Tech Collaboration

WARNING: Capturing video while teaching can cause motion sickness to the view. Dramamine may be necessary while watching.  :-)

I had the awesome opportunity to work with a classmate to engage kids in a new way. Ms Jane and I set up our classrooms and taught our kids a high frequency word game. We facetimed in. Each class would ask a question about a word wall and we would whittle down our high frequency word list until we only had one left. The children could only ask yes/no questions and if the answer to the question was no, the other team got a turn.

My children absolutely LOVED getting to see another class of kindergartners that they'd never met face to face. Many of them were surprised to hear that the other class is learning exactly the same thing as they are. It is always fun to see kids who are normally only somewhat engaged get excited and fully invest in our activity.

This activity helped kids to think a bit more deeply about their words. They can already recognize them and write them but this helped them to see similarities and differences between words. Finding all of our words with an "a" in it or all of the words with 3 letters just further helps them to learn the words. Learning this while playing a game with a class across town? Jackpot! Later on in the day I was telling my team how it had gone and my teammate asked to play a round with us. So, later in the afternoon we played a round with my teammate. The only problem is that we didn't exactly get the technology to work properly. Moral of the story: Make sure you test the technology first! Ms Jane and I had tested it before children had gotten to school that morning. We had a couple of small kinks to work out and by the time kids got there our settings were all correct and were ready to go. Since we didn't do that in the afternoon we wasted some valuable teaching time. LESSON LEARNED!

Creatively Challenged

It's been an intense couple of weeks. My class and I have been sprinting to keep our heads above water. New use of technology kind of went by the wayside, but it was still very much present in our lives. My favorite technology related moment this week came out of a pattern app we were using to practice patterns before our test. The children were in front of the room leading their classmates in pattern practice via Learning Patters app. It's nothing more than pattern flash cards but it gave my children a chance to practice without me being in front of them and freed up a few minutes for me to help other children one on one. As we were wrapping up math that day one student was very upset. I was worried someone had done something to anger him. When I asked him what he was upset about he said, "I just want to do patterns and that one's not on the kid iPads!" And he was right. I asked the entire class if they would like to have the pattern app on the kid iPads for them to use on their own and I had an overwhelming yes. Patterns are usually a pretty big hit with the kindergarten crowd, but it was cool to see them spend a lot of time practicing as a group and then not want to stop. I ended up paying $1.99 to get the full version with all of the patterns. When I told this little guy that I had planned to even purchas the hard patterns for him to try he could barely contain his excitement. He knows I'm pretty forgetful so he asked if he could write me a note. This is what I had waiting on my computer when school got out that day. 

 Translation: Mosier, Put the patterns (patt-er-ins is how he says it- and write it!) on the iPads. 
iypads. iPads. SAME THING!

I loved that he got to practice some great phonics while doing something that he found to be very important. And to be honest, I'm glad he wrote me the note because frazzled doesn't begin to explain my life right now, but I didn't forget to purchase the full version and add them to the kid iPads! Kid enthusiasm fuels my fire and I love it!


Creativity
I don't feel creative in the sense that I do lots of arts and crafts or that my house and/or classroom are coordinated and decorated just so. I am, however, creative in finding ways to get kids to learn as are are of the great teachers. That's what makes us great. But when I was asked how I help kids to be creative via technology, I didn't have an answer for that. Or I didn't have a GOOD answer.

When I attended the TechEdge conference last month at the University of Nebraka-Lincoln I got to attend a session on the maker space. The presenter was William Vann and he spoke about how he's able to provide materials, set some parameters and then allow children to explore, create, fail, revise, and maybe eventually succeed with an amazing amount of materials, some electronic and some not. I was so excited by the idea of giving kids time to explore and create and I've been thinking about how I could provide that for my students as well. 

