Technology Tuesday: Seesaw

I am so glad that our whole school is using Seesaw this year as a portfolio for student work as a communication tool for parents.  And selfishly, I am loving it for the library.  At the beginning of the year, I asked our Instructional Technology Specialist, to add me as a teacher in all the classes.  I was then able to add a library folder in every class where students can put any work that we do in the library.  While I thought this would be the only benefit, that I would be able to keep a "portfolio" of their library work, I am finding many more benefits as the year goes on.  

1.  Parents can see what we are doing in the library!  When students are putting the work in the library folder, parents see that the library is a place where learning is happening.  Of course these are things I normally would have sent home on paper, but who knows if they actually made it home or not. 

2.  I can explain what we are doing in the library and show how it relates to what the students are doing in the classroom.  

3.  I can send my newsletter and other notes directly to parents.  Although it takes me about 10 minutes to post in all the classes, at least I am sure the parents have a better chance of seeing it than if I sent a paper copy home.  

4.  I can see what classes are doing in other subjects- because I am nosy that way LOL.  It does mean that I get notifications on every class though.  

Flipgrid

I am been seeing a lot of hype about Flipgride from my PLN on Twitter so I decided to give it a try during my Bluebonnet Orientation.  I tacked it on to the end of the lesson when some groups had finished the QR Code sorting activity.  I gave them written directions to follow on how to make their Flipgrid and asked them to say their name, teacher's name, what Bluebonnet book they are interested in reading and why.

Technology Tuesday: Virtual Field Trips for 2nd Grade

Last week I talked about the Virtual Fields trips I learned about at TCEA including the Expeditions app that had teacher-led tours.  My 2nd graders are going to be researching Landmarks and Symbols and this was a perfect opportunity to try out this engaging activity.  Unfortunately, the Expeditions app didn't work right for me. I could never get the students connected to my teacher tour. So onto Plan B.

I used google maps to look up the places I wanted the students to visit.

By picking up the little yellow guy in the bottom right corner and dropping him on any of the blue dots that show up on the map you can drop right into a 360 view of that area.  

Once you drop him the screen will change to the 360 view.  

Then just copy the URL and use that for the students.  I put mine on our libguide, but you could make a google doc or whatever to share with the students. 

Our students had such a fabulous time "visiting" these places.  I loved hearing their excitement as they stood under the Washington Monument and looked up or stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon and looked down. 

After about 30 minutes of exploring, I called them to the carpet and projected some of the places on the Expedition App that I couldn't capture using Google maps.

This was such an engaging way to get them excited about the research that was coming up. 

Technology Tuesday: Strip Designer Clock Selfies

My 1st graders have been doing time to the hour and half hour so for our lesson this week, I decided to read one of my favorite books Scaredy Squirrel and do an ipad lesson.

There's just something you have to love about Scaredy Squirrel, his schedule and his fears of the unknown.  After reading we made a list of their schedule and what they were doing at different times of the day.  Then in strip designer we set to work.  

The students loved taking selfies and adding the speech bubbles to their work.  I printed them out for the teacher and she hung them in a timeline in the classroom.  

Technology Tuesday: Time to Innovate

I just started reading The Innovator's Mindset by George Couros for a book study with some of my teachers.  We are not very far, but innovation has been on my mind.

For three years, my third grades have been doing research about natural disasters and creating an online graphic novel to share their work.  You can read about that here.

This year we spent last week doing the research and appsmashing to create the pages and so today I started putting the books together in BookPress as I have for the last 3 years and when I emailed the link to myself - the pages were blank!  UGGGGG!

I don't know if this is a sign that I need to innovate and find another project to do or if it is just an update in the Book Press app that prevents me from making the free books but whatever the case, I think this will be the last year for our graphic novels.  Time to put on my Innovator's Mindset and as George Couros says in the book "change is the opportunity to do something amazing."

But for this year, I need a Plan B and another eBook creator!

Technology Tues: 3D Printing From a Pro

This week my 4th grade students were treated to an introduction to our 3D printer from a pro.  Travis Howk, a senior at Hendrix College in Arkansas, and the son of one of my very good library friends, explained 3D printing to my 4th graders better than I ever could!  Travis is a math and physics major but got involved in 3D printing when he discovered his campus had one.  He learned about it by watching and asking questions and pretty soon was teaching others how to use it.

This week, he spent an hour with each of my 4th grades. First, talking about what 3D printing is and showing them actual models of things he printed (all plastic, of course).

  Then he rocked their world when he told them you could 3D print pancakes, chocolate, clothes, and a house in less than a day.

Travis encouraged questions and answered all of them.  From the silly ones about 3D printing characters and logos to very thoughtful ones like "What will happen to construction workers if houses can be 3D printed?"

Students then logged in to Tinkercad where Travis walked them through creating a name plate.

 The students were so excited and proud of their designs.  

The 4th grade teachers and I am thinking of a way we can use the 3D printer with their research project coming up later in the spring.

