charging up

today we had to share the netbooks with the computer assistant because her lab was closed due to testing. we were disappointed, but we know that these are not our computers. they came back while we were at lunch and they needed a charge, so i plugged them in and we settled down to a writer's workshop lesson. mini-lesson was touching every word when we reread what we wrote so we are sure that we wrote down everything we meant to say. prompt was to write about the netbooks. anything. what you have learned about them. what you like to do with them. anything. whilst we were working - amazingly a very productive and quiet room - our district superintendent wandered into the room. i glanced up from my one-on-one editing with a student and told him that we were so sorry that he did not catch us using our netbooks because we would have been able to show him all the wonderful things we have learned and can do. i asked the kids to tell him what we were writing about and they shared their joy with him. "we learned how to take care of our netbooks!" "they're red and rubbery." "we search bing for images." "we create documents." "we make cool fonts and colors!" "we can fix problems." "we shut them if we get a picture we don't like." "we are careful not to break them." etc. it's hard to read him, but i hope that he was impressed with all of their enthusiasm. i said, "who are you smarter than?" and they chorused "THE 5th GRADERS!!!" he smiled and nodded and headed out of the room. we went back to our amazing stories of our netbooks. soon to be published on the netbooks as a photostory (maybe) or voicestream (maybe) or something.