For class this week we read Creativity in technology education: providing children with glimpses of their inventive potential by Theodore Lewis. Just in the first couple of pages I felt like, "this guy gets it!" He spoke about the importance of allowing creativity to allow students to discover a possibly hidden talent. He was speaking of using technology as a way for students to use their own creativity according to their own particular strengths and abilities. While I am not able to provide a true maker space for my students, I do allow them to make some of their own choices when it comes to independent practice on the iPads. At those times they are much more in control of their learning than I am, but it's not truly creative. I do have a few students who have taken to minecraft and are building their own worlds. I enjoy listening to what they're working on and what they've accomplished in their game, but I can't take any credit for that. I set no parameters. I am not assessing it in any way. I'm just not allowing children any creativity via technology based on curriculum goals. 

As I look down the road to the future and more iPads being available to us, I'd love to get kids writing via technology. I would love for students to be able to create their own character and print them on a 3D printer. I saw that Barnes and Noble has small da Vinci Jr. 3D printers for "only" $350. I think it would be phenomenal for students to create something in their 2D world on the ipad and then be able to print it out and have a real 3D object to hold, touch, show off, and take home. I want them to begin to understand that their ideas can become real. Of course I don't have that yet, nor do I see myself getting those things in the foreseeable future. I need to start bridging that gap for my students. 

My students are already used to taking pictures around the room and then I've been putting makeshift collages together and showing them on the projector. I think the next step to start getting tangable items out of work done via the ipad would be to allow them to make their own collages using Pic Collage and then printing it and displaying it. I really hate printing but students take pride in displayed work and this would just be the next level of awesome for them. I can see them loving posters around the room of the letters of the week with their collages of what they've found either online or around the school pertaining to those letters. For my students who are writing I could see allowing them to write a sentence in a fun font or illustrating it in any number of was and displaying them around the room to bring more excitement to our weekly (somewhat boring) sight words.

The article talked about students having "insufficient opportunity for open-ended pursuits that are joyful" (Lewis, p.3) and I completely agree. The balancing act is that we have a very prescribed curriculum and each classroom needs to teach with fidelity to ensure that all students are getting an equal education. Of course I enhance where I can but that takes creativity on my part. I'm not very good at creativity right now. Fall is an extremely busy time of year in my house and this year with my students. I'm just trying to keep my head above water but you can be certain that when I have more help with parenting duties and when plans are in place for my students I'll be able to explore and get some more great things up and running because I totally agree that creativity is absolutely necessary. This article really helped me to see my inefficiencies and allowed me some time to plan for the next step with my students. It's uncomfortable but I need a push to start moving forward. I think Theodore Lewis just gave me a virtual nudge. Thanks, Mr. Lewis.

Publishing and a New Man in my Life

I love new stuff and I love technology. It was natural that I added technology as soon as I possibly could. The problem is that I've settled in and haven't tried many new things lately because there's nobody pushing me to do so. This class has really forced me to think a bit harder about how I can use technology more without making it another thing to do. Technology has to be seamless for me to like it. I knew that writing was one place where I was horribly lacking in my technology but I haven't been very good about getting it going. Because I knew this I made publishing writing a goal of mine for class. This week I finally got in gear and gave it a try. I have one child who is a very good writer. Each day she is writing more than everyone else and is ready for more. I did a quick (2-3 minute) instructional session and sent her on her way. She wrote her story and we spent a few minutes stretching it out to three pages. Once we had the story laid out I had her illustrate. She chose to draw the pictures on paper and the next thing I knew she had taken it upon herself to take the picture of her illustration and had added it to her story. It was fun seeing her figure out the app on her own. The app I chose to used was Book Creator. It came recommended and I was pleased at how easy it was to use. I did end up paying a few dollar for it, but that's what I needed to push myself to add something new. I plan to get this app on a couple more iPads and let kids take turns publishing their work using book creator. I can see it being highly motivating for kids who may not be very enthusiastic writers. I can also see myself using it with the voice to text feature for my pre-writers. I could see them seeing their ideas on paper as very motivating as well as encouraging that they can be writers and that they're not far away.
When I told the first little girl that if she did a great story that I could put her story on youtube and send it to her mom her face lit up. She's a very sweet and hard working girl to begin with, but she's also very calm and even tempered. Seeing a child that usually needs no encouragement to be her best get excited about something new was motivating to me as well.