We had a great day of learning from an awesome young man.

Technology Tuesday: Coding with Kinder

My kinder students have seen the "big kids" using Dash in the library and they keep asking when they will get to play with it.  I talked with the kidner teachers and we decided that during December's Hour of Code would be a good time to introduce Dash to the students.  We had school for three weeks between our Thanksgiving and Winter breaks so I decided to do a progessive introduction for them.  We started the first week using the Kodable app on the iPad.

The second time they came I introduced them to Dash and the Wonder Path app where students could make Dash follow a path they traced on the ipad with their fingers.  They had such a blast with this. 

The third week, we tried using the Wonder Blockly app.  I showed them how they could use the words to make dash do different things and limited them to the Movement, Animation and Sound commands since most are nonreaders.  This was by far the most challenging for them because of the words, but they still enjoyed it.They loved finding new noises and animations for Dash. Their favorite was the burping sound and the kissing animation.  

Technology Tuesday: New Makerspace Robots

I feel so far behind in my blogging.  So much has been happening in the library this year and I have failed miserably at documenting it. One of the most exciting things is that we have some new robot-y items for our makerspace that the students are LOVING! (Disclaimer: I really had not played with any of these things in depth before putting them into the hands of students.  I really have been saying "I have no idea how these things work, y'all will need to figure them out").

Wonder Dash and Dot: I have 6 of the Dash robots and we borrowed 3 of the Dots for a few weeks. The students love Dash because he has wheels and can move.  Dot, we don't really understand yet. There are free apps by Wonder that can be downloaded to the ipads to code or control the Dashes. The students at first just want to drive them around and race them, but now they have moved on to coding it to make it do anything.  We made some mazes using shower curtains from Dollar Tree and tape.

Even the teachers and principal love playing with Dash.

 

Sphero SPRK: Similar to Dash in that there are apps you can use to drive or code the sphero, but we had to do some troubleshooting for connectivity for these since they run on bluetooth.  I have 4 and students would end up controlling someone else's until I labeled each SPRK with their "name" on the bottom with clear tape.  The students like racing these and coding them around the mazes as well.

Cubelets: These are sets of different cubes each cube with a different function.  When you put the cubes together something happens.  We have been using the cards that come with the set to build so far.

Ozobots: Small robots that are coding from colored lines and dashes.  Students have been trying to have the ozobots trace their names in cursive and have been designing tracks for them to run on. 

All of these have been really fun additions to our makerspace area.  I am excited to see what the students will do with them as the year goes on.  Now if I could only find a way to keep them all charged.

Technology Tuesday: Dot Day Aurasmas

Last week for Dot Day, my 4th graders thought about their goals for the year and how they were going to make their mark.  In class, they wrote out a script and colored a dot and then brought them to the library to make aurasma videos of themselves reading their goals using their dots as the trigger. We are planning to hang the dots in the hallways for other students to watch.

Technology Tuesday: Summer Twitter Challenge for Teachers

This summer I challenged my teachers to explore twitter.  I wanted them to have a relaxed time to figure things out at their own pace.  I knew the first thing they would say is "I don't know what to tweet about!" So I tied in Donalyn Miller's #bookaday hashtag.  I told the teachers to tweet a picture of ANYTHING  they read during the summer.  It could be a picture book, a grown-up book, a young adult book, a magazine, a blog post... anything. They just needed to put the #bookaday with the tweet. We talked about how they could write a little bit about the book if  it was a picture book or chapter book they might use with their class.

It was really fun!  About 15 teachers participated.  

On the first teacher day back in August when we met as a faculty, I handed out Twitter Badges and a gift certificate for our Fall book fair - the $ amount was the amount of books they read... they ranged from $5-$50!!!).  

Now those teachers that participated are more familiar with tweeting and are starting to tweet things about their class this year.  It will be fun to have more connected educators on my campus.  

Technology Tuesday: Decade Research and 3D Coins

You know those crazy ideas that come to you in the middle of the night?  The ones that wake you up and then you can't go back to sleep because you are thinking about them?  Well, that is how this research product came about and boy was it fun.  I have just recently received a 3D printer and have been trying to figure out meaningful ways to use it with classrooms.  I woke up in the middle of the night one night after talking with a 5th grade teacher about the decade research made into an iMovie product that we have done for the last few years.  I also had 3D printing on my mind and I guess the two things just blended together and "Voila" the Decade Commemorative Coin was born.

The next day, I talked with the 5th grade teacher and explained my idea.  Students would do a decade "exploration" where they listed important events, people, inventions, famous firsts, ect from the decade and then choose one of those things to research more in depth and create an image on the top of a "coin" to represent the decade. Now this is the teacher that I have written about before (see this post).  She is slowly becoming more comfortable with technology, but I knew as long as we were in it together she would be on board.  I told her about the tinkercad website and that it was easy to use, but that I really had no idea what the students would come up with or be able to design (just keepin' it real).  Well, we were totally surprised by the creativity and outcome the students produced!

