#EdCampNavasota

Saturday, one of my teachers, Kandra Overturf (@kandrarene) and I attended #EdCampNavasota (3 hours away from San Antonio) at Webb Elementary, the campus of Todd Nesloney (@TechNinjaTodd).  A few of my other twitter heros were there as well... Aaron Hogan, Aaron Marvel, Brent Clarkson and Tom Spall. And I met some great new educators to follow Cassie Reynolds, Stephanie Ryon and Jeremy Stewart to name a few.

Why did we leave Friday night and give up a Saturday for this? We are both huge fan girls of TechNinjaTodd and wanted to see in person the kind of learning that takes place on his campus.
But also we wanted to experience another morning of connecting and learning EdCamp style and put some faces to our PLN.  If you haven't experienced an EdCamp before, it is truly a different kind of professional development. There is not ONE person leading the pd.  It is a collective effort among the participants.

 It starts with people writing down topics or questions that they want to learning about on post-it notes and sticking them on a big board, grouping like topic together.  Yellow post-it notes were for topics and pink post-it notes were people who felt comfortable discussing a particualr topic.

Then the organizers of the EdCamp organize the topics and assign a "moderator" just to get the conversation started.  

This is what our sessions looked like.  

The problem comes when there are two (or three) sessions at the same time that you want to be at... Kandra and I split up for a couple and took notes in a shared google folder so we could essentially be in two places at once.  Three was a little more difficult. The great thing was that people were sharing out their learning on the hastag so all I had to do was follow the hastag to pick up some of the great ideas.  

I picked up a couple of really great ideas from the student motivation and campus culture sessions that I am going to take back to my campus to share.  I also got a little better idea of how I might use snapchat or instagram with my students.  One of the best ideas I heard was about Twitter Moments.  Aaron Hogan shared about that in the Socail Media session and it was an eye-opener for everyone in the room.  Aaron blogged about moments here.  And here is an example of a quick one that I put together while he was explaning.  #EdCampNavasota Moment.  What a great way to capture and tell the story of a school, classroom or in my case library.  

When we were leaving Saturday, Kandra said "Well, that was great.  We can check that off our bucket list."  Then today I get this tweet...

My reply..

Why keep all this great learning to ourselves... Hoping some others will join us at #EdCampKaty.

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: Virtual Valentines

Here's a fun connecting opportunity that I saw on Twitter this year and sent to my teachers.

This group pairs up classes to exchange virtual valentines across the miles and learn something on the way.  

Here is a blog post from one of my 5th grade teachers that participated in the program.  

Mrs. Foreman's Virtual Valentines

Technology Tuesday: Badges for Teachers

I am not sure when I first heard about digital badges, but it is something I keep coming back to as something I'd like to try.  And I think the time has come...

I know the power of being a connected educator and I want more people on my campus to experience the spark that a PLN can ignite.  I think they just need a little push so here I go jumping into something and flying by the seat of my pants again.  Many of the teachers on my campus are taking baby steps out of their technological comfort zones and I would like to find a way to acknowledge and encourage them.  I think digital badges might be a fun way to do this.  

I had a few articles saved in my "pocket" about badges and it has come up a couple of time in Twitter chats that I have been in this fall.  Back in October after one such chat, I emailed my teachers and asked who might be interested in earning badges for different technological tasks or achievements.  I gave them a couple of examples of badges I had created on credly.com

I told them they could earn these badges and then print them out to display in the classroom and/or post them on their blogs and I asked them to email me back if this is something that might interest them.  I received quite a few "Yes!" responses and so it was something I had on my "to be continued" list. 

Recently in an #edtechchat over the winter break, Shawna Ford tweeted

which got me thinking about it again.  I went back and reread the articles and tweets I had saved and got to work.  I reread "Building a Better Badging System" by Marc Toner and Alice Keener's  "Creating Badges with Google Sheets" .  Then Shawna Ford tweeted out a link to her blog post about "Professional Learning Options" and badging which pointed me to more models.  

