Time for an update!

I started a new position at a new school. I noticed that I've been getting a lot more activity on my blog and I thought hey I need to start actually updating it! For the past 6 years I have been a third grade teacher. Now I am at a new school as instructional technology coach. This new position is kind of like a resource, I go into classrooms throughout the day and work with the teachers on integrating technology in their lessons. I have gotten to see so many different grade levels and so many different levels of expertise. As I write my plans I try to think about ways to make the everyday teachers life easier through using technology. That was my biggest thing when I was in the classroom! I didn't want one more thing to make my life harder. I I know how valuable time is for teachers, and technology can provide more time for everyone! Now I just have to get everyone to buy into that idea! Being a classroom teacher you only have to worry about you and your kids and your students parents. Now as in instructional technology coach I have to think about the teachers the administrators the students the students parents and everyone else that's involved with our school as I try to initiate a paradigm shift. Luckily, with common core technology integration is expected. I have been working with lots of teachers on global lessons and getting their message out to the community and others. We have been working a lot with augmented reality lately. I'll tell more about that in a later post. So as I've been getting settled into my new job., I've been very focused on finding ways to make technology easier and more accessible for every teacher. You can see the present that I sent out last week to my teachers where I gave them ideas for technology that they could implement in their classrooms the very next day. A lot of the teachers told me that they would be downloading the app or checking out the website that we need that I showed as soon as they could! It's all about the by an!

Smilebox: Interactive Gift Cards

A student in my class is moving to Japan this week for four years. We are a very tight knit class, so we spent some time saying goodbye today. I created this Smilebox card for CJ using pictures from the school year that were on my computer and a video that I took on my phone. It was super easy! Smilebox is a program that you have to download... but you won't regret it! It makes thank you cards, collages, slideshows.... all kinds of things! There is even a Smilebox app for iPhones. Some of it is free (I only use the free part), or you can pay a yearly subscription.

Here's the Smilebox I made for CJ today...

This slideshow generated with Smilebox

iPads & Prezi: A Wonderful Combination!

This week my class has been working on identifying character traits. Yesterday, we read the story The Popcorn Dragon, and we stopped to identify the character traits of Dexter the Dragon, the main character of the story.

To show my students what I would be wanting them to do with their own literature, I modeled a character trait graphic organizer with my iPad. I used Reflector to connect to my laptop through Air Play so that the students could see what I was doing. I had previously created the Prezi on my laptop because there are a lot more formatting options when you are using the web version instead of the iPad version. Here is a picture of the blank Prezi I created:

The students assisted and watched as I filled in my Prezi according to the directions on the screen. They were so engaged and seriously watched my every move!

So today, I reviewed and sent them off on their own! My students all have their own iPads, with the Prezi app downloaded, so I had them launch that app first. Then, I realized that they would not have my template to work with. Ahhhh! I figured out that I would have to give them my username and password and create multiple copies of the same Prezi. It was kind of a pain, but it worked in the end. I love how Prezi will give you the option to "save a copy." After saving all of the copies, I went through and labeled each one with a student's name.

So after a little patience on their part, and panic on mine... they were able to sign in and find the Prezi with their name on it to work on. Mind you, this does require some front loading... I had to make sure that the students knew that they were not to go on someone else's creation!

Here are some pictures of the kids working away....

Here is a finished product:

I love using technology like this in my room! They were all working so hard and I was just getting to be the facilitator. Beautiful!

I love to help others with ed tech tools! Leave me a comment below and I will be glad to help you figure things out! :)

I'm Back!

It's been quite a while (almost a year) since my last post... I kind of lost my fire, and got buried in teacher details... but I'm back! It's probably due to my most recent adventure. 

The last week in January was like my Christmas... that's right, I was at FETC (Florida Educational Technology Conference). I sat there, constantly getting my mind blown by the amazing ways I can use technology in my classroom. I am so very lucky this year... my students all have their own personal iPad 3's that their parents purchased for them. Crazy right?! I have been the laptop teacher for the past 4 years, and this year we decided to switch it up. I had no idea the implications of this great idea. I just thought it would make my class even cooler... Little did I know that I would basically be reinventing the wheel that I already had rolling pretty well. So with that said, FETC gave me a ton of easy ways that I can get my students working productively on their iPads.

A website that I have started using is infuselearning.com. It is amazing! Think of surveymonkey, but much easier to use. I can easily ask my students to write out how they would complete a math word problem.  I would just have them draw on their iPads using the infuselearning webpage, and turn in their drawings to me. I will get instantaneous feedback that I can post for the entire class!

Another app that I really loved was learning about Remind101. This app will allow me to text reminders to my students on their iPads without them getting my personal cell phone number. I could also use this with my students' parents!

The last app/ website that I really loved was Aurasma. I learned about this while I was at FETC 2012, but I could never really figure out how to utilize it in the classroom. This year it finally clicked! So what this app does is it will take any picture and make it "come to life" by presenting a moving picture on your phone. It sounds crazy, but click on the video below and see how it works! I've decided that I will use book covers that can be scanned. Then the person with the phone will see my student telling a summary of the book. Pretty sweet, huh?!

Go Glogster!

My third graders have been really taking their understanding of technology to the next level lately. We are working on weekly projects that help to solidify their understanding of the reading comprehension strategies that we are working on in class. Last week, we discussed character development and how it's important to recognize how a character changes throughout the story. It was phenomenal when one of my students said, "We can see how the character changes, and then figure out the theme of the story by paying attention to the life lesson they learn!" It was like it all clicked!