We spent one day doing the decade exploration using books that I borrowed from the middle schools. The next two days, the students chose their specific idea they would research more thoroughly using books, Britannica online and other websites that I had listed on my library webpage.

Then the fun part... I pulled them all together on the 4th day and briefly explained how tinkercad worked.  We were using chromebooks, so the students were able to loging to tinkercad with their google account.  I gave them the specifications of how big and think t make the coin and showed them how to group object and layer them on top of the coin. I also had them name their designs with their first name and the object and make it public so that I could find them and then print when they were finished.  We talked about the different shapes they could use and how they design couldn't be too detailed because of the small space we were working with.  

Then they set to work... As with any project, some students grasped using tinkercad right away and some needed a little more assistance but over all we were super pleased with their finished coins.  I was shocked at how detailed some of the students were able to get their coins and the things they figured out without me telling them. 

My filament is white, so I knew we were going to want to color them somehow.  We tested a few things and found that colored pencils worked best until I accidently ordered a different filament when I was getting low and then Sharpies worked better (see this post about things I learned).

 

Each coin took about an hour to print so as I finished a couple, I would take them down to the class where they waited anxiously to see if it was theirs'.  They colored the coin and wrote a little bit about the event pictured.

  

After printing the first couple, I realized that I was going to have to go in to each design and make sure they had layered properly and there were not spaces between the layers, layers coming through the bottom of the coin, or that the layers were not too tall.  That part was a little time consuming, but well worth it to the see the results.

Technology Tuesday: Shape Poems

I have always loved Shape Poems but found it so difficult to form the words in the correct shape.  I started looking for an app that might do it for me and came up with something close.

With 2nd grade this week, I read them some shape poems from Come to My Party by Heidi Roemer.

We talked about how these poems rhymed, but not all poems do.  We talked about how poems describe things and can be about any topic and then I had them open the Read, Write Think Theme Poem app on the iPads.  

This app has different themes to choose from.  We picked Nature poems.  Students wrote a poem about the sun, flowers, rain, trees, moon, sun, leaves or fish.  Then before we saved it, we copied the words of the poem using the select all and then copy feature.

We then opened the website Tagul.  

WARNING: This website requires a login.  I used my library google account, but I went in ahead of time and on each iPad logged in and created a shortcut on the home screen of the iPad to make it easy for the 2nd graders during the lesson.  There are also a bunch of different features on this website, so I could suggest playing around with it yourself before jumping in and doing it with a class.

We created a new cloud and imported our words that we had copied using the paste feature,  Then click VISUALIZE and wal-ah our words were in the shape of a... cloud.  We then looked at the different shapes available on the website and picked one that went with out poem.  Tap visualize again and then poof... our words were inside a shape that matched the poem. 

  

       

  

You'll notice the words in the colored shape poems are not in order of the poem but we were still excited about what we had done!   

Technology Tuesday: Newsela

Last week my Instructional Technology Specialist friend, Jennifer Heine (@JHeineEDU) happened to be on my campus for 2 days.  We have been outside-of-work friends for 12 years now, ever since our now 13 year-old boys were in the baby class together at daycare, but rarely ever see each other during the work week as she is assigned to different campuses.  She is also one of my go-to people when I have a technology problem or question and I want to look smart for my campus. Additionally, she is one of a small handful of people that talk as fast and erratically as I do, so while no one else can follow our conversations, we understand each other just fine.

Usually our sharing of ideas happens in the summer while on one of the rides at Schlitterbahn, where we have no paper to write them down or at some sporting event where in the midst of the work related talk we are also cheering and by the time the game is over work related thoughts are gone. 

12 years old

6 years old

Since she was on my campus for a whole 2 days, it was my opportunity to pick her brain in one of those "look smart for my campus" situations.  After the first round of STAAR, my 5th grade teachers like to spend two days rotating the kids around -each teacher has a different science activity and the students spend an hour with each teacher.  One of the teachers came to me an asked if I could think of anything "fun" they could do with the chromebooks.  I mentioned this to Jennifer and before I could even finish the request she was bouncing in her chair ready to tell me the perfect thing!

Newsela!  Have you heard of this?  It is a website full of nonfiction articles for all subject areas and reading levels.  Teachers can create classrooms and assign article to kids to read based on level or topic.  The articles are not too long and what kid can resist reading about these kinds of things?

Anyway, we were talking and bouncing ideas of what they could do with these articles and decided google classroom and slides would be a great option.  I took the idea back to the teacher and she loved it!  There are some things that need to be done within newsela to set up the classroom ahead of time.  Then the teacher picked 8 science articles related to things they had talked about this year in science. The task was for students to choose an article, read it and then make a google slide about the article and how it relates to something they have learned in science. 

I'm excited to see how these turn out. The students were definitely excited about the different articles assigned to them.