Here is her current progress. The plan for tomorrow is for her to record her voice reading her story and then upload it for her family to see and share. I love the invented spelling and approximated sounds. It's one of my favorite parts of kindergarten!

As soon as we get a final draft I'll take down these screen shots and replace it with the final product. 

I loved seeing Zaria get excited and dive in. I started with a child who was already hooked. I'm excited to try it with a child who is a reluctant writer next. I might try StoryBird next since the pictures are already there and they can write based on that. It doesn't exactly align with my curriculum but I'll find a way to match them up. It's worth it to get a kid feeling like a real author!



And friends, I have an announcement. I have a new man in my life and his name is OSMO!

 

Isn't he handsome?  ;-) 

Is that a group of kids happily working together to solve puzzles? Are those kids who are supporting others making connections between the tiles and the image to achieve a task? YES IT IS! Osmo is so awesome. Besides the fact that the kids think it's absolute magic that the iPad knows what's going on on the table, it has been a very good addition to my classroom. I've been the most impressed at the collaboration among the kids. There were actually only 2 kids who were assigned to the Osmo at the time this picture was taken but they were all working so well together that I just let it happen. (Don't worry, their work was done!) I've loaded their pictures and names into the Osmo Words app. Once I can make some reference cards with their names and pictures they'll get to work on building their names as well as their high frequency words and vocabulary words with the Osmo. I'm so excited to see what we can do with the Osmo. I'll have to post some video once I get it fully up and running. 

I still have a lot of things that I want to try this semester pertaining to technology. I'm hoping I can get them all squeezed in. If I do so, I'll write about it here. Thanks for reading!

Graphic Organizers are Awesome

During a session yesterday by Mr. Balcom I first saw Piktochart.  He says he uses it lots with young children and ELL students. DING! DING! DING! That's me! So when I saw I had an assignment to create a graphic organizer for my class I immediately thought of Piktochart. It's going to take a while for me to get used to using Piktochart but I can do that. I didn't exactly create a graphic organizer in the sense that children use it to organize their thoughts independently, but this is EXACTLY what my students need RIGHT NOW. We are retelling stories and having a strong pictorial representation of character and setting will help them in their quest to retell a story using the characters, setting, and three main details.

I'm excited to print this out and put it up. I could even print it smaller so children can hold a small one as they retell and hold on to the part of the chart that they're retelling as they are retelling it. 

I just love finding new things that I can put together and use tomorrow. I'm not the kind of person who waits around for something to happen. I make it happen. That's what we nerds do!

Piktochart and I are going to get along juuuuuuust fine! :-)

October is Busy but Fun!

 (Photo Credit: @FriedrichLaurie)

I'm a bit behind in posting. Life is busy as a mom, teacher, and wife to someone else with a very busy job this time of year! I've enjoyed the work I've done for my tech class and I even got to present at my first tech conference yesterday which was so much fun. I felt like I walked away with so many ideas that I have to sift through them all to decide which one I'm doing first and how I'm going to get funding for the rest of them. It seems like I always walk away from tech conferences eager to buy ALL THE THINGS! It's just so exciting to see the possibilities and to be around others with the same excitement. It's very motivating.

I'll start with a few things I've already done.

I went to Common Sense Media and found the K-2 curriculum. I'm always great about getting technology in the hands of students but I admit I'm not great about preparing them for internet safety outside of my 4 classroom walls so I was happy to have some guidance on how to do so. We watched the "My Online Neighborhood" video on internet safety, discussed it using the provided prompts, and took a virtual field trip to a pumpkin patch that I found on youtube. The kids loved it! After the lesson my students wrote about internet safety. We're in the first quarter of kindergarten so their writing was "______ is safe for me." They each told me what was safe for them (app, website, etc.) and then they drew a picture to match and shared it with their group. The kids loved being able to write about their favorite apps and websites. A few common mentions were minecraft, starfall.com, pbskids, and the Teach Your Monster To Read app. A few mentioned Netflix so we talked about how Netflix is usually safe but it's best to talk to your families about what shows are appropriate for kids to watch and they all agreed that they would continue getting parent permission before watching. I was pleasantly surprised at how fun it was talking to the kids about being safe online. I saved all of the information to be used again next year and I plan to do a few other lessons from Common Sense Media in my classroom as time permits this year.

