Preparing Our Students for the Future eMINTS Preparing Our Students for the Future (This presentation was produced with the school board as the target audience. With skepticism about whether eMINTS is worth the money that the district is spending, we are looking at the value of eMINTS in the classroom.) Thank you for the privilege of addressing you tonight. I would like to share with you some of the reasons why eMINTS has transformed my classroom. Let’s begin by watching a short video clip that some of my students put together on the gas laws. (show video clip by clicking on the picture) The students in this video spent hours (both in class and out) first learning information about the gas laws, internalizing it and coming up with a way to creatively express the information. Students who normally don’t like to do homework came in excited the next day with lines that they had come up with that contributed to the overall project. Not only did it reinforce the concepts that had been taught in class but it helped to build a community of learners in the classroom as well as true leadership from some of the students. This winter I had the opportunity to attend the Midwest Education Technology Conference where I heard a key note speech by David Warlick. He provided great insight into why technology in the classroom is vital for the future of our students. The next two slides are downloaded from his site.

Three years ago when I was asked to take part in eMINTS training I thought that it would be great because it would provide me opportunity to get lots of cool equipment in my classroom. Little did I know how much true transformation would take place beyond the technology…… The equipment is an important part but not just because it makes class more exciting and students more engaged. We live in a society now where technology is the center of so much of our world. An eMINTS classroom is well equipped to help students prepare for any future that they head toward. The technology is the tool by which we are able to teach so much more….

An eMINTS Classroom Produces Students who Become… Inquiry Based Learners Explorers of Knowledge Problem Solvers Independent Thinkers Team Workers Effective Communicators These are all qualities that prepare our students for wherever they are headed: more education or the work place.

This is another slide from David Warlick’s site. (Read slide) If our students are going to be productive members of society, they have to be able to make evaluations for themselves. If we don’t teach them how, how will they learn? They are bombarded with information… bombarded with decisions….

This is one very important aspect of what it means to teach in an eMINTS classroom.

Tools for the Classroom Moodle Smartboard Webquests Inspiration Movie Maker Being an eMINTS teacher has helped me to provide more resources for my students. Here are some of the many tools that I have been able to utilize in my classroom: Moodle – link to Moodle link – explain that my assignments are put here daily… all handouts from class are here… review quizzes… discussion forums.. I link grades here… Smartboard – link to picture and talk about how I use it in class and return to this page Webquests – link to webquest – explain how they work Inspiration – link to example and explain the program – how it enhances the learning process Movie maker – open the example – point out big periodic table project as well as the act of explaining it all on video

What do the tests say? This is the third year that eMINTS has been in our district. We were really fortunate to have administrators who were excited enough about the concept to make us the first high school in the area (and almost anywhere) to bring in eMINTS. Although no formal results have been calculated at this time for our district, we can look to proven results from other schools to solidify our resolution that eMINTS will help test scores in the future.

These results were taken from the eMINTS site: http://www. emints Missouri's Office of Social and Economic Data Analysis (OSEDA) worked with the eMINTS National Center and participating schools to evaluate the eMINTS program implementation in the first five cohort groups of schools.

Thank you for your support of eMINTs.

Smartboard Give examples of using smartboard inc class. Return