What Can I Do With Only One Computer in My Room?

Hello,

I can’t believe this is my last blog. I have really enjoyed sharing with you this month. Thank you for the questions, comments, and feedback. It has been a pleasure to have an opportunity to reflect on resources, activities, and ideas that worked for me as a teacher. I hope that they will be helpful to you as you continue to create lessons for your students.

I have shared many websites that I love to use, but I didn’t give you all of them. So before I sign off for the last time, I want to give you a few more sites to explore. These sites are not for you, they are for your students. Now before you say that you don’t have enough computers in your class for everyone to use (I know because I only had one), let me give you an idea how to use they few that you do have.

If your students are anything like my students, they are eager to use the computer whenever they have a chance. I never had a problem with the one computer in my class after I implemented this idea.

I developed a computer usage chart for my class. The chart was divided into 15-minute increments. There was one chart per week. My class was 90 minutes long. I never allowed students to sign up for the first or last 15 minutes in class (I used those times to introduce the class objective and closure and I didn’t want them to miss that) but the 60 minutes in between were available.

1. http://www.sitesforteachers.com
This unique website provides over 1,000 ranked links to sites that provide free resources for teachers, students, and parents.

2. http://www.gamequarium.com
This website provides resources for teachers, students, and parents. The resources cover grades Pre-K through 6 and all subject areas. Although the material does not go beyond the 6th grade, some of the games and resources can be used for older students who need a fun and stress-free review of basic skills and content. This is a good site to assign to students during their computer time.

3. http://free.ed.gov
The Federal Resources for Educational Excellence site is sponsored by www.ed.gov. This website leads to a variety of resources from federal agencies. There are over 100 links and resources on this website.

If you have one computer in your class, you can make a computer usage chart. Believe me, it works.

Have a wonderful school year and thanks for reading our blogs.

Tanya

Comments

[Erin]

Thank you for sharing this! I've been trying to push technology use in a building without a lab. This is a great resource.