A Few Final Thoughts

The last six weeks have flown by. I have learned about so many different forms of valuable technology to use in my classroom that will enhance learning and engagement amongst my students. I have had the opportunity to explore and play with some applications such as Animoto, Storybird, VoiceThread, Google Docs, Blogger, and many more. Everyday, I learn about more applications and I can't wait to explore all of them. This course, EDUC 584: Integrating Technology and Literacy, has truly captured endless opportunities for teachers to integrate technology into any age classroom. Thank you Judy Artz! When I first entered the blogging world, I had no clue what I would write about.  I began with "One Small Step," and took a giant leap into blogging.  Now I have a million ideas, and I am excited to create a blog for my classroom next year.  My digital footprint below represents my giant leap into new technological experiences as well as the trace of digital information I have left behind me during my adventures in EDUC 584.  I created this footprint shaped word cloud using Tagxedo, which was very easy to use, to capture all the things I explored. 

My Digital Footprint

I look at this experience as just the beginning because there is so much more left to explore.  Judy Artz opened the door to numerous amounts of technology that I have barely gotten my feet wet with, and I plan on exploring these tools over the summer and implementing them in my classroom next year.  If you are new to the world of technology in the classroom check out Kathy Cassidy's webpage and book, Connected from the Start:  Global Learning in the Primary Grades, as well as Judy Artz's blog.  They have helped me along my journey, and I am confident they will help inspire you too!

Take this survey to share about your technological experiences!

To Be Determined...

Recently, I learned about the colAR app.  The colAR application makes a child's coloring page come "alive" on a tablet or smartphone.  In other words, a normal coloring page turns into an animated 3D scene.

Today, I tried the application using my Samsung Galaxy s5 smartphone. The kids excitedly picked out the pictures they wanted to color. While they sat down and colored, I downloaded the app. My youngest son finished first so we tried it out right away. It worked great!  He was really excited to see his airplane come alive on the screen.  Then, we were sadly disappointed when the app would not work for my older son's drawing.  Other reviews for the app did mention that the same thing occurred for them.  I had heard many great things about the app despite this review so I ignored it at first glance.  Now, I wish I took it more seriously.

              

Since I purchased the coloring packs offered by the colAR app I contacted Google Play, and they were very helpful.  They offered to help me get a refund, but I decided to contact the company first.  I am hoping this is just a bug that needs to be fixed.  My children love creative activities and technology so this application is a great fit for summer fun.  I am awaiting a response from Puteko Limited, so my full opinion is yet to be determined.

Have you used the colAR app?  What has been your experience?

A Blogging Challenge

A few weeks ago I was new to the blogging world.  It now doesn't seem quite as foreign, and I am hoping to incorporate a classroom blog next year.  I see the added value of using it to create a digital footprint of what is going on in the classroom.  Everyone is so connected nowadays that I can see my parent's getting into it.  I recently shared three Animoto videos that I created with the families of my student's.  The appreciation and response was overwhelming rewarding.  I even received an email from an aunt of one of my student's that lives in Florida because the videos were shared with her.  It was such a powerful reminder of how technology can build on our student's learning experience in the classroom.  Now I just need to find out the best way to keep my student's digital footprint protected in order to make the experience the most valuable for my classroom community.

My ideas for blogging are endless.  However, one of my biggest challenge of blogging is timing.  Blogging more than once a week is definitely challenging in the life of a mother, student, teacher, and the many other hats I wear throughout the week.  I have managed to blog at least twice and sometimes three times a week, but it is not always the easiest.  I am an advocate of play, conversations, personal interactions, and not being "plugged in" as we say in my house.  So trying to be the best role model I can, I save blogging for late nights and interactions with my children for the daytime and evening.  I am hoping to find a happy medium as I move on with this blogging experience.  What is your biggest challenge of the blogging experience?

Readers, Readers, Tell Us All About It!

