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CUE Rock Star Solana Beach Reflection, Day One

Since I had such a great time and learned so much at CUE Rock Star Tahoe, I decided to sign up for another three day session of learning and networking a little closer to home at CUE Rock Star Solana Beach, and I’m so happy I did. I will take a page from Melissa Hero’s book and write my reflections day by day so I can process today’s information before it gets overwritten in my brain with new information acquired tomorrow. Yes, I am taking notes in Evernote (one of the best tools ever), but writing about what I learned helps me make better sense of it.

The structure of the conference was the same as at Tahoe; there were ten sessions to choose from, each attendee could choose two to attend, and each day follows a theme. Today’s theme was “Getting Googley,” just like in Tahoe, but the sessions offered were different. I chose Holly Clark‘s session on digital student portfolios and Who Said Google Docs is not for the Primary Grades? with Juli Kimbley. One of the goals at my school this year is to increase communication; I thought that these two sessions would help me find ways to make it easier for teachers to publish student work online for an authentic audience.

The Power of Digital Student Portfolios

In Holly’s session, what I was really looking for were things I could take back to my school and share with my teachers to explain why they needed to have their students create digital portfolios and how easy it was to do it. I was not disappointed.

One of the best reasons to have students create digital portfolios is that it provides an opportunity to discuss digital citizenship. As students are working on their portfolios, we can teach them they about their digital footprint and how nothing online is actually private. This is key because when students post something online, whether they post it on Facebook, Instagram, or somewhere else, they are actually building their own brand, but they often fail to realize this fact. We need to teach students to think about what they are putting online. It is easier and better to create a positive digital footprint than to fix a negative one, so they need to learn how online interactions now will affect them later. This is especially key in an age when college admissions officers and prospective employers search for you on Google before they make a decision about whether you are a good fit for their school or company.

Digital portfolios also offer an opportunity to teach kids to be good global communicators. They must learn to put their work online in a way that makes people want to consume it. Simplicity is key. Just because you can use red text on a green background doesn’t mean you should.

Holly also pointed out that when work is online, both students and teachers up their game. Students produce better work when they know it will be seen by an authentic audience, and teachers will reflect on their lessons to make sure they are good enough to be used in a digital portfolio.

Holly’s recommended workflow:

  • Upload all work to Google Drive
  • Provide a Google Form for students to use to write a reflection
  • Publish the work and the reflection on the digital portfolio

Suggested platforms for the portfolio were Google Sites (good, but can have a bit of a learning curve for teachers), Kidblogs (not live, you can choose to limit visibility to specific people), and Weebly (her favorite for ease of use and attractiveness of the result). If none of those are an option, at least the work will be stored in Google Drive and accessible. She recommended that whatever platform you select, make sure that the kids never have to click more than twice to get to their work.

One of the keys to her success was parent buy-in. We need parents to understand what we are doing and why we are doing it. If we can do that, they will be on board. Talk about what you are doing on Back to School night. Have as many meetings as it takes.

My favorite take-away from this session was the idea of creating QR codes that link to student work housed in the portfolio and posting those on the class walls instead of printing and then posting the work. Codes can also be sent home to parents.

Choose File > Make a Copy to save the planning sheet below to your own Google Drive.

Digital portfolio brainstorming sheet

Who Said Google Docs is not for the Primary Grades?

In this session led by Juli Kimbley, I hoped to find ways to have students in the primary grades collaborate and publish online. We are not a Google Apps for Education School, so I was hesitant about whether this session would be useful for me, but I decided to check it out.

Juli started out by immediately allaying my fears. A classroom account will work just fine for younger students to create in Google Drive. She suggested making the name and the password easy for the students to type and sharing all passwords with the parents.

When introducing Google Drive to young students, Juli pointed out that they must first be given the opportunity to play with it, just as they would if they were be given math manipulatives for the first time. Have them open a practice doc and type on it. Let them explore a bit.

Other helpful tips:

  • Have students use a consistent naming protocol for their work, such as first name and date (Ex. Nancy 7-24-13) so that you can find it easily later.
  • Have students work in pairs, especially in the beginning. This allows them to remind each other about what they need to do and how to do it.
  • Ask students to do a pre-write on paper before they open a doc. It doesn’t have to be a rough draft; it can be a brainstorm, a Venn diagram, or anything else that has meaning for the student. In this way, you can avoid students sitting at the computer complaining that they don’t know what to write.
  • Don’t worry about teaching proper keyboarding. Children at this age are too young for formal keyboarding instruction. That will come later.
  • To help students learn beginning research skills, put information they need to access in a folder in Google Drive and let them pull what they need from there. Photos to be used in the documents can also be stored in a folder in Google Drive.
  • Once a project is complete, store all the student work and any research/image folders inside a single folder. This cleans up your Drive without deleting any work and makes it easier for students to find what they need for the next project.
  • Showcase one student’s work on your website every week.

