Closing the Gap: Part 4

Blog for Thursday, October 13, 2011

Before I talk about “Closing the Gap” tonight, I want to talk about my first ever live NHL game.  We went and watched the Minnesota Wild play the Edmonton Oilers.  What a great game.  First of all, it was opening night, so there was a lot of energy in the Xcel Center, both goals were scored at the end that we were sitting at, the game went into overtime, and finally Minnesota won in a shoot-out.  For a first game, it had everything.  Even though I was cheering for the Oilers, it was awesome to see the crowd go wild (pun intended) when the Wild scored in the shootout.

Today I was able to attend a session about Boardmaker Studio with the other 2 resource teachers from Killarney School.  The session was about using T.H.E.P.A.C.T (I’ll tweet the website…it’s a way of teaching focusing on talking about, reading about, writing about, and learning about subject matter…it’s very well-planned easy to use) with Boardmaker Studio.  The creator of T.H.E.P.A.C.T. and the key developer of Boardmaker Studio were the presenters.  It is amazing what one can learn when you have the opportunity to “sit at the feet” of the people who originate ideas (as opposed to regurgitate them).  We were all given a CD with a unit that they had prepared, which can be adapted and changed for any subject area, and were able to see how low-tech and high-tech can work together to make education accessible for all students.  What was great is that it was a marriage of high and low-tech teaching strategies.

We were so impressed with the presentation, that after it was through, went and spoke with the presenters and were given 40 more CDs to distribute to our staff to help in implementing Boardmaker Studio in the classroom.  Every classroom in our school has a laptop, projector, and a Mimio or Smartboard, so these CDS will help support the use of these technological tools in the classroom.