Students Using a Template in Google Presentation

Often times I have teachers asking for assistance with their students creating a Google Presentation.  Recently I worked with a grade level team who wanted their students to work in small groups to create a Google Presentation for "Holidays Around the World".  Each group was assigned a different county, and students worked together to research a holiday and facts about it using KidRex and NCWiseOwl.

To provide scaffolding for the students, I worked with the teachers to help them create a template Google Presentation that was shared with each group.  Teachers added in the titles and some subtopics to each of the slides, in order to give the students some structure.  Then the teacher shared it with one member from each group as "View only".  This group member then opened it within their "Shared with me" in Google Drive and clicked File > Make a copy in order to personalize the template for their group's assigned country.

Once this copy was shared with the other members in their group, all students could work simultaneously on their presentation, most finishing within 30 minutes.  The kids got so excited to see that multiple people could be working on the same document at one time.  They enjoyed adding images and video to support their writing, and they look forward to sharing it with their classmates next week.

Kahoot! A game-based response system

If you're looking for a fun, engaging way to review concepts with your students, I highly recommend Kahoot.  This tool has been used by quite a few teachers since last school year, but it is always so much fun, so I thought I would take the opportunity to remind people of the tool or introduce it, if you've never seen it before.

I was just in a 5th grade classroom at one of our elementary schools earlier this week and was reminded of how much kids enjoy Kahoot.  In this particular class, the teacher was using it to review a genetics unit on which traits are learned and which are inherited.  As soon as they started the game, excitement filled the entire room.  Students were engaged and sitting on the edge of their seats as they sought to answer the review question as quickly (and correctly!) as possible.  After each question, a leader board is shown to motivate students and further support the game-like feel.  Here is an example of what students might see projected on the board:

Prior to the activity, the teacher creates a Kahoot quiz online and selects from one of the many public ones already created.  Once students are ready to engage, they go to a Kahoot.it.  A pin number is displayed onto the projector, and students enter it and their name from an device with the Internet--laptop, iPad, Chromebook, etc.  A question is displayed on the projector along with the answer choices.  On student devices, students select the correct answer from the color-coded choices.  Here are a couple pictures from the 5th grade class using it earlier this week:

If you've never used Kahoot before and want to watch a quick tutorial on how to set one up, check out this screencast.

Coding Club in Granville County Public Schools

This past summer, an Instructional Technology Facilitator (ITF) colleague and I had a chance to attend a FREE two-week Adventures in Alice coding workshop at Duke University.  The workshop was taught by a Computer Science Professor at Duke, Susan Rodger.  We learned how to create animated worlds and had an absolute blast doing so.

Here's an example of a world my colleague created on caring for your device:


As a result of the training we received, we were charged with thinking about how we could bring Alice Coding back to Granville County Public Schools.  My colleague and I thought we'd pilot after school coding clubs at two of our high schools.  Our first club is meeting on all four Mondays in October in their school's media center.

Here are a couple pictures of the students learning how to use Alice Coding:

In this particular workshop, we're learning how to create the Shark Attack world.  We are grateful for Ms. Distler's Google Site with so many awesome resources as we plan our coding club.

We can't wait to see how Alice coding spreads in Granville County Public Schools!

Technology Resources for the K-5 Classroom

As an Instructional Technology Facilitator, I'm often asked about some helpful technology resources I'd recommend to teachers.  For one of my grad school assignments last semester I created a LiveBinder to house links to all these resources.  Recently I shared that LiveBinder with someone and they were so appreciative.  While the purpose of this assignment was initially for grad school, I can certainly see it being a great resource to share out with teachers.

Link to Gwen Loftin's LiveBinder: http://www.livebinders.com/play/play?id=1720311

If you're looking for recommended apps, websites, Chrome add-ons or extensions, SMARTBoard resources, etc., I highly encourage you to check out and bookmark this website.

Using Shadow Puppet Edu to Create Presentations

Shadow Puppet Edu is a free iPad app that, ironically, has nothing to do with shadows or puppets!  This app allows you to create videos to tell stories, explain an idea, or document learning.  It’s a great way for students to practice their speaking skills or reading aloud.  