So after reading A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon, we went to ReadWriteThink to create a character trading card for the main character in the story. This was a great template... and would've been great for my kids. The only problem is, they can't connect to my classroom printer and all of your work is a one shot deal on this site. So after twenty minutes of watching me play with the website, the kids were all stoked... only to find out it wouldn't work for them! Sometimes you just have to go with the flow!


The next day I decided that I wouldn't chock it all up to a loss and referenced the previous trading card that we had made as a class (luckily I printed mine out). I decided to have the students create Glogs where they would include the same information... just in a poster format. Here is the example Glog I posted for them: http://tatel.edu.glogster.com/character-development/

The students then took their own books that were assigned to them to create a Character Development Glog. I provided them with a rubric that I made on Rubistar that mapped out what they needed to have. It was a great collaborative project that allowed the students freedom to discuss the character elements that were important to them! Here is a student's Glog that she created for the book Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes.

So it all turned out amazing! I can't wait to see what the other kids have put together! These are going to look great in the hall! :)

On another note... I am having a really tough time figuring out how to actually get people to read, and follow my blog. If you have any pointers, would you kindly leave me a comment below? I need some inspiration!

It's difficult for me to write about novel ideas that I have had, when they don't seem novel to me. Then I get brought back to reality, and learn that the tech ideas that I implement in my room are NOT the norm. I am super stoked though that there is a small group of teachers, spanning all grade levels and concentrations, that have made a new commitment to try technology in their rooms. My school participates in Professional Learning Communities (PLC's) where we focus on one particular aspect of teaching, and I am leading one on worksheets... PSYCH! It's on technology in the classroom. We met about two weeks ago, but I've been so busy helping other teachers figure new things out, I haven't had time to write!

So I had a HUGE range of teachers show up for our meeting... Kindergarten, 3rd Grade, Self-Contained ESE, Art, Media. It was crazy! Not only did I have such a wide range of grade levels; but also, a wide range of familiarity and ability. It is such a daunting task when you are faced with something you are so passionate about, and you're unsure of how your audience will even respond. So, I started by showing this video...

This was all to make the point that we need to make sure we are meeting our students where they are. I think so many teachers get stuck in a rut, and forget that if we don't change with the times we are only doing our students a disservice!

After introducing the urgency for our group's meeting I then checked out the survey that I had sent out earlier in the week using surveymonkey.com. It was really great because I got a lot of honest answers about the challenges teachers are facing with technology. Some of the responses said that it is, "just one more thing to learn" or "lack of time."

Feel free to click here and add your response!

Once we had gotten some sort of momentum going I started answering general questions that teachers had about the technology available at our school. We worked with the eInstruction CPS Clickers and Edmodo. I'll give more details about that later!

Ultimately, my goal was achieved because I have gotten tons of emails asking me, "How do I do..." I think my colleagues are reluctant to ask because they think it'll bug me. BUT IT DOESN'T! I'm so excited that I have more people on my bandwagon!

So what are some things that you have been wanting to try in your classroom? What's holding you back? Leave a comment below... maybe I can help you out! :)

On the Fly

So I had some visitors from another school come by to observe my class today. They actually kind of just "popped in" unannounced... but it worked out OK. Their tour guide wanted to bring them to my class to show how I use technology... She asked me to show them how I use the eInstruction clickers, Voicethread, and blogging. I told her that she had been gone (she used to teach at our school) for too long. I explained that I still use those components, but that the main hub of my class is Edmodo. Edmodo could be likened to a class Facebook account that is completely secure and school related. It is the main source of all things related to my class. So, I really wanted my visitors to get a good idea of how technology isn't just "another cool thing" that we do, but that it is ingrained in our classroom community.
So my intern was just getting ready to do a sweet lesson on using a thesaurus with my class, when I politely asked her if I could take over. Or maybe I just kind of said, "Can I do this one?" (It's really hard to sit back sometimes.) I guess my passion for anything ed tech just takes over and I want to make sure that visitors get to see ALL of the crazy awesome things we do. So I started by reviewing what a thesaurus is, and I showed them our classroom thesaurus book. Then, I asked my students, "When we need to look up a word, and we don't have a dictionary near by, what do we do?" The resounding answer was... "We Google it!" I told them that we could do the same thing to find words in a thesaurus, and then I showed them the even cooler way to find synonyms using an amazing website.
Graphwords.com allows students to visualize the different shades of meaning of a word in a way that makes much more sense to them. A thesaurus is so linear and unappealing. A graphwords web shows how words are connected in a visual sense.  Check out this web for the word "friend."

The kids instantly perked up when I showed them this site. We looked up several words as a class to do a little practice. Then I told them that I had made an assignment on Edmodo where the theyhad to use their personal laptops to look up this week's vocabulary words on the graphwords.com thesaurus. They then had to "reply" to the assignment with two synonyms for each of their words. Instant engagement. Instant feedback. Check out what they found...

Let me just let you know though... I wasn't even supposed to be teaching this lesson (my intern was). Nor had I planned any of this out. But the use of this type of educational technology made it super easy and beneficial for each student. My visitors (4th grade teachers from another school) were blown away, and had about a million and one questions for me. I was more than happy to share my ideas! I just hope that these teachers won't walk away saying, "That was cool, but I don't have the time or patience for all of that technology..." I should have emphasized how "off the cuff" that lesson really was! That's what I love about technology... it's available, just waiting to be used!