Talking with Other Teachers Around the Country

I talked with a middle school reading and writing teacher from Chicago, IL. His name is Mr. Hackmann and he teaches at Audubon Elementary School. He said by far the most frequent technology they use is word processing. This is not surprising considering all the papers and reports required in a reading and writing class. This is also not that groundbreaking but he did have some other very interesting things they had used or planned to in the future.
First off his class uses an online grading system that can be checked by all students and their parents. He said this allows for parents to keep up with their child's assignments and grades and it allows students to take responsibility for what they have due. He said this really helps rebut the excuse that they didn't know what to do if they weren't at class that day.
He talked about using digital audio recorders in the classroom. It sounded like they did a really fun project with them. He said they used the digital recorders to reproduce old-fashioned plays like they did in the '30s and '40s. He said they added sound effects and mixed it using Audacity.
He said that in the Spring they are going to be working on a multimedia project centered around social justice themes which sounded really interesting. They will be using Garageband and Imovie to create videos of the themes they find relevant in their own lives.
One of his future projects included producing some kind of web page that has daily updates from all teachers on homework, upcoming tests etc. This way students could have one site which would encompass all of their school information. He said he has not had time to tackle this yet but is hoping to soon.
I really enjoyed conversing with someone from another state about some of the ways they used technology in their classroom. Especially since he is teaching reading and writing (as I will be), he had several projects I found interesting and might one day use in my own classroom.