Using photos on the iPad’s camera roll, you can create a video with voice over narration, add music, add text titles, draw on the screen with pointer tools, zoom in/out, and swipe between photos.  Videos are saved to the iPad camera roll and can be shared using your school YouTube account, embedded on a website or blog, or the link emailed.

I had the privilege of working with some of our elementary students as they used Shadow Puppet Edu to share what they had learned about butterfly life cycles. Students used an iPad to take pictures of their work and then narrated a presentation as they described what they had created and learned. They loved the app and said it was "SO FUN!"

Here are some pictures of the students making their presentation:

How to Share a Google Form

Google Forms are wonderful!  They allow you to survey any number of people in a professional manner and all responses are collected in a Google Spreadsheet.  If you'd like to learn more about how to make a Google Form, I encourage you to check out this video.  Google allows provides great tutorial at their own support site which you can find here.

Recently I was asked how to share a Google Form once you have created a survey.  In this short screencast, you will learn how to share a Google Form via email or hyperlink, add collaborators to the form, and embed it.

Best Practices in the Use of Blogs in K-12 Education

The use of blogs in K-12 classrooms is becoming more and more prevalent.  Recently I had the opportunity to deliver a Professional Development session for teachers titled, Blogging in the Classroom.  As you consider starting a blog for your own classroom, here are some tips:

So now what?  Here are some things to think about...

What will be your student guidelines?  If you need some inspiration, check out Kim Cofino's student blogging guidelines.

Which blogging tool would best suit your needs?  As I was making this decision for my own professional blog, I turned to Richard Byrne for some advice.  Check out his comparison of five popular blogging tools, including Blogger, EduBlogs, and KidBlog.

What might your first few lessons on blogging entail?  You might want to cover what makes a quality blog, online safety, composing quality posts and commenting on others' blogs.  For detailed lesson ideas, skim over Kim Cofino's descriptions of her first five blogging lessons.

How are you going to make the blogs interactive?  Will you have students respond to each other's posts? If so, you'll want to teach your students how to compose a quality comment.  This short video (also embedded below) will likely be a hit in your own classroom as you hear from other students about how to leave a meaningful comment on a classmate's blog.

How to Compose a Quality Comment! from yourwonderfulteacher on Vimeo.

And, finally, if you're looking for some topics of what students might blog about, here are some ideas:

• post a prompt
• the week in review
• critique a site
• comment on current events
• continuing stories
• share recipes (as you study world languages and difficult cultures)
• question blog (similar to a KWL chart)
• report on a field trip or virtual event
• role-play a point of view

HAPPY BLOGGING!

Creating Videos Using Fotofriend

A teacher recently came to me asking for a way to have students videotape themselves using Chromebooks.  The task was to have students record themselves reading a poem.  I had students browse some of their teacher's poetry books, as well as search for poems online.  Once they found one they liked, they rehearsed reading the poem several times until they felt ready to record.

We used Fotofriend to record, a website that allows you to make free videos, among many other things.  The website has more than 50 different video effects (similar to Photo Booth on a MacBook) but students were asked to record their video using the normal effect.  There are three options for length of video: up to 10 seconds, 30 seconds, or 3 minutes.  Once finished recording, you can preview the video.

On a Chromebook, you are able to save the recorded video to your downloads folder or directly to your Google Drive.  In this scenario, I had students save it to their Google Drive so they could easily share it with their teacher.  Throughout the rest of the week, the teacher planned on showing a few of the poetry video recordings each day.

Students loved this activity and it was a great lesson in fluency and making eye contact with the video camera.  In fact, a Speaking and Listening Standard for 3rd grade reads, "Create engaging audio recordings of stories or poems that demonstrate fluid reading at an understandable pace; add visual displays when appropriate to emphasize or enhance certain facts or details." (3.SL.4)

Using Screencastify to Record a Book Review

Recently a teacher asked me for advice on how to have students share a book review using their Chromebooks.  We decided to have students complete a simple "Powerpoint" presentation using Google Presentation.  The first slide would have the student's name and the title of the book they were reviewing.  The second slide (and third, if necessary) would have 3-5 bullets explaining what the book was about and whether or not they would recommend it to their classmates.

