School is only a couple weeks away and I am working to get some SMARTBoard lessons ready for this upcoming school year. Our school district just changed curriculum's last year. We are using Journeys by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. I have my SMARTBoard lessons that I created for 1st Grade shared in Google Drive. I am missing the first seven lessons and working to create those now. Below is an idea that I will be using for the first lesson. Step 1 Students will be using the iPad to snap a picture of their pals. This will be done at recess or during the school day. Step 2 Using Skitch students will add labels to their pictures. **The focus of the first weeks writing is adding labels to pictures of pals to show "who" and "what" the picture is about. Step 3 After students have added the labels to their pictures, they will upload the picture to their own blog via Kidblog. I am excited to see how it will work with my first graders. Since I will be introducing iPads to them to start the school year, I thought having them use the iPad's camera, Skitch and Kidblog will hit some key tools we will utilize throughout the school year.
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I was reading an article on the Greatist website. This website had its readers respond to the question, "How do you find happiness?" The winner of this writing contest was Casie Cook. You can find her on Twitter @kaceemaree. There was a section of her writing that gave me an idea. She talked about how her dad left her Post-it notes randomly for her to find. These little notes had positive comments. Casie reminisced how this gave her happiness. This gave me an idea of using QR Codes to leave little "notes" of encouragement for my 1st graders. Since reading is a skill that is taught and refined in first grade, I knew that a QR Code that provided a text response could be a challenge to read for some students. However, there are a couple of options for creating QR Codes that play audio. Here is how I envision this in my classroom. Randomly put QR Codes in students' desks, book box, lunch card holder, etc. When a student finds one he/she can use our iPads to scan the QR Code and hear what the code says. I could start the year with my voice being the one speaking but transition to students creating their own voice QR Codes to share with each other. Talk about building happiness in addition to classroom community! The sky is the limit for what your QR Codes could say. "I am so proud of you." "Keep up the great work in math." "Thanks for being a kid of character." "I am so happy to have you in my class." "You have been a rockstar worker lately, keep it up!" Below are a few resources for creating the audio QR Codes: Record MP3 is a website that can be used to create an audio recording. Press record and begin talking. When finished, press stop. You can choose to save your recording or if you are not happy you can start over. Once you save your recording, you are given a link to the recording. Copy the link and take it to a QR Code generator like Kaywa or QR Code Generator. Paste your link and create a QR Code. Now you have a QR Code that you can print and cut out and place in a student's desk. Vocaroo is somewhat similar to Record MP3. You click the record button and say what you want. When done press stop. If you are happy you can click save or if unhappy you can retry. If you save, you are given a link for your recording as well as some other options for sharing your recording. You would then take the link to a QR Code generator to produce your talking QR Code. QR Voice allows you to type text. Once you have typed in your text, click the little QR Code to generate your scannable audio code. The only downside is that it will not be your own personal voice. However, if you do not have access to a microphone and want to create a QR Code that talks, QR Voice is an option. I came across this app recommendation from Tony Vincent's Blog Learning in Hand. Tony does a great job of highlighting the features of this app. I wanted to add to the highlights of this app by providing a screen cast of the app below. If you are looking for a fun way to turn photos into jigsaw puzzles, Up in Pieces is the app to accomplish this. Once the image is loaded, you are able to choose the type of jigsaw puzzle you would like created. Open up your newly created puzzle and drag the puzzle pieces from the tray to create your picture. I can see a lot of potential for this in my 1st grade classroom. Each of our Journey's reading lessons via Houghton Mifflin Harcourt introduces students to new words each week. This curriculum even comes with pre-made photo cards of the words that could be downloaded and inserted into this app for students to practice. Having iPads in my 1st grade classroom, I have had many parents ask about writing. Writing on a tablet vs. writing on paper? Importance of holding a pencil correctly to write? Upper case vs lower case letters? In between lines on a page or the roller coaster effect? I came across Mind/Shift's on How do tech tools affect the way student's write? I suggest reading it if you have time. It provides the positives and negatives of tech tools' impact on writing. I want to highlight a few points that I found interesting. The 2,462 educators surveyed, who were either Advanced Placement teachers or National Writing Project teachers, largely agreed that technology positively impacts students with their writing, personal expression, and creativity, and facilitates collaboration. The ability to share work with a wider audience beyond the classroom is particularly engaging, with 96 percent of teachers responding that digital technologies make it more possible. The couple words that stuck out to me were "creativity" and "collaboration." "Many teachers reported that students are more willing to offer feedback and advice to peers through a shared document." In my opinion, peer editing has more impact than a teacher marking up a paper. Furthermore, having the ability to share with a global audience lent itself to increasing engagement. One of the cons of tech tools in writing could be in regards to copyright and fair use. As pointed out by Katrina Schwartz in the article: What’s more, many teachers felt students don’t have a good understanding of fair use and copyright laws, and don’t digest complicated texts well. In both categories, more than two-thirds of teachers rated their students “fair” or “poor.” Students have difficulty discerning the original source of online content and citing it properly. However, I think the burden falls back onto teachers to ensure covering responsibilities of being a digital citizen. One reoccurring theme in the article was while there were some negatives of tech tools in writing, teachers agreed that today's students are writing more than ever before. From text messaging and Tweeting to Facebook posts--students are immersed in opportunities to take part in digital literacy. I feel that the challenge for a teacher is to determine the right mix of analog vs. digital writing opportunities during the school year. In regards to my 1st graders, I still feel it is important for them to understand the essentials of forming letters, spacing words and incorporating punctuation effectively. However, I do see that tech tools serve as a powerful tool for students to become digitally literate. It boils down to the choice that