So I think I have a working (in-progess) system to offer teachers.  I have created a page on my library website where I will post the different badges they can earn and a link to a google form they can fill out to request the badge.  I will receive an email when a form has been submitted and then through credly.com, I can "send credit" to them where they can then print and/or display on their blog by following these directions.

I am going to cross my fingers and hope I have thought this through.  Lucky for me my teachers are pretty flexible so if I screwed something up they will patiently wait until I can figure it out.  I am excited about this and am looking forward to seeing how badges might fuel growth at my campus.  

I would love to to hear any ideas about badging or how you have used digital badges with students or teachers.

Technology Tues: Kate Messner Google Hangout

Writing, Writing, Writing... It is definitely an area that our school is concentrating on every year. Especially our 4th grade students that have to take a state writing assessment.  

Today, some of my 4th grade classes participated in Kate Messner's Google Hangout sponsored by We Are Teachers.  

She was specifically discussing the writing process of her Ranger In Time series.  This series is about Ranger, a search and rescue dog, who travels back in time to help people.  

Kate was so open about showing different parts of her work.  She held up her writer's notebook with her brief phrases about ideas.  She showed a long piece of paper where she collects all her ideas about a story in one place before she starts.  

The students were shocked to hear that it took almost 2 years to write and publish a book!  They were also glad to hear that even professional writer's have their papers marked up by editors.  

Our students were also surprised to hear one of the guest classes ask a question about what kind of "leads" Kate like to use in her books.  That class was in a totally different state and they called the beginning of their stories "leads" too!  

It sure does make more of an impact on kids when they hear that students in other states and professional authors go through the same writing process that they do... another example of the power of being connected.  

Being Connected: Another Virtual Author Visit

Thanks again to twitter, the students at my school were involved in another virtual author visit.  This time with Kate DiCamillo.  Last year, Jarret Krosoczka tweeted about a live event he was going to be doing.  I sent the information out to the teachers and almost my whole school watched as he talked abot writing, illustrating and Platapus Police Squad.  You can read about that here.

Back in August, John Schu @MrSchuReads, tweeted about a video conference opportunity in October with Kate DiCamillo.

 I immediately emailed my teachers about this awesome opportunity (even though we were not yet back in school from summer vacation)!  

When school did start, one of my kinder teachers asked if I had any recommendations for a read aloud to do with her class.  I mentioned the Mercy Watson books and reminded her about the upcomming video conference with Kate.  She jumped on the idea and started reading her kids book one and they were hooked!  She would tell me that her kids LOVED the books and couldn't wait for the end of the day when she would read.  They sat mesmerized, still and quiet while she read. They loved how Mercy loved buttery toast and asked questions about why Eugenia didn't like Mercy.  She said in all her years of teaching kinder, she had never had kids respond to a book like that.  So of course when she finished book 1, they wanted to read book 2. So they did.  And another kinder class started book 1. 

Today, they came back from lunch and were so excited to see "Mercy's writer" on the screen and the books that they had read displayed behind her.  Everytime Kate mentioned Mercy, they would gasp and giggle.  They "oohed" and "ahhed" when she mentioned the "buttery toast".  It was really something to be able to connect them with an author of a story they had just adored.

Meanwhile, in 5th grade, more amazing things were happening.  One teacher told her kids about the video conference and that they would only be able to watch the beginning of it since their lunch happened to fall right in the middle of it.  Tonight on her blog, this teacher wrote "After I saw the expressions on their faces, I offered to have them get lunch from the cafeteria and come back to the room during lunch.  They all had smiles on their faces!"  She emailed me after school and said that her kids loved it.  They had watched the whole thing and told me that they had eaten lunch in the room, and that it was the first time ever in her teaching career (21 years) that she had eaten in her room.  Wow!  The power of being connected!  

I love being able to find these opportunites for my students and it is only because I stepped out of my comfort zone and started tweeting that I became connected and in turn can connect my students and teachers.  