Yesterday I got to present at the TechEdge conference. I presented on using iPads as tools in the classroom rather than strictly as toys as many kids see them. I just called it "Tools not Toys" because I'm bridging that gap for kindergartners. Many of them have never used an iPad for another other than entertainment. If you'd like to see the powerpoint that I presented with click here. I also had a little handout with a few apps that I reference in the presentation that you can get here.

Next up - Flipping my classroom! I've wanted to do this for a while but I just haven't gotten around to it yet. I have some great ideas but I'll have to narrow it down to one and start there.

Until then, I'll leave you with my favorite tweet from my session at the TechEdge conference.

He's right. Even if you don't have a lot of technology you can still do a lot with it. That's a great reminder for all of us. It's in the QUALITY, not in the QUANTITY.

Thanks, @mrbalcom!

Technology for Individual Intervention

(photo source)

I have "my standard" technology integration that I use each day but my integration definitely gets more fun as the year goes on and we have more to work on and the apps can lend themselves to being a bit more self directed practice with the whole group. This class has made me think about what else I could do or what I could do differently. We're still highly focusing on letter identification and sounds so I decided that I'll look for something to enhance my instruction in that area.

My first stop was on ipadapps4school.com. I searched for "beginning sounds" and a list popped up. The graphics on Teach Your Monster To Read on the iPad caught my eye. They are cute monsters which I can see appealing to both boys and girls. I watched the promo video and it looks like exactly what I need. I then searched graphite.org to see what they had to say about it. Graphite gave it 4/5 stars. I paid my $5 and got it downloaded it. I played with it a little bit at home and was happy with what I was seeing so I downloaded it on my kid iPads and introduced it in class. The kids got to see me play it a little and then I let them take a couple of turns. At literacy work stations the children were using the app which I was pleased to see. I also used it during choice time to support one little girl who needed extra help and practice. She is usually a pretty serious little girl but I saw her smiling and happy while using this app to practice her letter S and the sound. I love play based intervention becuase children don't feel like I'm drilling and killing them. They're happy to practice and I don't feel like I'm taking away all of their play time. I'm just giving them a more structured play under my supervision and with my feedback. We all win!
 

A Peek at My Week

                                                                                                                       (photo source)

At the beginning of kindergarten I'm running a million miles an hour just to get kids ready to be in school. I have to teach them how to be a student before I can teach them content. Later in the year I like to let kids use the ipad and lead their own learning while I am there to facilitate and support.  For now it's a lot more teacher led but I do have some technology in use because that's my comfort zone.

Two of my primary uses for technology in these beginning days is for projection of student work. After children have completed their writing we oftentimes share our work on the projector while students tell about their stories. It is highly motivating for children to get work done and to do it well when they know it's going to be shown to the whole class. Students like seeing their work larger than life and using the teacher pointer to tell about their picture.

The other main way we use technology is during math. We do lots and lots of  great hands on math exploration with our Math Expressions. I love going around and snapping pictures of student work. I oftentimes take pictures of different ways to represent the same idea and flip back and forth between the pictures to compare and contrast. If I have time I will push those pictures through PicStitch or another app that allows for multiple pictures in any multitude of arrangements. This way kids can see more than one example at a time and talk about them them. With 5 year-olds being so concrete it's wonderful to be able to project their work in a large scale so everyone can see exactly what's being explained. And once again, children are so excited to see their work displayed on the screen and the pride they take in explaining it is wonderful to see.

Some of the other ways I use technology are good but not as interactive as the previous examples. I almost exclusively use the online content for our Reading Wonders curriculum and I run it via iPad. I am running it on my own for the time being but I like the freedom it gives me to be anywhere in the room. I'm not stuck behind a computer or at the front of the room. I've actually made a conscious effort to teach from the back of the room so that the learning space belongs to the students because it is about them and not about me.