This weekend I squeezed in some much needed pleasure reading. I am so excited to have more time during the upcoming months to read.  I also love reading books to my children, and this summer I get to listen to my son read to me!  Take this brief survey to share about your reading experiences.

More Than a Digital Story: It's a Literacy Project

Reading and Writing are one of my favorite things to teach and explore with my students.  In addition, reading and writing are a combined passion for many of my students this year.  I often read books throughout the year that naturally relate to writing.  So when I read Mary Had a Little Lamp, by Jack Lechner, for a class read aloud,  I knew a creating class book would be a great extension activity.  The book ended with, "Now Mary has a toaster," so our class book became Mary Had a Little Toaster.
  

From    to  

Since being introduced to digital storytelling in my Integrating Technology course, I decided that this class book was going to become our very first digital story.  After learning about and experimenting with VoiceThread in my graduate class, I decided it would be a great program to introduce to the young learners in my kindergarten class. However, before we could dive into VoiceThread, there were a few other steps we needed to take first.

Step 1:  Briefly revisit read aloud from previous session.
Step 2:  Brainstorm places Mary could bring her toaster and chart on chart     
            paper.  This list served as a resource for the children to utilize during
            their independent work session.
Step 3:  Class Vote - Since we were making a class book, we decided it would 
            be important for Mary to look similar on everyone's page.  We decided             that if we all drew her with the same color hair she would look        
            similar.  We took a vote and decided Mary would have blond hair.

Step 4:  Draw - The children turned and talked about where they would have               Mary take her toaster.  Then they were off to their tables and                       drawing.  When children finished early, I challenged them to think    
            about what Mary would have next and draw about it.  We later voted 
            on their item for the last page of our story.

Step 5:  Write - Each child wrote a sentence or two on the back of their        
            picture that would be narrated in our digital story.

Composing our digital story was fairly easy.  After the children shared their work, we compiled them into an order that made sense by sorting the pictures based on the setting.  I photographed and uploaded their illustrations             in VoiceThread.  VoiceThread allows you to upload more than one photo at a time so I was able to do it with one quick click and a few minutes of patience.  Finally, each child narrated the sentence for their illustrations.  The children were very proud of their work, and enthusiastic about creating a digital story.  Their work could have simply been turned into a class book that was bound together and sat on the shelf for the kids to read.  VoiceThread gave the students an opportunity to expand their knowledge of writing stories.  Now their classbook can be read over and over outside of our classroom since it has been shared with their families.  After a literacy rich project, this is our final product.

I recommend VoiceThread to anyone that wants to expand the literacy instruction children receive in the classroom.  It is an easy to navigate application that can be integrated in the classroom to make class books or to develop digital stories for instruction.  If you are interested in using VoiceThread, check out this tutorial and follow the links below to other literacy creations using VoiceThread.

Miss Kramer's Poetry Presentation

Miss Czelazewicz's Pre-Kindergarten Memories

Miss Larson's Kindergarten Digital Story

Miss Moore's Classroom Expectations and Rules Digital Story

Miss. Peace's Class Book Reviews

Principal on the Roof!

The principal of my son's elementary school is camping out on the school roof tonight!  Mr. Stevens encourages home reading by creating unique events if the kids meet the year's reading goal.  The goal was to read at least 500,000 minutes by the end of the school year, and the kids read 504,227 minutes this school year!  He invited families to visit tonight for a short time so the children could send up gifts, giggle, and get excited about their accomplishment.  Mr. Stevens is a great principal who works hard to encourage learning, inspire creativity, build school community, create lasting memories, and most importantly keeps school FUN!!!!

Mary's Final Digital Story

After much hard work and excitement, the children and I finished our digital story.  Once we got passed the technical malfunctions with the computer microphone, the children did a great job narrating their sentences.  They were intrigued by the idea that the computer could record their voice and instantly play it back to them.  They were engaged and motivated to do their best.  It was fairly easy to record the children, and immediately re-record them if they were not loud enough.  The red record bar that showed up helped the children know when to start talking.  We were inspired by Miss Larson's digital story and decided to make a title page.  It took us a few tries to get the title just right, but it was a lot of fun.  

