and the teacher can create multiple choice tests and the the children answer their questions on the activ vote and this records the answers from the students. The students also have slates at their seats. This way they can write on their slate and it will show up on the board without the students having to get up out of their seat to write on the board.
As far as computers go in Forsyth county each class is equipped with four desktop computers and then they have laptop carts in which they can check out a laptop for each child for different assignments. Also each classroom is equipped with their own scanner, their own DVD players and even digital cameras. They have many computer software programs that are available to them and they are allowed to use blogs in their classrooms as well. At this time Lindsey is not using blogs but I am going to try and talk her into it!
I am very thankful that Lindsey took the time to talk to me and e-mail me with all of these amazing tools that they have to use. I think she is a pretty lucky lady to be working for a county that supplies the teachers with all of the wonderful gadgets. I am sure it makes her life a whole lot easier as a teacher and I know she says that the students get very engaged in the activities because they truly are part of the assignment. If you would like to check out Lindsey Walters school page I will post the web link here on my blog.
http://www.forsyth.k12.ga.us/130120717101444997/site/default.asp