Reflection Through Digital Expression

This has been an amazing learning experience. I have learned so much about technology I actually feel like I could share some of my knowledge in a PD with my colleagues, I hate public speaking so through a digital story of course.  Judy has made learning fun with the use of technology. I am excited for the next school year because I cannot wait to try out more of the things I learned in class with my students.  I have already signed up to participate in the Global Read Aloud.  I especially loved working with Google Drive and Google Docs.  I figured out that I can upload pictures and documents from my phones Google Drive and it shows up instantly on my laptop.  No more emailing myself.  In addition, I learned about the Snipping Tool built into my computer.  I keep that on my tool bar for easy access.  I enjoyed using VoiceThread, Animoto, Storybird,  Padlet (my personal favorite) and learning how to embed links into my post.  There are still other teaching tools I have yet to try like GoAnimate, Tagxedo, and Bitstrips but will explore them this summer. 

Notice how I was able to link to the sites I mentioned. Yup, I could not do that before this class. 

Here is my attempt using Voki.  I had fun changing the different voice and creating funny faces. My Voki looks glum because class is almost over and it is bittersweet.

Welcome to Open House Room 355 ELA

This is the final version for class of my digital story that I created to share at Open House with incoming parents and students.  I decided to use Windows Movie Maker for this project.  I love my final product since I was able to add narration.  I thought it was going to be a struggle to match my voice to each picture.  Therefore, I decided to record each pictures narration separately.  While this made recording and re-recording much easier however, when you play the digital story you can somewhat hear the difference between each pictures narration.  I do plan to update it before the actual Open House in September with more specific information.

I believe it is very appropriate for my school and me.  I personally feel this is perfect for me since I strongly dislike speaking in front of anyone other than children.  For this digital story, I was thinking of the parents that might not be able to attend the Open House and how I could relay information to them.  I thought this would be useful for that purpose. 

If I were to do this again, which I plan to, I will need to have all the pictures in one file, know exactly what I want to say, and have a better microphone.  I think I would try to match the music to the pictures but I did not see the need to since I had narration.  If I were to use this technology in my class, I think my students would pick up how to use is quickly.  The challenge would be that it would need to be quiet if they were to record narration while using Windows Movie Maker.

I am excited and proud to share with you my final product.  Please feel free to leave feedback.

Blog Wars

The other evening I was flipping through Netflix trying to find a movie for my students to watch before they began their Field Day activities.  I came across the movie titled Harriet the Spy: Blog Wars.  The title caught my attention because after creating my own blog for class, I could not believe that there was a movie centered on student blogs.  The movie was based on a Harriet going head to head with the most popular student, Marion Hawthorne, competing to become the official blogger of their high school class.

In the movie, the students all seemed to be active bloggers through writing and commenting on others blogs.  I thought the fact the Hollywood created a movie based on blogging was interesting.  This movie was created in 2010 and here it is 2014 and I am just learning about blogging and actively using it.  After watching the movie, I realized that technology is very much a part of my student’s everyday lives.  Further, I need to find ways to help my students use blogs and begin to blog because this is their future.

As a result of watching this movie, I decided to try another piece of new technology and that is Wordle.  Wordles are word clouds that can be created with text that you provide.  I decided to create one based on the movie.  I included characters, themes, setting, and anything else I thought related to blogging and the movie.  Now make sure you write your words in another document then copy and paste.  I just typed all my words right into Wordle and when I tried to add more words, all the words were gone.  Therefore, I had to type the in Microsoft Word first, then copy and paste them into Wordle.  Lesson learned.

Then I saw that I could create one just by writing my blog’s URL in the link box.

Wordles are easy and fun to create you just need words!  I hope you decide to try to create one.

Survey Says...

Today was the last day of the school year.  I normally like to ask students questions about how they like being in my ELA class. I usually have students hand write their responses.  I tell them that their responses are anonymous and not to write their name on the paper. Well to a degree this is true, but after a year of reading their writing I can figure out who said what.  I have recently learned how to create a survey using Google Forms (another amazing Google tool) after watching a short tutorial.  I have embedded the survey below.

Now, I would like to give this to my students without them going to my blog or typing in the long link to the form.  Running short on time, I decided to create a new wall in Padlet and paste the form's URL there as a link.  Before publishing the wall, I changed the settings to "view only" so that no one could modify the document.  Now I am ready for their responses!

Padlet Link to Survey

I am sure there is an easier way to send students to the form, but I do not know how at this time. Also, since I have created my first survey using this tool I am wondering what else I can use with Google Forms.  Anyone have any ideas? Please share.

Book Reviews Using VioceThread

For my Literacy Project, I created a lesson that incorporated the use of technology. I decided to you VoiceThread with my students since it is almost the end of the school year and it is one of the new pieces of technology that I am most comfortable using with my students.

With my class, I had students select their favorite book they read during the school year. Then they wrote a book review based on a set of features we developed as a group. Before writing, their book review, they looked for an image of the book or drew a cover of their own for the book. After they wrote their book reviews, they had peers help edit and revise, and then practiced reading their book review aloud for fluency. I then set them up to audio record their book review in VoiceThread, which had its trails due to the microphone not picking up sound. The result was not thoroughly edited but I am proud with my result and first attempt at using VoiceThread with my students.

My ultimate goal is to have this particular VoiceThread grow beyond just the books I have here. I would like to continue to add books or remove book reviews.  I would like my incoming sixth graders to write their responses to these sixth graders and share what they liked about the books, if they choose to read that book based on the review.

