"Mobile Is The New Face Of Engagement"

Our job as educators is to prepare our students to be successful in their world.  

This fantastic article I received from Ted Krehbiel discusses the impact of mobile on businesses.

Businesses are mobile, customers are mobile, their world is mobile.

Click here to read full article

Teaching the New Generation

Those of you that have small children/grandchildren know that the kids we are about to see step foot through our classrooms are living in a different world.  Although we are seeing the positive effects technology is having on our current students, the students we will have coming up in a few short years are expecting a different school experience.  Last night I recorded my cousin, Chase, who will be TWO in December.  TWO Years Old...keep that in mind while watching this.  He LOVES the iPad and has already learned his shapes, colors, counting to 10, and ABC's because of it.  He is using an App called "Learning Shapes" with Lucky the Leprechaun.  He is so proud of himself and continually says "I did it", and "That's right!".  He can totally run and manage the iPad on his own (and he will let you know it!)  Remember, these are the kids we will have in a few short years, so start preparing now :)

http://youtu.be/_5_8-4WEuQc

http://youtu.be/IPdItxgSN8Q

Study Stack

Mr. Martin is using StudyStack for students to review math concepts in a fun way!  Flash cards for many subjects are used, giving the student immediate feedback of a correct/incorrect answer.  Mr. Martin has placed this site on his teacher school webpage for easy access for his students!

Flash Cards CLICK HERE

Vokis and Avatars

"Teaching should not be about the technology.  It should be about the synthesis of information and reporting those conclusions via a 21st Century tool.    Technology will also help you engage the learner to "hear" a message that would be tuned-out via verbiage, text or talk."

Read this in an article shared with me from my good friend Rachel this week.  To me it says it all.  Technology =engagement.  To read the whole article, click here.

Vokis and Avatars are a fun way to have students explain a concept, create, or draw a conclusion.  Voki.com allows your students to create these avatars.  4th grade has used them for their Famous Kansans unit.  The characters come to life as they represent the famous Kansan they are studying.  

OR

Use them to represent a character in a book.  

Give each student in a team a different character and have them tell the story from that character's perspective!

Students will be totally engaged getting to create their avatar while still producing the content you need them to.  

Click here to check out the app "Tellagami" for another avatar creator.  

Other classroom ideas:

neoK12 education videos/games/lessons

NeoK12 is a website full of educational videos, lessons, and games for K-12 School Kids.  I like it because it is organized by subject and then broken down into grade levels.  The videos/games are all kid/school friendly and very educational, yet fun!  Click HERE to visit neoK12.

QR Codes

Kids love QR Codes!  You can find them everywhere now.  Did you know it is really simple to create your own?  Use them with SmartPhones, iPods, iPads and even your MacBook, just click here to download: QR Code Reader for MacBooks or use the Scan app on the other devices.

Miss Reed used them for a scavenger hunt to review and practice parts of speech. The kids were excited to get to the next clue and figure out what part of speech it was as well as making an example sentence using that part of speech.  The clues were all over the building and the kids did great at being respectful and doing what they were supposed to be doing, practicing speech because it was fun!

Miss Wiebe has QR codes for current events in her room, students can easily scan them with their iPads to get to the site they need. Saves a lot of time not having to type in web addresses!

Print them out on business cards to give to your parents with the link to your school webpage or blog.

Kids love to create them too!  Let them create them using a QR code creator such as qrstuff.com  or make them extra pretty at unitaglive.com/qrcode, following the directions to the left.

StoryJumper-5th Grade Creates Books!

 A student in Miss Wiebe's 5th grade class authors a book, including adding her own pictures using StoryJumper!  

They create the story, add pictures they have created 

and the book is available to purchase in hardback.  

I know some of our parents would love to order a book completely authored by their child!    

Get on and check it out, the pages interactively turn, so fun to ready!

http://www.storyjumper.com/book/index/11575012/misswiebe

Richardson's Maps on iPad

Student's use iPads to compare different types of maps using

Google Maps, flat maps and globes!

Capzle-Miss Reed

Last week Miss Reed's Language Art's class built an interactive timeline using the website Capzle for the book they read as a class, "Where the Red Fern Grows".  Miss Reed created a screencast (using Quicktime) to introduce using Capzle.  The students had to choose appropriate music for the book (Miss Reed gave them a link in their Google Doc to the top 100 songs of the 30's), add pictures to represent the story of the book and captions detailing scenes.  At the end they included a short summary of the book.  Super engaging and interactive for the kids.  You can check out one of the student's projects here:

http://www.capzles.com/41e89da7-863f-48d0-8cc2-24a632d0ebb3

3rd Grade on Google Drive!

3rd graders are now on Google Drive!  

They learned how to login to their accounts, create a document and share it with their teacher for editing.  They really got a kick out of seeing their teacher "jump on" their paper to edit simultaneously as they were working on it!  

