The 21st Century Educator

Landstown Elementary School will be a VBCPS Vanguard Technology school again this year. We are proud of our state of the art schoolhouse with a Promethean Board with document camera in every classroom. In addition, we have 13 laptop labs of 24 computers as well as our computer lab and 40 IPads.  I will be adding to this blog throughout the year to discuss important developments in our instructional technology.  This year, ALL Standard of Learning tests will be administered on the computer. 

Many students in grades two, three, four and five grade are learning to access their blogs and Share Point storage accounts. This post is intended to help parents, help their student to use these technologies. SharePoint is a cloud technology that allows students to save their work and access it worldwide.

Blogs: All of our blogs are at www.kidblog.org . The login and password is known to each student who is blogging. Students should be RESPONDING to questions posed by the teacher only. Blogs are topical in nature, and its important to model this to our children.

SharePoint: To access a student SharePoint account, go to our website and pick STUDENT PORTAL, about halfway down the page you will see a yellow area and the words STUDENT PORTAL again. Click here and the student will be asked to login. LOGIN: vbstudents\student lunch number PASSWORD: students should know their password. Remember that it starts with a capital letter, the rest is lower case and ends with a numbers.

 If you have problems, the following recommendations may help. Internet Explorer 7 or greater is recommended for Windows Computers. Mac users will probably want to download Firefox, that will work better with SharePoint than Safari. You can go to TOOLS, INTERNET OPTIONS, SECURITY TAB, and add the following as trusted sites: schools.vbcps.com, portal.vbschools.com. AOL Users, login, then minimize AOL and use your Internet Explorer browser. SharePoint works great with Microsoft Office 2010 which is available at a discount through the school system to all students (www.journeyed.com ) or you can download the free Open Office (www.openoffice.org) which will also read all Microsoft Office files. If you have older children in middle or high school, they should be very familiar with SharePoint and may be able to help you as well.

Good luck and feel free to email me any questions at kevin.johnson@vbschools.com . Its a great time to be a kid! KJ

Students in third, fourth and fifth grade are learning to access their blogs and Share Point storage accounts.  This post is intended to help parents, help their student to use these technologies.

Blogs:
All of our blogs are at www.edmodo.com .  The login is their lunch number and the password is known to each student.  Students should be RESPONDING to questions posed by the teacher only.

SharePoint:
To access a student SharePoint account, go to our website and pick STUDENT PORTAL, about halfway down the page you will see a yellow area and the words STUDENT PORTAL again.  Click here and the student will be asked to login. 

LOGIN:  vbstudents\student lunch number
PASSWORD:  students should know their password.  Remember that it starts with a capital letter, the rest is lower case and ends with 4 numbers.

If you have problems, the following recommendations may help.

• Internet Explorer 7 or greater is recommended for Windows Computers.
• Mac users will probably want to download Internet Explorer, that will work better with SharePoint than Safari.
• You can go to TOOLS, INTERNET OPTIONS, SECURITY TAB, and add the following as trusted sites:  schools.vbcps.com, portal.vbschools.com. 
• AOL Users, login, then minimize AOL and use your Internet Explorer browser.

SharePoint works great with Microsoft Office 2007 which is available at a discount through the school system to all students (www.journeyed.com ) or you can download the free Open Office (www.openoffice.org) which will also read all Microsoft Office files.

If you have older children in middle or high school, they should be very familiar with SharePoint and may be able to help you as well.  Good luck and feel free to email me any questions at kevin.johnson@vbschools.com .

Its a great time to be a kid!

KJ

I am quite excited that Landstown Elementary School has been picked as one of 10 sites to field test SOL Online Testing for Virginia Beach City Public Schools.  Besides the obvious advantage of preparing the students for online testing in middle and high school, this gives students a number of advantages:

• No more mis-bubbling an answer sheeet-each answer is done on the actual problem page.
• Graphics and Text are on the same page as the question, eliminating flipping through a booklet.
• This year our 5th graders will be taking their Social Studies and Science tests online.  In addition, some students will be taking reading and math on the computer.

These results will get back to us very quickly and save more than a few trees in the process (hum…testing is going green!).  I am very confident that our fifth graders will have a great experience with SOL online testing. 

KJ

We are doing a number of exciting activities at Landstown Elementary aimed at using 21st Century learning methods to educate (and excite) the 21st Century learner.

• Mrs. Jackson’s first grade class recently podcast its interactive story “If You Gave A Kid An Apple.”  Check it out on our website at www.landstownes.vbschools.com .
• All teachers K-5 have recently received refresher training on the use of Podcasting for project based learning.
• Many 4th and 5th grade students this week are learning how to make their own podcasts using Audacity software. 
• Our five laptop labs are in HUGE demand as teachers work hard to incorporate 21st Century learning throughout the curriculum.
• FasttMath is being used throughout the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades to teach students automaticity of their math facts.
• Many 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students are learning about blogging and establishing blogs.

Exciting times to be a kid!

KJ