Educational Portfolio for Spencer Olmsted
Contact Information
Spencer Olmsted513 Central St NE
Olympia, WA 98506
(solmsted at yahoo)
2009-Current: 5th grade math and science teacher at Pioneer Elementary School in Olympia, Washington.
2006-2009: 5th grade teacher at L.P. Brown in Olympia.
Fall 2005: student taught in the 4th grade at Morning Star Elementary School in Bozeman, Montana.
Education
Links place content further down the page.Blog Entries
Graduate Work
Field trip to the Tinsley House at the Museum of the Rockies
Technology Instruction
I have been developing content for the web for over 15 years and I have enjoyed teaching my students how to publish media in this way.
Of course this is not the only thing we do in the technology lab, but it has been one of the most exciting and energetic units I have taught. My students (once given some footing) created an environment in the computer lab centered on group discovery and individual application. It can be a dynamic time when each student is no longer just plugged into their own machine. Learning how to "code" gives them some very fundamental knowledge of what the World Wide Web is, and how it works. Hypertext transfer protocol is not an abstraction anymore, and why should it be? In the world they were born into, the World Wide Web has always existed!
Geogebra is an amazing, free computer application that helps students learn about algebra and geometry. This image is one I worked on with my students as we talked about families of triangles.