Teacher Feature - Stacey Deaton

This past week, I had the pleasure of visiting Vass-Lakeview Elementary and see how some of the 5th graders there are using their Chromebooks.  VLE has only been 1:1 with students for approximately 7 months and it was great to see the creative work the students are already deeply involve with!

One of the teachers' rooms I visited was Stacey Deaton.  Stacey has been teaching for 7 years, all in Moore County Schools (and she is also a product of MCS!).  After 1/2 a year teaching 2nd, she has spent the last 6.5 teaching 5th grade.

It was immediately obvious that Chromebooks were not an add-on in this room- they were very much a natural extension of the learning tasks at hand.  Some students were working in inquiry-based ways, creating Google slideshows of images that represented current vocabulary words (which they will subsequently show their classmates, who would have to guess which word was being alluded to). I also saw some great, creative examples of students showing mastery of content.

"Using Chromebooks have benefited student learning in my classroom because they are more engaged than ever before.  They have fun working on projects and they are able to do more creating.  It is also more relevant to the world that they are living in now."

-Stacey Deaton, 5th grade teacher, Vass-Lakeview Elementary

Student Work Samples:

Movenote   (Support Materials here)

Jordan C - Vocabulary Movenote
Journie T - Vocabulary Movenote

GoAnimate  (Support Materials here)

Rebecca C - Animation about Thomas Paine
Kaden T - Animation about John Adams

---

Thanks so much for all the work you do for your students, Ms. Deaton!

-Steve Johnson

Lead Digital Integration Facilitator

Moore County Schools

@edtechsteve

Teacher Feature - Jilian Reynolds

Jilian Reynolds is a rock star 7th grade ELA teacher at Elise Middle School in Robbins, NC.  She is one of those teachers that has always been at the forefront of using technology with students, always chomping at the bit for more!

Because of this, at the start of this 2013-2014 school year, Jilian was a natural selection to pilot 1:1 Chromebooks for our county.  Her students did amazing work, created incredible multimedia projects, and have become a model classroom for others to come visit and see what every student is capable of doing on these machines.  She and her student's work and willingness to share their positive feedback on the Chromebook experience was a big factor in our decision to move forward with these devices for all students in grades 6-12.

As a bonus, Ms. Reynolds produced a short video with her students that shows how she uses Chromebooks in her classroom to easily and powerfully differentiate instruction and assessments.  Enjoy!