Summer Learning

I love learning!  How about you?

I always encourage my students to continue learning over the summer.  I send home a summer learning packet that includes activities that reinforce skills we learned throughout the year.  I like to include hot spots to visit, and interesting ways to learn outdoors.  I also encourage everyone to "Keep Reading!"

How do you encourage summer learning with your class?

A Technological Inspiration

I recently finished reading Kathy Cassidy's new book,Connected from the Start: Global Learning in the Primary Grades.  Kathy Cassidy does an excellent job of inspiring classroom teachers to incorporate technology into the classroom.  Cassidy's language throughout the text helps teachers relate to the struggles and successes of integrating technology into everyday learning.  She even shares a multitude of up to date ways that she integrates technology into her first grade classroom.  I love her realistic and inspiring message of, "If I Can Do It, So Can You" (10).  

Check out Kathy Cassidy's Classroom Blog to see some of her uses of technology in action!

photo of Ms. Cassidy's Classroom Blog

I also enjoyed looking at her personal webpage, Primary Preoccupation.  Check it out for some great teaching ideas and resources!

photo of Kathy Cassidy's webpage

Mary Had a Digital Story

Digital storytelling is a new aspect of writing stories for my students.  The children in my class love watching digital stories.  So it seemed like a natural addition to the student learning in my classroom.  We recently read the book, Mary Had a Little Lamp, by Jack Lechner.

  

It is a cute spin on the traditional nursery rhyme Mary Had a Little Lamb.  The story ends with, "Now Mary has a toaster."  The children were excited to brainstorm where Mary would bring her toaster.  After creating a list of ideas, each child illustrated a page for the story.  Here is an initial draft of our digital story...

I created this digital story using VoiceThread.  VoiceThread is a quick and easy way to use images, text, or voice to share videos with others.  It can be used with children of all ages or amongst adults.  I simply uploaded photos of my student's work.  After a couple of clicks, all of the photos were uploaded.  Most of the photos uploaded in the proper order for the digital story, but I easily dragged the other photos around on the storyboard to change some of them.  Then my students' and I prepared to record comments.  Low and behold the technology went on the fritz!  I'm not quite sure which set it in motion; the server or the microphone on the laptop.  Nonetheless I restarted the computer and hoped for the best.  I was able to have a couple children record comments, but this is all I have so far.  So stay tuned for the tales of Mary and her toaster!

F.Y.I.:  If you are interested in creating your own VoiceThread check out thess tutorials.

Frozen in Time

This week in class I learned about Voki.  I decided to check it out and play around. I stumbled upon an avatar that looks similar to one of the characters from the hit movie Frozen.  The songs have captivated children and adults.  No matter where I go someone is singing the songs out loud.  Here is the Voki I created...

You can create a free account at Voki and begin creating your own Voki right now!  The tutorial below is a great resource to help you create and publish your Voki

Our Summer Bucket List

A Summer Bucket List is a list of things that children and/or adults hope to accomplish over the summer.  I stumbled upon this idea on the internet, and introduced it to my class.  They loved every part of it!  I started out with a mini-lesson explaining what a summer bucket list was, and they were immediately shouting out ideas.  I recorded their ideas on chart paper as well as recorded some of my own.

Then the children created a summer bucket list of their own.  These lists became a rough draft, which the children later transferred to their final draft on a template of a sand pail.  

We are going to hang these up in our room for our end of the year celebration with the children's families.  Then, I plan to add them to the summer learning gift that I plan to send home with the children on one of the last days of school.  Stay posted for more information of my summer learning gift.

Keeping Kids Engaged and Educated

We have reached the last two weeks of school, and it is becoming tricky to keep the kids on task and interested in learning.  Now, add some hot days in a classroom without air conditioning and it's even harder.  So I have had to become the master of entertainment, excitement, and education.  I'm guessing that I am not the only teacher encountering this in their classroom at the end of the school year so I have decided to share a few things that are working in my classroom.

