Sample Technology Resource Ideas template -

Welcome teachers!  This page is designed to give you some ideas for technology-related projects that you can incorporate into your curricula.  It also provides you with the opportunity to share your own technology successes with your fellow teachers. 

Technology Ideas:
1 - Authoring & Illustrating a Children's Book
2 - Visualize your investment grow with Excel
3 - Use Paint to draw pictures
4 - Typing & Spelling Challenge
5 - Learning from PBS Kids website
6 - Character Hunt
7 - What Buildings tell us about Society
8 - Identify Species in Back Yard


Teacher Technology Projects:
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Share Your Technology Project (click)




Technology Ideas - details:
Idea 1 -

Title: Authoring & Illustrating a Children's Book
Grades & Subjects: 5-8 Language Arts (with K-2 connection)
Objectives: storytelling themes, creative writing, drawing/photography, PowerPoint, school citizenship
Description: Familiarize students with themes of children's stories/literature by reading some K-2 books.  Have students work in pairs to develop their own children's story plot.  Write text and illustrate with student drawings, student pictures, or Internet pictures.  Input text and illustrations into PowerPoint.  Print out books.  Read books to younger classes (K-2) in "reading buddy" like setting.
Technology needed: PowerPoint, flatbed scanner (optional), digital cameras (optional)
Implementation Comments: Lesson time could range from a few hours (spread over a few days) on up, depending on needs/desires.
Author/Contact: Seth Mayotte, parent on tech. committee, seth@mayotte.us
Date: 11/2005


Idea 2 -

Title: Visualize your investment grow with Excel
Grades & Subjects: 6-8 Mathematics
Objectives: understand compound interest, visually see it working, Excel formulas
Description: Teach students concept of compounding interest.  In Excel, walk students through creating columns for: years, deposit, interest rate, balance.  Show them how to create formula for balance: (last year's balance) + (deposit) + (last year's balance * interest rate / 100).  Have them insert numbers and try it out.  Have a worksheet of problems to answer (i.e., if you save $10/month or $120/year at a 5% rate, how long will it take to have saved $1000?; what if the rate is only 4%?; how long will it take to double an investment?; etc.)
Technology needed: Excel
Implementation Comments: With minor modifications, this can be used to calculate loan payoffs and such.
Author/Contact: Seth Mayotte, parent on tech. committee, seth@mayotte.us
Date: 11/2005

Idea 3 -

Title: Use Paint to draw pictures
Grades & Subjects: K-2
Objectives: mouse practice, color pallets
Description: Have students paint a picture on the computer using MS Paint.
Technology needed: Paint (included with Windows)
Implementation Comments:
Author/Contact: Seth Mayotte, parent on tech. committee, seth@mayotte.us
Date: 11/2005

Idea 4 -

Title: Typing & Spelling Challenge
Grades & Subjects: 1-4 Language Arts
Objectives: practice typing and spelling
Description: Pair up students.  Have one dictate a letter to the second (addressed to anyone they choose).  The second can type it into Wordpad (no spellcheck).  They can then proofread it and check spelling together.  Maybe make a contest out of who can make the fewest errors in the longest text.  Teacher can copy and paste text into Word to show them spelling errors they missed.
Technology needed: WordPad (included in Windows), Word (optional)
Implementation Comments:
Author/Contact: Seth Mayotte, parent on tech. committee, seth@mayotte.us
Date: 11/2005

Idea 5 -

Title: Learning from PBS Kids website
Grades & Subjects: K-2
Objectives: practice with mouse, basics of Internet
Description: www.pbskids.org
games, stories, music, coloring - all related to learning themes and popular kids TV shows (Arthur, Clifford, etc.)
Technology needed: Web browser (included with Windows)
Implementation Comments:
Author/Contact: Seth Mayotte, parent on tech. committee, seth@mayotte.us
Date: 11/2005

Idea 6 -

Title: Character Hunt
Grades & Subjects: K-2
Objectives: practice with mouse, learn about enhanced character set
Description: Have students use Character Map to search for list of characters (i.e., © ¢ Ø ).  Maybe a scavenger-hunt style with prizes or rewards.
Technology needed: Character Map (included with Windows)
Implementation Comments:
Author/Contact: Seth Mayotte, parent on tech. committee, seth@mayotte.us
Date: 11/2005

Idea 7 -

Title: What Buildings tell us about Society
Grades & Subjects: 6-8 Social Studies
Objectives: digital camera basics, architectural reflections of societies priorities, sociological research methods
Description: Have students take home cameras and take pictures of the new houses/building in their neighborhoods and the old houses/buildings.  Bring camera back to school; upload pictures to teacher's computer; present with projector; discuss.  Talk about what differences students see and try to explain differences.  Probe for things like: 3-car garages on new houses and front porches on old houses.  Try to illicit explanations.
Technology needed: classroom set of inexpensive digital cameras, projector
Implementation Comments:
Author/Contact: Seth Mayotte, parent on tech. committee, seth@mayotte.us
Date: 11/2005

Idea 8 -

Title: Identify Species in Back Yard
Grades & Subjects: 6-8 Science
Objectives: species classification, digital camera basics, nature/community preservation
Description: Take a field trip to the school's back yard.  Have students take pictures of trees, plants, animals, leaves, stones, etc. that they do not know.  Print out 1-3 pictures per student.  Have students use encyclopedias or Internet to research the classification of their pictured natural item.
Technology needed: inexpensive digital cameras; printer; Internet (optional)
Implementation Comments:
Author/Contact: Seth Mayotte, parent on tech. committee, seth@mayotte.us
Date: 11/2005



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