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.