By using Google Drive in her classroom, Juli said she saw improved classroom management (nobody wanted to lose laptop time), collaboration skills, and higher quality work as the learners strived to make their work as good as it could be.

Finally…

When I get back to school in a few weeks, I will be meeting with the teachers to do planning for the beginning of the year. I hope to get at least a few teachers to try out digital portfolios, perhaps posting one project per trimester. For the younger students, maybe just using Google Drive will be enough. But first, I have two more days of learning here in beautiful Solana Beach.

12 Ways to Use Twitter in the Elementary Classroom

I recently completed a short course on Twitter for Professional Development. For my final assignment, I created a plan for conducting sessions on Twitter for the teachers at my school site. As part of the assignment, I created this graphic using Google Drawings. The professor liked it so much, he asked if he could add it to the course resources. Of course, I said yes, and also decided that if he liked it enough to share it, I should too. You can do the same.

Twitter for elementary

Click to see a full-size version.

ThingLink Interactive Images

ThingLink image

A number of people mentioned to me during last night’s #CAedChat that they would like to see a blog post about ThingLink interactive images and their use in the classroom, so here goes.

ThingLink allows you to add tags to an image which viewers can click on to access text you have added or online material such as websites, images, sounds, videos, and more. This tool can be accessed on the web at www.thinglink.com, and there is also an iOS app. It is free to create an account and teachers can request an educator upgrade which lets you store an unlimited number of images on the ThingLink site. Your tagged images can be shared and embedded wherever you wish.

I have found ThingLink to be very versatile and easy to use. You start by uploading an image from your computer (e.g., a photo you have taken, an image created with drawing software, or a scanned file) or by linking to an image on the web. Then you add tags to the online content you want to appear on your image. When the viewer moves the cursor over the image, the links appear and are clickable.

Teachers can use it to present content in an engaging, interactive way. Students can create images that support learning at all levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Whether they are labeling the parts of a flower, creating a graphic comparing and contrasting two types of sculpture, adding content to a map or timeline, or creating their digital selves, students will be on task and learning (although I can’t promise they will be quiet; the enthusiasm is definitely audible).

ThingLink can also be a starting point for a discussion on digital citizenship. Many students want to dive headfirst into Google Images when they start a project like this, but we can take this opportunity to teach them about Creative Commons licensing and all the excellent resources that are available to them to use, such as Pixabay.comWikimedia Commons, and the Creative Commons section on Flickr.com.

ThingLink supports many of the Common Core State Standards, in particular CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.6 Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others and CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.8 Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, assess the credibility and accuracy of each source, and integrate the information while avoiding plagiarism. However, depending on what students add to their ThingLink image, it can also support several of the other standards.

Here are some images on the California missions and the 1849 Gold Rush my 4th grade students created using ThingLink. This was the first time I had used ThingLink with students, and I should have had them all send me a link to their images so I could embed them, but I didn’t realize that until too late. In order to get them on the page in a timely fashion, I touched the images (similar to “liking” on Facebook) and they appeared in my stream. One feature I would love to see in the Educator account would be the ability to manage student accounts and publish their images as a class, but I am sure they are working on that. Until then, I will use a Google form to collect the image link from each student for future projects.

ThingLink Toolkit for Educators

Richard Byrne’s 26+ Ways to Use ThingLink in the Classroom

Resources I provided for my students

 

If you have creative ideas on how to use ThingLink, please share them in the comments below.

Tech Tuesday: Poets.org Listening Booth

The Common Core standards emphasize the integration of digital media as early as kindergarten. Speaking and Listening Standard K.2 states that students will “Confirm understanding of a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media by asking and answering questions about key details and requesting clarification if something is not understood” (italics mine).

April is National Poetry Month, so what better way to address the listening standard than to hear poets read their own works aloud? At the Poets.org website, the Listening Booth allows you to do just that. Search over 400 audio clips of famous poems, most of which are read aloud by the poets themselves. Most of the poems are suited to students in the upper elementary grades and above, but the list is growing all the time, and I hope that more poems for younger children will be introduced soon.

To use this in the classroom, teachers could have students listen and then draw a representation of the poem. Students could read the poem first and then discuss how their impression of the poem changed after they heard it read aloud. Teachers could find other versions of the poem real aloud and students could discuss them. The possibilities are endless.

