Hello again! I wanted to pass along a GREAT idea I have found very useful in my classroom. A colleague and second grade teacher at Two Bunch Palms Elementary School, Jacinto Noriega, gave me the idea of using digital frames for incidental learning.

Here's the gist of it: Use a slide show program to export your ready-made slides into your digital frame. Make sure the slides are a readable format, such as jpeg, pdf, bmp, etc. Format and upload them to your flash drive. Plug it into your digital frame and let it cycle through the different "photos" throughout the day. When students' eyes are wandering about the classroom, hopefully they will be entranced with the rote concepts featured on the slides – helping them learn important facts and skills you've covered in class.  

Another idea that works well is taking those same slides and putting them to use as the screen savers on the student computers. When students are not using them, the computers become instant tutors in vocabulary words, math, science, social studies facts and other skills you are working on in class.  

We're always trying to incorporate more and more technology into our classrooms, but sometimes it can be overwhelming. My advice – just try it – things can always be reset or reinstalled! Ask parents to help by donating a frame or dig around local discount retailers, where I found a frame for less than $25! Although we're experiencing difficult economic times, digital technology is getting cheaper by the day. Even the Scholastic Bonus Catalog has a flat screen TV that you can hook up to an old PC and let it run through a screen saver of photos!

Do you have other ideas for digital frames or screen savers? Post your idea here!

Thanks for reading!

Eric

P.S. For any home schooling teachers, Parent and Child had an excellent article few years back on how to use digital frames with your child(ren) at home.

Photos courtesy of Jacinto Noriega.