Today I am looking for some feedback. I am transitioning in my school to a digital leadership role and am trying to create resources that teachers can recreate in their classroom. Instead of showing you what a student might create for a digital story telling assignment, I made a teacher model. I think Nearpod still demonstrates a lot of the story telling elements (and I even added in some audio)! I am looking for how I could improve this teacher model to help teachers see the capabilities in Nearpod and ultimately show them what a great Nearpod presentation looks like. Thanks for the help fellow bloggers!
Friday, November 7, 2014
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Curriculum Page
Check out my new curriculum page giving information, links, and even some video guides to some amazing technology!
Sunday, October 19, 2014
What's Your Story?
When I tell people I teach middle school, I get one of a few stock responses. Sometimes people simply ask, "Why?" Or they tell me, "I could never do that." Sometimes they simply wish me well on this impossible journey.
What they don't understand is I have a secret weapon. I don't just teach middle schoolers, I teach middle schoolers language arts. Some could call this a handicap but they don't understand the power of stories. When students sit in math or history or science they don't get a chance to share their stories. In my room, though, we are story tellers. We share and connect as a class, and that my friends, is what makes my job wonderful.
I recently came across a new way of telling stories and that is digital story telling. I've been thinking of ways to make this work in my classroom. I think it would be interesting to have students use Prezi as a story telling tool, or voice threads, or even just using narrated slides on PowerPoint or SlideShare. What I'm struggling with now, is what type of assignment I could use this for. Right now our standards have become very cumbersome and not oriented towards narrative writing. I, like every other 8th grade language arts teacher, am drowning in FSA (text based essay writing). Every spare moment I get, I spend on poetry and book clubs.
My students are just wrapping up their first book club in class, and one pretty easy way to use digital story telling would be for my student stop make digital book reviews. I think I might offer this as a culminating activity opportunity. Check out the amazing book review one student did on Insurgent by Veronica Roth (do not watch if you have seen Divergent!)
We are also beginning to work on spoken word poetry. This type of poetry has a performance element and it might be interesting to have students work on reading their poems via voice thread. Using pictures paired with audio to create their poetry story.
All of these are still in development stage and I would love to hear how YOU use digital story telling in your classroom or even personal life!
What they don't understand is I have a secret weapon. I don't just teach middle schoolers, I teach middle schoolers language arts. Some could call this a handicap but they don't understand the power of stories. When students sit in math or history or science they don't get a chance to share their stories. In my room, though, we are story tellers. We share and connect as a class, and that my friends, is what makes my job wonderful.
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| Writing by jeffry james acres on Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 https://www.flickr.com/photos/jjpacres/3293117576/ |
I recently came across a new way of telling stories and that is digital story telling. I've been thinking of ways to make this work in my classroom. I think it would be interesting to have students use Prezi as a story telling tool, or voice threads, or even just using narrated slides on PowerPoint or SlideShare. What I'm struggling with now, is what type of assignment I could use this for. Right now our standards have become very cumbersome and not oriented towards narrative writing. I, like every other 8th grade language arts teacher, am drowning in FSA (text based essay writing). Every spare moment I get, I spend on poetry and book clubs.
My students are just wrapping up their first book club in class, and one pretty easy way to use digital story telling would be for my student stop make digital book reviews. I think I might offer this as a culminating activity opportunity. Check out the amazing book review one student did on Insurgent by Veronica Roth (do not watch if you have seen Divergent!)
We are also beginning to work on spoken word poetry. This type of poetry has a performance element and it might be interesting to have students work on reading their poems via voice thread. Using pictures paired with audio to create their poetry story.
All of these are still in development stage and I would love to hear how YOU use digital story telling in your classroom or even personal life!
Saturday, October 18, 2014
Nearpod and Kahoot: Interactive Tools for ALL Classrooms
Check out my Nearpod presentation below. See how Nearpod can work as homework (by going through the Nearpod presentation yourself) and check out my video walk throughs for both Nearpod and Kahoot!
Trust me... you want to use these in your classroom!
Trust me... you want to use these in your classroom!
Saturday, October 4, 2014
Looking Back to Look Forward
I was inspired this week to take a look back at the history of computers. If you've read my previous post about my technology autobiography, then you know technology has been a part of my world for as long as I can remember. I thought I'd take this week to look back at some of this technology.
Yes, that's me. Not many adults my age have pictures of them on computers at such a young age. I was talking to my husband whose parents had a computer in the house but it was for "taxes" and he wasn't allowed to use it. My parents had us using every computer in the house and I know this contributed to my tech savvy nature as an adult.