If you would like more ideas, take a look at this Teachbytes post on ten ways to celebrate National Poetry Month with technology.

Originally published on Technology at Chaparral.

Tech Tuesday: Story Starters

The Common Core standards are coming, and with them will come new emphasis on writing, and especially on producing and publishing writing using digital tools from a very early age. In fact, English Language Arts Writing Standard 6 for kindergarten states, “With guidance and support from adults, explore a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.” The five paragraph essay is no longer the star of the student writing pantheon. Students will need to become accustomed to different types of writing produced for different, authentic audiences. Some student writing will be produced in ten minutes and some over the course of a week or more.

Here are two story starters that may help.
PictureScholastic Story Starters generates creative writing prompts that allow students to practice using different voices and formats for different audiences. Students (or teachers) can select a genre and then spin to get a prompt. You can spin all four wheels at once or do one at a time until you get something you like. Need to practice vocabulary? Have your students write a to-do list so they can focus on using higher-level words. Are letter writing skills what you are looking for? One of the prompts has students writing a letter. You can also choose a grade level to produce simpler or more complicated prompts. Here are some that I generated:

  • Grade level K/1: Describe a pet for a silly elephant who swims in the ocean.
  • Grade 2: Write a one-paragraph newspaper article about a nervous parrot who wants to be invisible.
  • Grade 4-6: Write a birthday party invitation for a stubborn dentist who only looks at things through a microscope.

If you choose to write online, you may add a drawing and publish your work in one of four formats: notebook, letter, newspaper, or postcard. You can then print it or save it to iBooks, to Edmodo, or a number of other places. See Scholastic’s Teacher Guide to using this activity.


The Story Starter and The Story Starter, Jr. work similarly, however, they provide randomly generated complete sentences which would typically be used to begin a creative writing piece. The sentences are usually funny and will appeal to students. Here are the first few prompts I got:

The Story Starter:

  • The brilliant accountant polished the table near the submarine for the hunter.
  • The tired sock inspector rode the bicycle into the backyard to wake up the President.

The Story Starter, Jr. (more basic vocabulary and simpler, shorter sentences):

  • The pilot was digging in the sand in the desert.
  • The girl was carrying an envelope in the haunted house.

Originally published on Technology at Chaparral.

Tech Tuesday: Guided Access

Guided Access is a feature of iOS 6 that allows users to prevent app switching and/or disable parts of the screen. It does not affect the way the app works unless you specifically set it to do so.

There are many reasons teachers might want to enable this feature on iPads in their classrooms. It may be a simple matter of keeping the students on task. Teachers may want to prevent students taking online tests from having access to Google or other search engines. Teachers using iPads in small groups may find that the minute or two spent enabling Guided Access is time well-spent when the iPads are ready for the next group without need for further teacher intervention. Guided Access can also be helpful if you want to disable areas of the screen, whether it is because you want to prevent students attempting to make in-app purchases, pressing the pause button, saving to the camera roll, or for any other reason.

First, enable Guided Access on your iPad. Go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Guided Access. You will need to set a passcode so you can turn Guided Access on and off and control the settings for each Guided Access session.

To start a Guided Access session, open the app you want to use and triple-click the Home button. If there are any areas of the screen you want to disable, circle them. You can use the handles to adjust the area. You can also set the iPad to ignore all screen touches by turning off Touch and keep it from changing orientation by turning off Motion. When you have set everything the way you want it, click Start.

To end a Guided Access session, triple-click the Home button and enter the Guided Access passcode.

The video below will give you a quick overview of what Guided Access looks like and how it works.

Originally published on Technology at Chaparral.

Tech Tuesday: Using Weather Apps

lightning

“…after all it is more important to know whether there will be weather than what the weather will be” (Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth).

Perhaps. However, weather is an important area of study for our students. They examine different aspects of weather as early as kindergarten. The weather apps on the iPad can help with this, but they also allow students to do much more. All require an internet connection to download current weather.

InstaWeather Pro (regularly $1.99; free for a limited time) adds a weather overlay to your images. You can take your own pictures or use images from your camera roll, apply the skin, and then share.

Educational applications: Class weather book, compare predicted weather with actual weather, add weather to 365 project photos, tweet your weather, take a picture of the same plants at regular intervals and see how weather affects their growth, etc. Matt Gomez is using it to document the weather in his Texas kindergarten classroom.

Apple‘s default weather app and other similar apps* can be used not only to check the weather, but may be incorporated into the curriculum in a variety of ways. The possibilities are endless. Here are a few ideas to get you started.