1. Include lots of brain breaks:  One thing that works best with my class is music and movement.  My kindergarten class LOVES songs by The Learning Station.
2. Provide lots of student directed learning:  I try to keep my lessons as short and direct as possible, and give the children more time to work together or independently.
3. EXTRA recess:  Every kid loves more time to run and play outside!
4. Create, Discover, Explore!:  I have been including more creative ways for kids to learn, which include digital tools as well as art projects related to our writing or reading.
5. Add technology:  We visited the computer lab for math this week!  The kids had the chance to practice some of their addition and subtraction skills on ABCya.

These are just a few examples that I have used in my kindergarten classroom.  I hope you are able to modify them to use in your classroom so your student's stay engaged in learning until their last day of school.

Look in the sky...it's a Storybird!

Storybird is a great website to encourage storytelling with your students.  The website has a collection of illustrations that can be combined in order to make a visual story.  The author can type in the words to a story as well as organize how the illustrations are presented.  The website also allows you to read many different stories that have been created by others.

Tonight in class, Liz, Jenn, and I created our first Storybird story.  There was a variety of artwork that caught our eye, but we decided to use the artwork of Hedgehog and Co.  We collaborated to create an if/then story similar to Laura Numeroff's If You Give a... series.  It was a lot of fun, but frustrating when we realized our story got deleted.  Despite our mishap, we were able to quickly recreate it.  You can check it out below.  I hope you like it!

An Animoto Adventure

Prior to this class, I was introduced to Animoto by one of my colleagues.  She collaborated with our Technology Leader to create an awesome video of her students sharing about love.  We are currently working on a video of our students sharing their thoughts on their year in kindergarten.  In the meantime, my students and I created an Animoto video that summed up their learning about aquariums.  They helped create the video by choosing their science journal page and sharing some facts that they learned.  The facts were compiled from their oral dictations and written work in their science journals. It was an exciting adventure for the children.  I am so proud of their work and knowledge!

Here's our Observing an Aquarium Animoto video...

Capturing a Year's Worth of Memories

Each year I love creating memory books for each child that captures their growth throughout the year.  Typically, I collect work samples from the beginning of the year until the end in a portfolio that I use during conference time to share student learning with parents.  I also hold on to a few keepsake projects that I think would fit nicely in their memory books.  This year I did a family project that wouldn't fit in the book so I took a photo of each child's before I sent it home so that I could include it. I also like to include photos of the school, our classroom, a class photo on the play scape, field trips, and other exciting events that may have occurred throughout the year. I also include an end of the year poem or letter from me.  This year I am thinking about including a reprinted version of the letter I sent home to the children over the summer.  Most importantly, each child's memory book tells the story of their year in learning from beginning to end.

I also like to invite families to celebrate their child's accomplishments with an end of the year celebration.  In the past, I have had a celebration with just my class as well as collaborated with other teachers on my grade level.  My celebrations typically include a song, a slideshow, an award that recognizes each child for an accomplishment, and an opportunity for the children to share some of their work with their families.  This year one of my colleagues and I are collaborating to have a family picnic lunch.  Our school is having a Sharing Assembly where each class shares some form of learning.  We will be singing a song and sharing a collaborative Animoto video that shares each child's thoughts about kindergarten.  We have invited families to join us for a picnic lunch after the Sharing Assembly.  Once the children have the opportunity to enjoy lunch with their families, we are inviting the families into our classrooms so that the children can share some of the work that they are working on collecting.  Each child is having an active part in selecting the work they will share!  We are all very excited about the upcoming event!

How do you celebrate the year with your students?

One Small Step...

Well, here I go!  This is my first blog entry, and I'm not sure where to begin.  I expect this to be an exciting adventure we will take together, and I hope you will help me along the way.  I am looking forward to share about my kindergarten students' yearly journey.  Stay tuned to learn more!