I talked with my dad a lot this week about the computers we had. The one in the pictures could have been our old Leading Edge PC, which came out the year I was born and we purchased in 1987. It could have had at most 512kb of memory. To put this in perspective, that is about the size of FIVE small pictures. It may have been our Mac IIcx which had our first color screen. When my father bought this computer which has a shocking 20mb hard drive, my grandfather exclaimed, how are you ever going to fill up all that space! It is more likely that it is one of the later computers we had, maybe our PC 80386 or our Mac IIsi. This cutting edge computer had 40mb on it's hard disc. I have 200 times that space in my relatively out of date iPhone.
My favorite computer we had was by far our Macintosh Portable.
It was the precursor to today's laptops. Weighing only 16 pounds, my dad described how excited he was to actually take this computer with him.
Now a days, I am constantly lamenting how out of date my resources are at school. How slow the bandwidth is and the lack of technology in general. It was refreshing to look back and see how far I have come and we have come with technology. It has certainly been exciting literally growing up with computers and I cannot wait to see where technology takes us and education in the future.
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Changes in Classroom Technology #BYOD
This week I encountered, in a couple different ways, new initiatives in BYOD. If you aren't in education you probably got almost through that acronym: Bring Your Own ... D? The D stands for Devices and in the classroom it is the new technology movement. What school districts are encouraging is students to bring their own devices (lap tops, tablets, phones, etc) to school to use in classrooms.
This is a smart way of addressing a serious problems. You see, it isn't that schools don't realize that we need technology in classrooms. Everyone from teachers to students to principals to school board members know that we need technology. I mean I follow my school and my district on Facebook! The problem isn't convincing the higher ups, the problem is getting the hardware into classrooms. It is expensive. Not only would you have to buy hundreds of thousands of computers but you'd have to reconfigure schools that were built before teachers had computers. BYOD is an elegant solution to this problem. If you can't put the computers in the classrooms, have students bring the computers (or devices) with them!
Most teachers have an instant gut reaction to this idea. We have spent the past few years fighting against cell phones. Trying to get students to stop texting and start listening. Watch how this teacher deals with this age old problem:
But take a closer look at this classroom. Why is the student texting? The teacher is standing in front of the room lecturing to a group of pretty uninterested students. He is fighting the technology. Check out this engaging video about how Mabry Middle school is Flying forwards with technology instead of fighting against it:
My personal experience with BYOD is limited. I am one of the blessed few that teach from a computer lab, but I have recently come across a few amazing tools for teachers who are using BYOD. If you Google this subject, you'll come across millions of resources such as 40 Quick Ways to Use Mobile Phones in Classrooms. I tried a new BYOD resource, Kahoot this week. To be honest, it was almost TOO engaging. My students had a blast! Finally, if I wasn't in a lab, I'd be using Nearpod. It is an amazing tool for teachers to engage students on their own devices.
I know BYOD has its problems and I know it isn't the ideal solution but if you haven't tried to engage students with their devices, I recommend you try out one of the tools above and you will be amazed at what students can accomplish when they "plug into" your classroom.
This is a smart way of addressing a serious problems. You see, it isn't that schools don't realize that we need technology in classrooms. Everyone from teachers to students to principals to school board members know that we need technology. I mean I follow my school and my district on Facebook! The problem isn't convincing the higher ups, the problem is getting the hardware into classrooms. It is expensive. Not only would you have to buy hundreds of thousands of computers but you'd have to reconfigure schools that were built before teachers had computers. BYOD is an elegant solution to this problem. If you can't put the computers in the classrooms, have students bring the computers (or devices) with them!
Most teachers have an instant gut reaction to this idea. We have spent the past few years fighting against cell phones. Trying to get students to stop texting and start listening. Watch how this teacher deals with this age old problem:
But take a closer look at this classroom. Why is the student texting? The teacher is standing in front of the room lecturing to a group of pretty uninterested students. He is fighting the technology. Check out this engaging video about how Mabry Middle school is Flying forwards with technology instead of fighting against it:
My personal experience with BYOD is limited. I am one of the blessed few that teach from a computer lab, but I have recently come across a few amazing tools for teachers who are using BYOD. If you Google this subject, you'll come across millions of resources such as 40 Quick Ways to Use Mobile Phones in Classrooms. I tried a new BYOD resource, Kahoot this week. To be honest, it was almost TOO engaging. My students had a blast! Finally, if I wasn't in a lab, I'd be using Nearpod. It is an amazing tool for teachers to engage students on their own devices.