  • Mathematics ideas: Use a weather app and Easy Chart (basic version is free for iPhone, also compatible with iPad; $0.99 for iPad HD version or iPhone advanced pack to add more functionality) to compare temperatures or wind speeds over time, in different places, or at different times of day. Compute mean, median, and mode of high or low temperatures over the course of a week. Give students a temperature and have them try to find a city with that mean temperature this week. Graph the difference between expected highs and lows.
  • Language arts ideas: Use the information from the weather app to list facts or write an informational paragraph. Write about how the weather influences your activities. Use the InstaWeather image as the background for a haiku or weather-related senses poem. Create a PuppetPals video to explain a weather phenomenon.
  • Social studies/science ideas: Compare local weather to weather in other parts of the world. Use one of the video capable apps to observe the ways weather moves across the continents.

*For example, there are apps by the Weather Channel, Weather Underground, AccuWeather, Weather +, WeatherBug, and others.

Please share the ways you might use weather apps in your classroom in the comments.
Image courtesy of PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay.com.

Originally published on Technology at Chaparral.

Tech Tuesday: Bluster!

App: Bluster! (Free)
Subject: Language Arts
Grade level: The stated grade level in the app is 2-4, but it could be used by 1st graders who are already good readers and would be a good review for many 5th graders.
What it is: A word matching game from McGraw-Hill where players can work on rhyming words, prefixes and suffixes, synonyms, homophones, adjectives, and other skills. The app comes with over 800 words. More words are available via in-app purchase ($0.99).

This game uses weather sound effects and backgrounds to engage players. Each game consists of three rounds in which players need to sort 30 words into the three spaces in the center. Players swipe through the word list to find words that match according to the selected type. When all three words in the center spaces match, they are cleared from the list. The object of the game is to make all ten matches and clear the word list as quickly as possible. The game keeps track of the fastest times. The game times a player game in which you are timed as you place the matching terms in the given boxes from the list until all words are used. 10 matches wins one round. In addition, students are able to play the game in a team mode in which students are able to collaborate to complete the task together. The object of the game is to make all matches from the word list provided as fast as possible to get the best time.

Two things that would greatly improve this game would be to have the game pronounce the words in the list and to display the type of match players need to make during game play, but even with these shortcomings, it is still an excellent game and one that students will enjoy.

Note: When setting up the game, it may be best to refer to the “grades” as “levels,” since students may need to play either above or below their actual grade level to be challenged.

Variations:

  • Single-player mode: Students play at their own pace and can tap the sun to pause
  • Team mode: Students share an iPad and work together to find matching words
  • Versus mode: Students compete head-to-head to see who can clear the word list first

Extension idea:

  • Have students who are playing alone or in Team mode note unfamiliar vocabulary words while playing, then use the Dictionary app to look them up. They could even illustrate them with a drawing app and add to a class vocabulary book on the iPad or in the class library.

Key for success:
Make sure students know how the game works ahead of time. In Team mode, there are weather elements that can freeze the opponent’s move if properly timed, allowing the player to get ahead.

Additional links:
Using Bluster! during RtI

Originally published on Technology at Chaparral.

Tech Tuesday: Puppet Pals HD

Puppet Pals icon

App: Puppet Pals HD (Free)
Subject: All
Grade level: All

What it is: An animation and story-telling app for the iPad that comes with several characters and backgrounds. Students select characters and backdrops, then create a movie by moving the characters with their fingers while recording narration or dialog.

Upgrading to the Director’s Pass version ($2.99) provides access to many more characters and backdrops from the developer and also allows users to create their own puppets and scenes.

Educational applications:

  • Demonstrate understanding of a lesson
  • Create a news story about a current or historical event
  • Provide opportunity for ELL students to use language in an engaging way
  • Create presentations for classroom projects
  • Reader’s theater or poetry reading for fluency
  • Persuasive writing
  • Many, many more; please share in the comments if you have a wonderful idea

How to share with the outside world:

  • Save your project
  • Export it to the Camera Roll
  • Open it in the Camera Roll and email it or upload it to YouTube

Key for success:
Planning! Students can re-record while working on their project, but there is no option for editing saved work. Students working on more sophisticated projects should decide beforehand which characters they will use and what will happen. If they are working in groups, having a script, or at least discussing who will say what and when is important. Having a storyboard would be very helpful.

Download printable directions for using Puppet Pals HD.

Additional links:
Introduction to Puppet Pals HD
Practical Lesson Plans Using Puppet Pals HD
Persuasive Writing and Puppet Pals HD

Originally published on Technology at Chaparral.