Another lesser way that I use technology is via youtube on my iPad. We use lots of various educational videos on a number of topics that we've found on youtube. My current favorite is HeidiSongs. We have used her high frequency word videos for a few months now but her newer classroom management songs are a favorite of mine as well as my students. My current playlist is here if you're interested. Or if you'd like to poke around and see what HeidiSongs has available you can find that here.

Grad School, Nerd Style

I'm starting grad school. Again. Or still? This class is a workshop for technology in the classroom. Sounds perfect.

In our first meeting we talked about a few different apps we can use to present information as the teacher or for the students. Of course you find one app and someone mentions another app that they like and 30 minutes later you're down a giant rabbit hole. A fabulous, nerdy rabbit hole, but a rabbit hole none the less.

A couple that I'm getting excited to get my hands on are HaikuDeck that the instructor presented and Slate which is apparently an Adobe product. It's pretty simple but it puts it together to look pretty fancy. I can see kindergartners getting pretty excited about it. I'm thinking it might be a good way for me to post pictures of student math work so we can EASILY go back the next day and students can remember where our discussion left off. Plus, they can see several examples of ways children solved a problem all at once so they can easily reference each example during discussions.

I'm trying to decide where to go next. I feel like I have a pretty good system of technology integration going, but we're on year 3 (or 4?) of the same thing and it's time for me to UPDATE! In a couple of years we'll be getting iPads 1:1 so I'm looking to ramp up a bit so when we go 1:1 that aspect is an even easier for me.

One goal for this year that I've set for myself is to figure out how to do a flipped lesson AND ACTUALLY DO IT! I've been super fascinated with the idea of a flipped classroom ever since my buddy Jason did it several years ago. He did it in 4th grade and I was never confident that my efforts would be worth it for kindergartners. I'm confident now. With the added cushion of a university instructor, I've totally got this.

Another goal I have for myself is to get kids publishing their writing. Technology is so motivating to kids and I feel like I have lots of room to grow in the Motivating Kids in Writing category. Of course the next step is to use technology to motivate children in the area of writing.

I was asked to have 3 goals for this semester. At this time I have 2 solid goals. My third goal is to help others on my team become more comfortable with technology and to be a resource to them. The only problem with this goal is that their devices were purchased with Title 1 dollars and when their devices are going to show up is anybody's guess. If they don't show up then I'll designate another goal. It seems like the more that I learn the more I realize I don't know. If I were to choose an alternate third goal now I worry I'd run across something that really excites me but I wouldn't dive in to it as fully as I would if I were able to designate it as my goal. I'll keep you all updated on that part.

I'm going to write about myself for my classmates. It's was suggested and lets face it, I'm pretty good about talking about me.

I teach kindergarten at a Title 1 school. I absolutely love technology and have spent lots of my own money to get my classroom closer to where I want it to be as far as technology goes. I love ELL and experimented with team teaching with our ELL teacher last year for all of 2nd semester. I learned a lot about teaching English Language Learners and found that a little time spent preparing visuals on  google slides to support ELL students saved me lots of class time and strengthened understanding.

My husband handles all of the digital stuff for the Huskers. He and I are both very "connected" with our technology and use the tools available frequently. The same goes for our kids even though they're using it more as a consumer than as a tool. My son Owen (8) is very interested in youtube and has made a few videos. I was planning to link them up here but in doing so I realized he deleted all but one of his videos from his youtube channel when the memory on his iPad was getting low. I cried and then we had a long talk about not deleting without mom or dad as well as the difference between items being stored on your device and those being stored on the cloud.

Here's my family this past spring on the capitol lawn. Or maybe it was this past summer? Either way, we took thses ourselves with a wireless shutter button. You'll notice you'll only ever see one of Kelly's hands at any point in time. The other has the shutter! I have to say, it takes a little longer to set up when you are your own photographer, but the stress level of making the kids be good for someone else is a million times easier. I'm never hiring a photographer again. I love making technology do the work for me!