Online Videos

• The National Teacher Training Institute asserts that video can be an efficient tool to use in the classroom. Videos help students retain more information and understand difficult concept in less time. There are several ways you can use video. If you're teaching a social studies class, you'll find a wealth of video segments on the PBS web site that have been pre-selected to align with state standards and curricula. If you're teaching a class about anatomy, you can use a video of a frog dissection to illustrate the different parts of the body. For primary school math, check out the educator's section of the Cyberchase website. It's a treasure trove of kid-friendly math videos. When you find a video you like, bookmark it, so you can find it easier when you're ready to show it to your students.
  
  

Collaborative Writing in Wikis

• Collaborative writing assignments at the primary level are a great way for students to learn how to work cooperatively, divide work, peer edit and complete a task--as a team--on time. Wiki web sites can make this collaborative writing process much more interesting. A wiki is a web site that users can edit without knowing any sophisticated programming language. The wiki can be private, so you don't have to worry about exposing student work to the world. Using a wiki, your students can work on their group assignments: editing each other's text and easily adding videos and images. Since work in a wiki is tracked by user, you'll be able to ensure that everyone in the group is pulling her own weight. Wikispaces and Mindtouch are two companies that offer free wikis to educators.
  
  

Blogs

• On a blog, the administrator (teacher) posts a an entry to which users (students) respond in the comment field. A blog is a great platform to use for question-and-answer assignments and for foreign language assignments. For example, you can post chapter questions about a book the class is reading. Students are responsible for responding to both your question and to each other's comments. In a language course, you can post a passage or a video in the language being studied. In the comments section, students can either translate the passage or post a reaction to the video. This type of activity allows them to practice their reading, writing and listening skills.
  
  

Grading and Attendance

• You can also use technology to help organize daily tasks such as attendance and grading. Use spreadsheet software. Create a new spreadsheet with a new page for each subject that you're teaching. Put students' names in the first column and the name of the test/quiz in the first row. As your students complete each exam, put the grade in the corresponding cell. You can then use the software's built-in math functions to automatically compute each student's average. You can use a similar technique to track attendance. Use a separate spreadsheet with a new page for each month. Students names go in the first column and dates go in the first row. Place a check in the cells that correspond to student absences and then use the function feature to tally automatically the number of absences each student has accrued.
  
  

Classroom Chores

• Primary school students are often eager to help in the classroom. You can use technology to help organize the chores your students complete and to help ensure that every student gets his turn at both the "good" chores and the "bad" chores. Develop a class web page--you can use a wiki--on which you create a table. Put the day of the week in the top row and the name of the chore in the left-hand column. Each week, rotate students' names, so they complete a different chore on each day. Stick to a predetermined rotation pattern, so you know every student is completing every chore at least once.