We love to use Pixie to draw things we are learning about.  We love to create web pages using Pixie and WebBlender to share with different classes and grades to teach them.  Right now my 3rd graders are creating a ABC book to share with the Pre-K and Kinder kids. Pixie is great for making graphic organizers to compare lots of things like story elements for the older grades and animals for the younger grades. 

My philosophy is that technology is a tool that should be used all day everyday.  It should not be something that we stop and are think "Hmm how can I meet the technology TEKS with this project?" but more so a automatic tool that we use like a DVD player. 

Technology motivates students and makes some boring subjects way more interesting for the kids.  For example making a history timeline slideshow instead of just talking about what dates MLK made speeches, etc. My kids have completed projects on water cycles or projects on maps and legends in Pixie.  We have used cool word for vocabulary words.

Since purchasing the Imagination Suite, I have worked with my colleague Colleen Byrne to create a website full of step by step lesson plans for each project and a sample and templates for the project.  To help get our teachers and students on board, we created resources for PK-2 and 3-5 for reading, science, math, and social studies.  All these projects are TEKS based and help kids connect Technology Applications with their subject area TEKS.

Explore our resources here!

I try to teach my kids to think and figure out what they should do next instead of just clicking on the computers.  I try to teach them the common sense elements of computers so as the programs advance and new operating systems come out that they can use what they have learned to know how to use the new stuff, instead of thinking well I'm supposed to click on the button with the N but its not here now?