the teacher makes in regards to using the tech tool as a "tool" or as a means of enriching the learning experience. "How Do Tech Tools Affect the Way Students Write?". Mind/Shift. Katrina Schwartz, 16 July 2013. Web. 17 July 2013. I have been putting together a Symbaloo page of animal web cams. Every fall in science, we talk about living things. Our big focus is on plants/trees. However, these animal web cams will be a great asset to help differentiate the needs of living things and how these are met by animals. My students will be able to watch animals in real time and identify how they are meeting their needs to survive. They can compare and contrast this with plants. The full page is embedded below but feel free to check it out here too. Another tool that I plan to integrate as well is the Cactus.AR app. This app utilizes augmented reality. You must print out the marker to display the cactus. Put the marker in view of the iPad's camera and see a virtual cactus appear. Students get to take care of this virtual plant and see how it changes if not taken care of correctly. As the school year approaches I am thinking about the number of teacher meetings we will have as a staff this upcoming school year. I am guilty of getting off task during these meetings. Checking my Twitter account to see new and innovative ways teachers/students are using technology, updating my blog or commenting on students' blogs are just a few of my guilty undertakings during these teacher meetings. PRINCIPALS!!! I am challenging you to digitize your meetings. Often times, we are introduced to topic and giving time to discuss with our peers. We then spend time having each group share out. That is great and all but what about trying some of the following to take an analog process and turn it into a digital experience. Use TodaysMeet to create a back channel. Now staff can collaborate in real time. I am no longer limited to the peers at my table only. You do not have to take time to share out as it is happening in real time. Another similar tool to TodaysMeet is Padlet. Create a stream of collaboration. My favorite difference is that you can share an image with Padlet. Now if asked to create a drawing/sketch of your thinking, snap a pic and share with the whole staff in real time. Create a public shared document and give the link to teachers prior to the meeting. All the teachers can access the link and use the Google Doc as a collaborative slate. Once the meeting is done save as a PDF and email to teachers or even publish to a cloud storage for all staff to access on demand. In conclusion, I am not pointing fingers saying that principals or even teachers leading staff meetings are failing. As we ask students to embrace technology to foster their learning, I think staff meetings are a great opportunity to model pedagogical uses of technology.
What do you think? Any other ideas to turn analog process of staff meetings into digital ones? At the recent iPad U hosted by GWAEA I learned about three new apps to help primary students hone their spelling skills. These apps are created by @Reks While they make a variety of apps, I am highlighting the three apps are below:
1) Build a Word Easy Spelling learn to spell sight words, long and short vowels--with 700+ words, students can choose to learn, practice or test. The app keeps a history of the students progress. You can use upper/lower case letters as well as toggle audio feedback on and off. ($2.99) 2) Build a Word Easy Spelling with phonics--same capabilities as the previously listed app with more emphasis on phonics. Toggle on audio and/or visual prompts. ($2.99) 3) Build a Word Express--this is the free version that allows a lot of the similar functionality as the other apps but there are in app purchases needed in order to reap the whole benefits of this great app. Looking for a fun way to add captions to images? Phrase.it is a tool that can accomplish this for you. I learned about this tool from Free Technology for Teachers. Phrase.it provides you with three choices for getting pictures to the site in order to add captions. You can upload a picture from your device, import from Facebook or choose a random stock photo that Phrase.it provides. One of my favorite parts of this tool is the simplistic design. It is very straightforward whether using a tablet, smartphone or a computer. Once you have loaded an image, you can drag the speech bubble of your choice to bring your picture to life. You can even add more than one image at a time to create a comic strip. Below is my example that I made on my iPad. I see great potential for this tool in the classroom. My first grade classroom utilizes the Journey's Reading program provided by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. In unit 21 of this curriculum, students are introduced to adding a voice to their writing. Phrase.it would be a great tool for students to create authentic "voice" by taking their own picture and one of their friend to showcase dialogue.
Once students are done creating their "voice" using Phrase.it, they could save the image, add it to their Kidblog and share with the world. A great visual way for students to see how "voice" in writing can bring it alive for the reader. In my 1st grade classroom we currently have 5 iPads. These 5 iPads are used during centers, small/large group instruction and one-on-one. An example of my first graders using the iPads is that we use Evernote and Educreations to create digital portfolios. Currently my students can share their digital portfolios by sharing their notebooks on their Kidblog. However, this adds an extra step into the process of sharing their digital portfolio. I came across a post on the iLearn Technology blog. The site highlighted was called Postach.io. Postach.io instantly creates a blog post base on your notes in Evernote. To get started you create a Postach.io account. Once you have created an account, you are able to set up a "site." This will serve as the blog for your notes that are published to Postach.io via Evernote. After you have created your site, you will be asked to authorize your Evernote account with Postach.io. At this time you can choose a notebook to dedicate as the central location for notes you want to be published to Postach.io. Upon setting up your notebook in Evernote, you will simply add any notes you want to show up on your Postach.io page into the notebook you established as your default blog publishing notebook. All you do is add the tag "published" to have your note show up as a blog post. You add the tag "page" to have it posted as a page instead of a blog post. Super simple and a cool way to get content from Evernote instantly to a blog. Looking forward to trying this out. I have posted before on using these two web/iPad tools for creating digital portfolios. I will be presenting at iPad U which is an iPad professional development session hosted at the Grant Wood AEA in Iowa. This PD session will be keynoted by Kathy Schrock. This will be a two day session over integration of the iPad into the classroom. I am fortunate to have the opportunity to share how I utilized Educreations and Evernote to create digital portfolios in my 1st grade classroom. My presentation is embedded below. |
Andrew FenstermakerInstructional Technology Coordinator | Innovation Coach | Google Certified Innovator | Presenter | Blogger | Adjunct @UiowaEducation | Owner @kids_f_i_r_s_t |