Technology Spotlight, Karen Brown, L W Conder Elementary School

Karen Brown has made teaching child development students her career for very good reasons - she understands 4-year olds and how to provide engaging and meaningful experiences for them! Karen has taught in the Clemson Road Child Development program for 10 years both on the Clemson Road campus and currently at L W Conder Elementary. Her love of nature led her to the Congaree National Forest where she was a teacher ranger for two summers and she continues to bring her students to the outdoors through grant funded projects and many recycled materials.

The name of Karen's classroom is the Terrific Turtles and her class has already learned a lot about sea turtles in particular, one of her favorite animals. In order to provide her students with the opportunity to meet a turtle expert and to learn more about their class mascot, Karen arranged a Skype session with a west coast authority on turtles. He presented lots of pictures and stories and the Terrific Turtles answered questions and shared their turtle school family song with him. The two-way exchange made possible by Skype was very helpful in keeping student engagement high!

Skype, Google Hangouts, Facetime and other video chat applications are a great way to bring experts to your classroom. How have you used applications like this in your classroom? 

Thank you to Debbie Brady for nominating Karen Brown. If you have a teacher or project on technology you want to showcase at your school in Richland School District Two, fill out the Spotlight Form .