Technology Tues: Dot Day

We are celebrating "Dot Day" again this year.  Dot Day is inspired by The Dot book by Peter Reynolds.  The Dot is the story of a teacher who encourages a student to trust in her own abilities by being brave enough to "make her mark". What begins as a small dot on a piece of paper becomes a a challenge to create bigger and more inspiring things. This movement has gone on to connect students and classrooms around the world.

This year, I made the "D" page in my kinder journal D is for Dot Day.  I shrunk the page that was given on the website to use with the Quiver 3D app and had the students color.

Then they brought their journal to me and we made their dot come alive.  It was so fun to see the amazement on their faces as their dot became 3D.

 

I also wanted to get in on the skyping part of Dot Day, so Matthew Winner and I connected our kinder classroom - Texas to Maryland.  The students from each class shared some of the Dot Day activities they had done and we please to discover that BOTH classes had made dots out of their initials.

While we were waiting for Mr Winner to call us, we sang the Dot Day song.

A fun Dot Day today and we have more stuff planned the rest of the week.  I love special events like this that put the "FUN" back in learning.  

Live Video Feed with Jarrett Krosoczka

Another fabulous opportunity for my students discovered on Twitter...

Last night I noticed a tweet about a live opportunity Jarrett Krosoczka was offering for students today.

 I immediately emailed my teachers about it.  As usual, most were skeptical, but my two go-getter, willing to try anything, 4th grade teachers jumped at the 11:00 opportunity.   They even asked questions during the feed and Jarrett answered them!  

Wanting to get more teachers on board, I asked these two to reply to my email about how cool it was (sneaky, I know, but hey, it worked!)  and I brought it up with them in the teacher's lounge at lunch since he was doing another one at 1:00 our time.  

Once they heard how easy and fabulous it was, the rest of the teachers were all on board.  During the feed, Jarrett introduces his Platypus Police Squad books and how he draws the characters.  Some of my kinder students were even drawing along!  

 

He also showed how he changes characters facial expressions by drawing different lines around the eyes.  Here is a 2nd grader practicing.

What a super way to connect with kids and get kids excited about reading.  With summer coming up, I know what books my students are going to be looking for at the library.  

 

Here are some actual quotes from some 5th graders about the experience.  

"We are learning about his books online without him actually being here"

"We loved that it was interactive"

"Not only did he talk about his books, but he showed us how he illustrated them too"

"He gave us a sneak peak of his next book"

"We got to look at a live screen at a famous author that students across the country were able to see at the same time"

Thanks Mr. Krosoczka for a fabulous 20 min that our students will remember!  

Twitter Chatting with Students

Last week, one of the middle school librarians in my district, Irene Kistler (@irenekistler) and I were talking about how fun it would be to have the students in our district be able to chat and share via twitter.  She had been tossing around the idea after seeing a tweet from New Zealand .  We decided to make it easy since it was our first time and the week we came back from spring break.  We had 2 questions.

Q1:  What did you read over spring break?

Q2:  What did you do for fun over spring break?

Irene had a form that the students could fill out and then bring to me to get approved.  Then I took them to the computer and let them tweet.  I had the chat up all week on my Smartboard in the library and the students were thrilled to see their tweets pop-up on the screen.  

We also wanted the students to be able to give a shout out to a teacher, so we added that as a 3rd response on the form.  Not all of my teachers are on twitter, so I emailed the tweet to them if a student mentioned them.  

Irene and I let the other librarians in our district know about this and some of the G/T teachers.  As a matter of fact, one of our G/T teachers, Terri Eichholz (@terrieichholz)  wrote about how she used this idea in her classroom here.  It was fun to go through and read the tweets from different campuses. The part that I was missing though, was the students being able to read and respond to others' tweets. Irene had a great idea to have a week of questions and then a week to be able to read and respond. We are in that process now, so it will be interesting to see how that turns out.  

Today, some of our 4th grade students that were in the library during checkout had the opportunity to participate in the #stu2stuchat set up by Sandy Otto (@sandyrotto).

