Russell Street School Blog

Here is a fun and insightful fact I read on the site. Maybe you also saw it? "The school uses technologies to focus on skills and competency development, enhance students enjoyment, participation and creativity. We still use books, paper, paint, construction materials etc regularly, where technologies provide no additional benefits they will not be used." I thought this is something we should all reference as we do our planning for our classrooms. We shouldn't use technology just for the sake of using technology. This is how I first felt whenever the technology tools first started to appear 15 years ago. After I starting using the graphing calculator more regularly in 1997, not much else has been super helpful in the mathematics classrooms until recently. Even then, it is still tough to beat the tech behind the handheld calculator. Then there was the doc camera and projector; that was an awesome improvement. Now the graphing calcs can have backlights, which is another amazing improvement. Math is still done best with pencil in hand and write your steps on paper, because typing math has a long way to go before it becomes faster than handwriting your work.

These kids are keeping a blog of their work similar to what us adults need to do to for several EdTech courses and our master's degree portfolio! What a great way to showcase all the student work and parents can see it anytime they want. Plus, I can imagine getting rid of some papers in my house that my daughter has created!! If my daughter had a blog to showcase her work, we would have a lot less paper in our house. This is a genius idea!

This is pretty amazing video work. I found the Street Talk Video Episode 6 but it wouldn't play. So I went to YouTube and searched for Russell Street School and lots of videos appeared. I especially enjoyed the video from the 5 year olds (Year 0) who give a tour of the school in the video. http://youtu.be/b6Fc2bbk1Zw By having to perform for this video, I imagine the kids are learning a lot of skills. The Year 0 kids even wrote all the scripts! They have to learn what to say, pronounce the words correctly, speak clearly, and speak loudly over the wind. A great addition to this video creation is that the older kids in the school, from years 5 & 6, were the ones helping the younger kids make the video! The credits state the year 6 kids helped with the filming and editing and the year 5 kids did the final video editing. I wonder if these kids know how much they are learning about what adults do at their jobs?

Very cool stuff!!  -Angie Kruzich