Eventually, I would like to create leveled book review VoiceThreads. Since I have a diverse group of readers at many different reading levels, I would like to create VoiceThreads for struggling reluctant readers and VoiceThreads for my advanced readers. I can see this happening during the next school year.

Mind Olympics

Tomorrow my students will be participating in what our team calls “Mind Olympics.”  The “Mind Olympics” is a friendly competition against the homerooms on our sixth grade team where they play mind games.  Each homeroom teacher creates a challenging mind activity for the students and they earn points for first through fifth place.  We tally the points up at the end of the day then announce the winner.  The mind challenges are:

24 Game – This is a math card game in which the object is to find a way to manipulate four numbers so that the result is 24.  Addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division, and sometimes other procedures, may be used to make four numbers from one to nine equal 24.

http://tech4teacher.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/24-game.jpg 

Word Plexers – These are word-based puzzles that describe a word or phrase without actually spelling it out.  For example, KCART would be backtrack since it is the word track spelled backwards.

http://www.worksheetworks.com/images/prev/Word_Plexer_lg.gif

Paper Tower Challenge – The goal is for students to create the tallest free standing tower with only one piece of paper and 20 centimeters of tape. 

http://prod.zurb.s3.amazonaws.com/friday15/uploads/activity/artwork/25/papertower.jpg 

Sudoku – Is a puzzle in which players insert the numbers one to nine into a grid be made up of of nine squares subdivided into a further nine smaller squares in such a way that every number appears once in each horizontal line, vertical line, and square.

Sudoku example

I am running the Sudoku challenge.  I give them the easiest puzzle I can find and never have a homeroom complete it within the 50 minutes.  Sudoku is challenging but not many students even know what Sudoku is before I explain it.  In the years past, I have created a PowerPoint that explains the rules.  However, that does not seem to be enough to help them understand it. I usually have one or two students that have played it before and they help explain it to others.  I had not thought of this before but this year I will show a YouTube video explaining the directions.  If I had more time, I would have created my own VoiceThread explaining each step.

Students have a blast with these challenging mind games.  Hopefully my homeroom takes first place this year!

Ruff! Rough Draft of My Digital Story

For my digital story, I had two choices; I could create a digital story for my Accelerated Reader program or for Open House for the beginning of school.  I decided to create my first digital story to share at Open House.  For starters, I strongly dislike public speaking.  I can talk to my students all day long: however, if I have to address my peers in a public forum, I become extremely anxious.  Either way this rough draft of my digital story had my head spinning.

I began using VoiceThread but I wanted to add seamlessly music and not just my voice.  So then, I tried using Photo Story 3 and Windows Movie Maker at the same time.  I uploaded all the pictures and screenshots and began moving them around.  Photo Story 3 is linear and when moving pictures around was cumbersome.  However, Movie Maker was nonlinear and I felt like I had more space to maneuver. 

The hardest part of this journey was taking pictures that I thought would be useful in my digital story.  However, the trickiest part of creating my digital story was trying to do the narration.  I had issues with the sound on my laptop.  Then I would try to record my voice and the microphone stopped working.  I decided to try music.  Since I am extremely indecisive, selecting music that I thought would match took more time than necessary.  Below is my "ruff" draft. I intend to add my voice little by little maybe one slide at a time.

My Padlet is Your Padlet

In my last EDUC 584, last I was introduced to a new collaborative tool called Padlet.  By far this is one of the easiest online tools that I have used.  Padlet has many user-friendly features and you can get started using it immediately.  You just need to create an account and you’re on your way.

First, I love the auto save feature, however, this takes some getting used to because I am programmed to always save my work before I exit out.  Second, you can easily attach a link to YouTube or any other website.  You can upload pictures and word documents right onto the wall.  Third, you can create a private wall for only your students to post on and can open up the permissions so that others can change what you have written.  Lastly, I love the layout and wallpapers they provide.  You can allow students to post in a free form or stream layout.   

I love Padlet so much I decided to try it on my return to school.  I asked my students what were there plans for the summer.  I wrote the URL I created for their class on the board and they quickly figured out how to post and move their post around the wall.  Here is a screenshot of what they had to say about their summer plans.

Core 1/5 Padlet

For more ideas on ways to use Padlet in your classroom, look at Three Good Ways to Use Padlet in Your School.  The author suggests several ways to have students collaborate using Padlet that I plan to try before the end of the school year.

My only concern with Padlet is that if my students were to create their own accounts they could potentially use Padlet to send each other messages without my knowledge.  Nonetheless, I still think this is an effective collaborative tool.  I hope you decide to try it in your classroom. 

Storybird Time

During my last EDUC 584 class, I had the opportunity to create a story with my peers Michelle and Juan using the online digital story-telling tool Storybird.  It was the first time I had used a tool such as this to create a story.  It was difficult to create a story on the spot based on someone else’s pictures.  However, once we selected an artist our story came together quickly.   

I am proud of our accomplishment, so proud that I showed it to my six graders the next day.  I wanted to show them what I created in class the night before and to get some feedback.  I told them that we created the story off the top of our head and had it done within a half hour of starting.  After I read the story to them, they asked when they would get the opportunity to make one of their own!  They did say they thought the story was nice and immediately noticed the students on the cover page.  They had so many questions about the artwork and where did we get the names for the characters.  I reminded the students about the short stories they wrote at the beginning of the year.  I told them if I had known about Storybird before, they could have used it to create their original stories to share online.  I definitely plan to use this tool with students in the future. I can see them selecting pictures first then building their story using a plot chart.  They can practice including conflict, dialogue, characterization, and setting. As an ELA teacher, I see the many possibilities for using Storybird in my classroom.