This is a great way for kids to collaborate with one another too!  

They used the website below to create their character and then make up a story to go with it.

I was pretty impressed with how much they were able to type, since only starting keyboarding in August!  Way to go 3rd Grade!

Buildyourwildself.com, 

created by the New York Zoos and Aquarium, lets students create a character called their “Wild Self”.  Students can choose a character and then add crazy hair, arms, legs, etc. to make them wild. There are even fun sound effects for the different backgrounds they add.  This tool can be used for a descriptive or creative writing lesson plan.  Students can create their "Wild Self" and describe their character in an adventure story.

Uploading Videos to your YouTube Channel and adding them to your Teacher Page

Disclaimer:  

When you see this full page of text it appears to be scary.  

Don’t be scared!

It is really simple once you get the initial setup done

and parents will LOVE you for sharing their child’s work!

Just call on your trusty Tech Facilitator if you need help!

Video:

1. Get the video off of your phone/iPod/iPad by plugging the device into your computer.
2. Import the video(s) you want by clicking the import button.  You can select more than one at a time by holding down the command button.  It will import to your iPhoto, to make it easier to find you can drag it to your desktop.
3. If the movie is in iMovie: On top menu bar share, export, change to Mobile and choose desktop.
4. Now the movie is a file on your desktop.

YouTube:

1. Log in to your Gmail.  Works best in Chrome, doesn’t always work in Safari.
2. On the menu bar above click on More, Youtube.
3. Your own YouTube account will open up.  The first time it will ask you to create a username and password.  Mine is “TechHansen”, other teachers have used: “MrsRhodesArt” or “MrMartinMarth”.  You can create it how you would like, you can’t use periods, OR spaces.  You can see your account name in the upper right hand corner.
4. You are now ready to Upload:  Use the Upload button next to the search bar at the top of your YouTube screen.
5. Change the arrow next to private to public.
6. Click on the big upload arrow (it turns red when you hover over it) and find your file OR drag your file onto that arrow.  
7. Add a title and description.  The video sometimes uploads quickly, other times takes a little bit.  When it is done it will give you a link.  This is the link you will need to copy and paste to your blog.

Your Teacher Page on the School Website:

1. www.es.hesstonschools.org (works best in Chrome, doesn’t always work in Safari)
2. Staff, Teacher Pages, Your Name
3. Login at the top of the screen…Login with Google (only works in Chrome)
4. It might tell you that it wants to use your contacts, etc. Just say Accept.
5. While on YOUR home screen of your teacher login page (this is important or it will add the page somewhere else)...Click on Page Properties on the left-hand side of your screen at the top and choose “Add new page”, and choose “Document container”.  YOU WILL ONLY DO THIS ONCE, you do NOT need to add a new page every time.  Once the page is set up, you can just keep adding your YouTube links to the same page.
6. Title the page as you would like, just remember you can add other files to this section such as word documents, spreadsheets, pdf’s, etc.
7. Add New Item, Link and copy and paste that YouTube link for the video it gave you when you uploaded.

Congratulations,

You have just added a YouTube video your class created to your school webpage!

10 Alternatives to Book Reports

Give life to old book reports...Use these strategies to increase engagement from students!  

Found this article this week and love it!  Has many several great ideas, Miss Reed has used Smore.com to have the students create an informational poster as a precursor to their reading of "Where the Red Fern Grows" (#3), Mrs. Ortman and Miss Wiebe have used iMovie to create book trailers (#2), we have done #6 bookcasting and we are going to try #7, using an online timeline called Capzules.  

Miss Reed's Student Smores:

https://www.smore.com/fe0n-the-ozark-mountains

https://www.smore.com/x35y-events-in-the-year-1913

https://www.smore.com/7u8t-redbone-coonhounds-for-sale

https://www.smore.com/6yxn-events-in-1913

Blogs by Grade Level

http://caffeineandlessonplans.blogspot.com/p/blogs-by-grade.html

Link up with other teachers in your subject/grade level and collaborate! Share ideas, get new ideas, use stuff others have created and save yourself some time!  This is a FANTASTIC list of blogs organized by grade level K-5 and Middle School, and Special Ed!

WatchKnowLearn Education Videos

http://www.watchknowlearn.org/

Free educational videos organized by subject as well as age.

 Use them to introduce a unit or explain a concept!  

They are all kid-friendly!  

StoryJumper: Create online books

http://www.storyjumper.com/

Create FREE books online.  Students would LOVE to do this as a book review, or their own story creation!  Use it to have them teach a concept, explain a process, or just be creative!  
Available to purchase for print...parents would LOVE this too!

YouTube Free Audio Library

http://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary

YouTube now has an audio library of free music available to use for "any creative uses".  Audio is of good quality and is FREE!  See video: http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/25/youtube-launches-free-audio-library-with-150-royalty-free-tracks/