I know BYOD has its problems and I know it isn't the ideal solution but if you haven't tried to engage students with their devices, I recommend you try out one of the tools above and you will be amazed at what students can accomplish when they "plug into" your classroom.
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Constructing our Own Maps
This week, I was confronted with something I constantly circle back to as an educator and as a student. We encounter many ideologies, philosophies, strategies, and ultimately evaluations as teachers. But there has been one theory that the moment I heard it, it struck a chord with me. That theory was constructivism. I stumbled across a similar (related) theory connectivism through a video. This video really illustrates how constructivism plays out in our techy classrooms (or how it should).
Let me start with my real connection to constructivism which centers around my education as a kid. I grew up in a very structured elementary school with your typical teachers. We had the angry old man science teacher (who knew everything). We had the 3rd grade teacher who had her clear favorites (nice sweet quite little girls). We had the 5th grade English teacher who gave us A+++++++ (yes 7 plusses). And then I had my gifted classroom. One day a week, I was pulled out of class with 10 other gifted children and we were placed in Mrs. Rodriguez' classroom. She had a love of frogs and puzzles. In her classroom we played. We played at games and government and math and reading and geography. We played at learning. We chose what we wanted to study and then dove in with fervor. It was my first experience with constructivism, and I'll tell you at 7, I was hooked.
She introduced me to the program that has guided my life since the age of 7, Odyssey of the Mind. If you've never heard of it... check it out! It is a student-centered program that literally forbids parents/adults/teachers from helping. As a kid, this was the gift of freedom. I learned how to be funny, write scripts, build props (even cars)! I met my best friends in the world and even my husband. As an adult I am constructivist by nature. I figure out everything from technology in my classroom (Google Apps for Education) to how to install a toilet in my home. Mrs. Rodriguez and Odyssey of the Mind gave me the ability to learn and the love of learning.
I stumbled across a TED talk this week by one of my favorite authors, John Green. In his talk, "The Paper Town Academy," he speaks about creating our own maps and how he also learned to love learning in a constructivist environment.
If that talk isn't convincing enough, listen to Adora Svitak, talk about the power of kids. As she states, "in many ways, our audacity to imagine helps push the boundaries of possibility."
Both John Green and Adora Svitak talk about the power of letting kids guide their own education.
As a teacher, I know more than most how challenging this is. With my students, I am constantly encouraging them to "Google" things that interest them or that they don't understand. I let them form their own "book clubs" and have student-directed discussion. But as a class, we are stuck in a curriculum and unfortunately have limited constructivist opportunities. This is probably one of my main questions as an educator, how can I put the learning back in my student's hands?
Let me start with my real connection to constructivism which centers around my education as a kid. I grew up in a very structured elementary school with your typical teachers. We had the angry old man science teacher (who knew everything). We had the 3rd grade teacher who had her clear favorites (nice sweet quite little girls). We had the 5th grade English teacher who gave us A+++++++ (yes 7 plusses). And then I had my gifted classroom. One day a week, I was pulled out of class with 10 other gifted children and we were placed in Mrs. Rodriguez' classroom. She had a love of frogs and puzzles. In her classroom we played. We played at games and government and math and reading and geography. We played at learning. We chose what we wanted to study and then dove in with fervor. It was my first experience with constructivism, and I'll tell you at 7, I was hooked.
She introduced me to the program that has guided my life since the age of 7, Odyssey of the Mind. If you've never heard of it... check it out! It is a student-centered program that literally forbids parents/adults/teachers from helping. As a kid, this was the gift of freedom. I learned how to be funny, write scripts, build props (even cars)! I met my best friends in the world and even my husband. As an adult I am constructivist by nature. I figure out everything from technology in my classroom (Google Apps for Education) to how to install a toilet in my home. Mrs. Rodriguez and Odyssey of the Mind gave me the ability to learn and the love of learning.
I stumbled across a TED talk this week by one of my favorite authors, John Green. In his talk, "The Paper Town Academy," he speaks about creating our own maps and how he also learned to love learning in a constructivist environment.
If that talk isn't convincing enough, listen to Adora Svitak, talk about the power of kids. As she states, "in many ways, our audacity to imagine helps push the boundaries of possibility."
Both John Green and Adora Svitak talk about the power of letting kids guide their own education.
As a teacher, I know more than most how challenging this is. With my students, I am constantly encouraging them to "Google" things that interest them or that they don't understand. I let them form their own "book clubs" and have student-directed discussion. But as a class, we are stuck in a curriculum and unfortunately have limited constructivist opportunities. This is probably one of my main questions as an educator, how can I put the learning back in my student's hands?
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