These particular students had already created a few Google Presentations before, and got right to work.  In the mean time, I added an extension on each of their Chromebooks called Screencastify.  This extension allows students to create a screencast.  Wikipedia defines a screencast as "a digital recording of computer screen output, also known as video screen capture, often containing audio narration."  Using this simple tool and some sound effects from YouTube, students created a screencast of their book review.

Here is one student's book review:

The students were so eager to share their book reviews with their classmates.  The principal is even considering posting this latest project on the school website.  What fun we had!  The best part?  The project only took 30 minutes from start to finish!

Research Tool in Google Docs and Google Presentation

Over the last couple of weeks I have had the privilege to work with two fourth grade classes at one of the schools in our district.  The students were studying nonfiction research in reading and writing and were tasked with picking any topic of their choosing to research.  Students created an outline for the research paper and then I introduced them to Google Docs.  I showed students how to enter in their text, format it, and use the Research Tool in Google Docs.  The Research Tool allows students to locate text, images, and scholarly articles related to a topic.  Even better, if inserted through the Research Tool, the citation information is automatically inserted into the footnote.

Once students had written most of their research paper, I returned to show them how to create a Google Presentation about their research topic.  Students were tasked with creating a title slide and informational slides that supported their writing.  Again, using the Research Tool, students inserted images that reinforced their writing.

The students were excited to learn new tools (Google Docs and Google Presentation) as well as to share it with their teacher and peers using the "Share" button in Google.  Creating documents and presentations in Google Drive allows students to access them from any device that has internet because the documents are stored on the cloud.  They simply log into their GCPS Google Drive account at www.drive.google.com rather than having it saved on one particular device at school. 

Here are some pictures of students working on the nonfiction Google Docs and Google Presentations and using the Research Tool:

Coding in Elementary School

Vanessa Wrenn, the Director of Technology in Granville County, recently tossed out the idea of introducing computer coding to the elementary students in our district.  I immediately loved the idea and wanted to get moving on the project as soon as possible.  The Instructional Technology team met and brainstormed some ideas of how to proceed: What computer coding program might we use?  Where could we pilot the program? Who would be involved?

We decided to pilot the program at one of our elementary schools.  The process would begin by pulling small groups of 6-8 students and introducing them to FREE "modules" available through Code.org.  The first group of third graders moved through the Frozen "Code with Anna and Elsa" session and it took them about 45 minutes to complete it.  They all loved it and were highly engaged.  Students had 20 tasks to complete and were provided hints throughout.  The tasks required close attention to detail, problem solving, and perseverance, often requiring trial-and-error.

I love Code.org's vision:

"Launched in 2013, Code.org® is a non-profit dedicated to expanding participation in computer science by making it available in more schools, and increasing participation by women and underrepresented students of color. Our vision is that every student in every school should have the opportunity to learn computer science. We believe computer science and computer programming should be part of the core curriculum in education, alongside other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses, such as biology, physics, chemistry and algebra."

Here is a look at the student workspace in the Code studio:

https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/blog/codeorg-releases-frozen-hour-code-tutorial

And here are some photos from our coding fun this morning...

Next up will be piloting the coding modules with other grade levels at this school.  Then I'll start up a coding club for after school students, capping the program at 15 students.  Once the after school club is piloted, I plan on pushing in with the technology teacher and introducing computer coding to her students at the end of the school year.  What better way to build capacity in a technology teacher and introduce coding to an entire population of students at one of our elementary schools?!  How exciting!!

TouchCast App

I wanted to share another iPad app that I discovered while being out in the field.  While working with a second grade teacher to plan a technology-infused lesson, we took the recommendation of a fourth grade colleague to try out an app called TouchCast.  These second grade students were researching different kinds of penguins and the teacher was looking for a way to have the students present their information to their classmates.

