With teaching 1st graders how to read, sometimes having students listen to their own voice while reading can be very beneficial. This helps them see if they are reading like a robot, word by word or paying attention to punctuation. Parents that are not familiar with the term fluency or reading with intonation can have a hard time understanding some "teacher" talk about reading. This is where the Educreations app comes into play. My 1st graders are becoming experts with the Educreations app. We keep digital portfolios throughout the school year. One element that we keep in the portfolio is their development with reading. Moreover, we use these portfolios to show parents what fluency sounds like as well as how reading with intonation can impact the meaning of sentences. Below is how we use the Educreations app for cataloging our reading development. You can take the link and place into the digital portfolio. We use Evernote to create our digital portfolios. You can even take the link and send it to parents. They can open the link to view/listen to their child's fluency. **Students are limited to sharing links only. **You are able to get the embed code if you save as "public" and are not signed in as a student. Below is an embedded sample.
0 Comments
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 previously posted how I have been trying to integrate Evernote as a tool for cataloging student artifacts of their learning. To compliment Evernote, I have also been using Skitch. This tool allows me to annotate over my pictures that I take of the artifacts. Skitch is also available on the app store. I have it installed on my iPad and iPhone to make recording artifacts in my classroom a point and shoot task. Below is an example of how I used Skitch to capture an image of a student's spelling test. Using Skitch, I made a note that the student knew it was a "D" but wrote the letter "B" in place. This is a very low student. This is great progress for this student to know the two sounds. By taking this picture and annotating, I will have a quick, easy reminder during conference as to why I wanted to share this artifact. After recently attending the ITEC conference in Des Moines, Iowa, I revisited my Evernote account. With parent teacher conferences quickly approaching, I find myself wondering what I can do differently to provide a valuable experience for parents at conferences. Many times they are confused by the "teacher talk" during these short meetings. I wanted a tool to visually show parents their child's strengths and areas for improvement. Evernote provides a free tool (limited monthly uploads) to categorize and catalog each student's work. In addition, apps are available for the iPhone/iPad in the app store. I have since created a premium membership and created a folder in Evernote for each of my students. My goal in the future is to allow students the opportunity to catalog their learning experience with Evernote but for the time being I will be using my iPad and iPhone to collect artifacts for the upcoming conferences. To find out much more on how to use Evernote as an ePortfolio tool check out Rob Van Nood's blog about how he has used it in his classroom for multiple years. |
Andrew FenstermakerInstructional Technology Coordinator | Innovation Coach | Google Certified Innovator | Presenter | Blogger | Adjunct @UiowaEducation | Owner @kids_f_i_r_s_t |