I had seen Sandy publicize this post over the weekend and made a note to check it out.  I happen to have 4th graders checking out at that time so I called a few over to check it out and a few turned into more.  

A couple of our students tweeted, but they really enjoyed seeing what other students were reading. We have plans to join the next #stu2stuchat on April 8th.  

I love that we are venturing in to connecting our students and letting them see things outside the walls of our school.  

Technology Tuesday: Skyping with Maryland

So last week, I wrote about how one of my students skyped with a few students from Maine. (read here).  Today, after rescheduling from a Maryland snow day yesterday, a whole class was able to skype with another class in Maryland for World Read Aloud Day.

I first heard about World Read Aloud day on twitter.  I asked a few questions and a very nice librarian in Maryland named Mr. Winner answered my questions and volunteered to show me the ropes if I signed up on his schedule.

He sent me the link to the google doc and you notice he is on p. 65.  Yes, it goes on and on, teachers and librarians everywhere looking for schools to connect with for World Read Aloud Day (or Week). 

Mr. Winner and I  discussed via twitter which book we would like to read and  thought we were all set, until Mother Nature got in the way and cause a snow day in Maryland yesterday.  

Lucky for me, Mr. Winner had a cancellation for today and we were able to connect anyway.  He had a 2nd grade class and I had a 1st grade class.  After walking me though a camera glitch, we were finally connected!  One of his sweet 2nd graders introduced themselves and told us a little about their school and then we did the same.  We had decided that we would partner read Shh, We Have a Plan by Chris Haughton.  He read a page and then I read a page.  

    

Then his 2nd graders took turns each reading a page of Hug Machine  by Scott Campbell.  We still had a few minutes so one of his students asked us a question and then we asked them a question. 

We said our "good-byes" and "thank-yous" and disconnected.  

Afterwards, the kids were full of questions about Maryland.  I pulled a map up on the computer and showed them how far it was from Texas.  Earlier in the year, we had talked about communication in the Colonial Times.  That was a great thing to bring up again to talk about how that connecting like we did would not have been possible back then and that people had to wait weeks or months to exchange letters and news and here we did it instantly.  

I am so excited to connect some more and see how my teachers might take an interest in this.  I know I am late to the skyping bandwagon, but I love the possibilities of connecting kids to other kids to talk about geography, parts of the world, books, research... the list is endless.   

Technology Tuesday: Skyping

Another item checked off my professional bucket list!  Been scared to do it until now.

I finally connected with another class via skype!  Well, actually we tried skype and my sound settings were messed up so we switched real quick over to a google hangout video chat, because you always have a plan B for technology, right?

Back at the beginning of February, I saw a tweet about ConnectED Bingo by Brad Gustafson.  I loved the idea and since I don't have a class of my own, I sent an email out to all my teachers telling them about it.  I suggested they could do it whole class, send it home for kids that wanted to do it at home or have students do it during our whole school intervention time in the morning.  I even threw in $5 gift certificates for the book fair for students who completed a bingo and a $25 if a class completed a bingo.  I have loved watching the tweets of my teachers as they post the student completed squares.

One of the squares is to hold a book talk with another class to discuss a book or author using skype or google hangouts.  One of my 4th grade students wanted to discuss Rump by Liesl Shurtliff.  So through the power of twitter, Ms. Melissa Guerrette in Maine replied back to my tweet searching for some students who would like to talk Rump.

Yesterday, we connected Texas to Maine.  They laughed when we said we were having a cold front and it was 30 degrees.  My 4th grade student had a list of questions that Ms. Guerrette's students graciously answered as they talked about their favorite part or the book, which character they would like to be, what they would have done differently if they were Rump and so on.  We even found out their class had skyped with Liesl Shurtliff!  How cool is that!

It was such an awesome experience. I am not sure who was more excited me or my 4th grader.  I can really see the power of classrooms connecting and hope I can convince more of my teachers to try it.