TouchCast allows students to type in the information they want to share through a video and the text will run like a teleprompter while they're recording.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/touchcast-imagine/id603258418?mt=8

Students had already done the research on penguins and were ready to publish their findings on the app.  Students took 10-15 minutes to type out their research and then came to the "recording studio" to make their video.

Once students finished recording, I exported their videos to their teacher's YouTube account.  With Google Apps for Educators, all users have a YouTube account as well.  If you're a teacher in Granville County Public Schools, just log in to www.youtube.com with your full school email address and computer password.

Here are some photos of the students using TouchCast.

Typing Club

A wonderful website I have stumbled across is Typing Club.  This website, also an app on our Chromebooks, allows students to improve their typing skills.  Time after time I have seen students enjoy this website.  The website is scaffolded in that you can only move on to the next level once you have reached a certain degree of proficiency on the current level.  Students earn stars based on their performance and the number of words per minute (WPM), percentage of accuracy, and total time is calculated after each round.

Students start with single letters and eventually move into typing whole words.  One of my favorite things about the app is it shows students exactly which finger they should be using to type the highlighted key.

Here are some pictures of students "playing" Typing Club on their Chromebook:

Locating Aligned Resources in icurio

One of the most common questions I hear as a Curriculum Design Team member in our school district is, "Where can I find Common Core or NC Essential Standards aligned resources?"  As the district Instructional Technology Facilitator for our elementary schools, I decided to push for a grant that would provide access to icurio...which we were awarded in the spring of 2014.  icurio is a product I had the opportunity to observe in Mooresville Graded School District last year.  It is an online repository of digital resources that are aligned to standards.  These resources are tagged not only by standard, but also by keyword, grade level, language, type of resource, readability level, etc.

Here is a quick tutorial for my fellow Granville County Public Schools colleagues on how to access icurio:

1. Go to our district homepage and click on "Educators" and then "icurio".

2. Next you will login to icurio with your district username (the first part of your email address) and your network password (the same one you use to log in to your laptop).

3. Once you are logged into icurio, you will see this home page.  You can search by keyword in the center of the screen.  Type in whatever content you are searching for such as multiplying fractions, life cycle of a butterfly, sound waves, two-digit addition, etc. and click the green "Search" button.  Searching by keyword is the way that I highly recommend you search for curriculum resources.

4. Once you see a list of resources, you can click on any of the titles of the resource to view it.  Keep in mind that each resource will open in a new tab or window in your Internet browser.  This keeps a tab of your initial search always available, which is very helpful!

These resources are all from third party websites, many of which you will recognize: LearnZillion, BrainPop, SMART Exchange, PBS Kids, etc.

5. I highly recommend you click "Interactive Media" and then click the blue button "Narrow Results".  This will recommend resources that are more visually appealing to your students and often includes SMARTBoard activities, games, and videos.

6. Once you find a resource you like, you can click the orange "Save" button to keep it handy in your icurio content folders (then accessible from the "My Content" tab on the icurio home page) OR you can click the "Copy URL" or "Copy URL for Citation" button and paste the hyperlink into your lesson plans.

Rather than searching by keyword, you can also search by standard.

7. On the icurio home page, you can click on the orange "Search Standards" button and then narrow down your search to a specific standard.  For example, I might have the following bread crumb trail of clicks in my search: Search Standards > Essential Standards > Science > 2nd Grade > Strand Forces and Motion > 2.P.1.1 

8. Once you get to a page like the one pictured below, you can click on any of the bulleted items to find resources related to that concept within the standard.  In this example, I can click on Alexander Graham Bell, Sound, Sound Waves, and/or Vibration.  Once I select one, such as "Sound Waves", I will find resources aligned to this specific concept aligned to this specific 2nd grade Essential Standard.

Happy aligned-resource hunting.  Contact me with any further questions or if you would like additional training on icurio as this is just the tip of the iceberg!