Since I work with kids at all six levels at our elementary school I am going to overview what technology I see kids using at my little school on a regular basis.
In kindergarten the kids all have a chance to do a program called Zip Zoom. It is meant to be comprehensible English for students that don't speak English at home, but most all the kids play it because they learn mousing skills and onset vowel sounds.
Last year my kindergarten group of 7 kids made an ABC book in MSWord, copying and pasting pictures from a bank that I created. I actually had them print the pictures and paste them into a cardboard blank book to take home and keep. They used Photo Story to recreate the book and record their voices.
This year the schedule was different and i didn't have one single group that came to me daily, I had groups of five - seven kids that came to me on a rotation.The "conversation" group mostly uses realia to prompt speaking in complete sentences. Sometimes they can take turns on an iPad I bought that has a couple of programs from Montessori that teach letter sounds and how to form them and number sense games. I also got some of the Smart Baby programs that have flash cards to learn vocabulary. As squirmy as they often are, they can generally focus on what the other students are doing on the iPad when it is not their turn. It is pretty motivating. I hope we can get a couple more.
