NETA Conference

NETA Conference 04/24/15

I attended the NETA Conference last Friday with Keke and Ashley. Lots of great information was shared with us. A few apps that were introduced to us that I want to learn more about are:
Book Creator
Wifi Photo
Adobe Voice
Scribble My Story
The Foos

Tech Project #2

Tech Project #2

I used Story Creator with a Kindergarten student who is participating in functional curriculum. He is nonverbal, but still loves to share projects with his peers. The classrooms were working on paper/pencil animal research projects, but we decided that he would not get much out of it if we did it hand over hand using paper/pencil. As a team, we decided to do it digitally which would allow him to make some binary choices (selecting pictures) and it gives him the opportunity to very easily share his finished product with his classmates. Since this particular student is nonverbal, I had another male Kindergarten student record himself reading the book so when he shares it with the class it will be a young voice. This app allows you to incorporate pictures, videos, text and audio. I wanted the project to be meaningful to him so I had him research cats, knowing he had his very own cat named Richard. We were able to incorporate a picture of them into the book and he loved that! I have used other similar apps like Shadow Puppet and Educreations, but I liked this for the younger students. It is as easy and simple as they come.

Check out the story / photo album I created called:

Cats

To view the story just do the following:

1. Download the Story Creator app from the App Store from the link below
http://itunes.apple.com/app/story-creator-pro/

2. Click on the link below to view my story
Cats

Let me know what you think! :-)

PS: If you already have the Story Creator app installed, skip step 1
and just click on the second link to view my story

Tech Project - Symbaloo (Jumpcode PFRX)

Symbaloo - (Jumpcode PFRX)

I chose to make a Symbaloo for my 2nd graders. I decided to do this for two reasons. First of all, every Friday the students take their weekly reading tests and when they get done I usually let them have free time on the computer. The problem has been that many of them have difficulty finding appropriate sites and they require a lot of assistance. Now all they have to do is go to the LPS Homepage and enter the jumpcode. In a matter of a couple clicks they have access to a number of reading and math sites that are at their level. The students love it and they are more independent allowing me to assist other students who are still testing. It's a win-win for everyone!
Secondly, I have one 2nd grade student who qualifies for Extended School Year Services. In addition to meeting with her throughout the summer, I will also have her use this Symbaloo for additional practice at home this summer. 
Symbaloo is very easy to make and is a great way to organize sites for targeted students. I plan on creating one for my 3rd grade students and also one that is specific to NeSA practice. 

Collaboration Project

Collaborative Project between 2^nd grade general ed., ELL and Special Education teachers – 2^nd grade Animal Research

Together the adults met to discuss how we were going to teach it and the process involved. We started by using keynote presentation to introduce the project to the students. Carlie and Nan (from class) came in to help us with the special education students. The students were paired with an adult to help them search for pictures and record their report into Shadow Puppet.

We learned that you need to play around with the app until you are comfortable with it. You also need a quiet place to record their voice, because it picks up a lot background noises. It is so sensitive that it even picked up the noise of turning the paper. Students were very excited about it and enjoyed presenting it to their peers. Paula and I also had to problem solve how to set up email on the iPads we were using and how to share it via email. We found it frustrating that if a mistake was made while recording you had to redo the entire recording again.

As we regrouped and talked about the final project we discussed how next time we would like the students to reflect on one another’s work and give them feedback.  We decided that we would have the students practice reading it over and over again before recording it. This would save time in the end in the event that we had to redo the recording piece over and over again. This was a great way for students to share their presentation without having to speak in front of a large group of students.

http://sharedpuppetfiles.shadowpuppet.co/424702E6-37E1-46B5-B587-92407E5B08B9.puppet

Thinking Skills and Creativity; ISTE Standards

Thinking Skills and Creativity; ISTE Standards

The article stresses the importance of schools educating for creativity. I believe this is where we are headed and I can see the impact it could have on higher levels of learning. This will include some hurdles and will be a big learning curve for some. Students will need to work together on tasks and the information will be more student led than teacher led. The areas of study will have to be areas of high interest for students so they are motivated and put forth their best effort. The  roles of student and teacher may look different, but with appropriate scaffolding the students should be able to problem solve through it.

I am going to compare the standards to the animal research project my students did 3^rd quarter. The 2^nd grade students searched the internet using educational sites such as Pebble Go to find facts about their animal. Next, the students used a graphic organizer for their rough draft and then did their final draft using paper pencil. Once that was done the students were paired up with an adult and they used Shadow Puppet to download pictures to add to their reports, then they read their research into the app and used the final digital copy to present to their peers.

1. Creativity and Innovation: Students were researching animals so no new ideas or trends were created. They did use a couple of different graphic organizers as models to follow throughout the writing process. 

2. Communication and Collaboration: Students collaborated with adults to publish their final product and used Shadow Puppet to digitally present their final research product to their peers.

3. Research and Information Fluency: Students researched and organized facts on their animal from a variety of sources. From there they had to organize their information and write their report.

4. Critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making: Students had to make a plan of what information was important to gather and how to manage it.

5. Digital Citizenship: Students practiced safe and legal use of technology when searching the internet for information on their animals, as well as, when they downloaded pictures to add to their report.

6. Technology Operations and Concepts: Together students and adults experienced this as they learned how to use Shadow Puppet and navigated the various sites to gather information and pictures. There was a lot of troubleshooting before it was all said and done, but a learning experience for everyone included. 

Graphic Organizer

I used Inspiration to create my graphic organizer. This app also takes a little time to figure out and not very user friendly. I think older students could be successful with it, but I am not sure about my 3^rd graders.

We are starting on personal narratives in 3^rd grade so I made a graphic organizer to show students how to brainstorm ideas. I will let the students make a graphic organizer to help represent topics they would like to write on. I like how you can insert pictures or text, but it was more limited than other apps I have seen.  

I think there are great benefits to having students produce digital stories. I work with students with learning/language needs and due to the number of steps involved in the writing process it can be a daunting task. The level of frustration rises and the amount of work that is produced is often minimal. Allowing them to develop stories digitally would lessen the amount of stress involved in traditional writing and would allow them to produce more written work in the end.

Screencast

I used Educreations to create my screencast. I created a lesson on compound words for my 2^nd grade students. I have to admit that I had to spend quite a bit of time playing around with it before I felt confident in creating a lesson. I still can’t figure out how to completely delete a page from it. I figured out how to clear or erase the page, but then that blank page still exists in the presentation. It all worked out as I just turned it into a title page.  I like the options it has for inputting information (audio recording option, you can draw, use text box, download pictures from camera or web).

I will use this with my students during small group as a warm up.  I could also email this link out to parents to let them know what we are working on and how we are teaching compound words. Due to limited resources for some families, I don’t think I would assign it as homework. It is a little time consuming, but once you have the lesson saved you will always have it to use.

 I am curious to know if you can edit a lesson once it has been saved??

 https://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/compound-words/30196510/?s=CkfH39&ref=appemail 

Digital Citizenship

After reading the article on "Digital Citizenship" it really makes you stop and realize that the world is quickly changing and there are many challenges facing those using the internet. It is very important that our students enjoy using the internet, but know how to do it safely.

We just finished with our animal research projects and the students used the internet to collect information and pictures to use in their reports. The video "Copyright and Fair Use Animation" would be a helpful tool explaining to students what copyright means and how you can legally take information. It also teaches them to give credit where credit is due. 

I could see myself using the video "My Online Neighborhood" with a social skills group. It's a short video on how to use the internet to explore new things and emphasizes how to stay safe when discovery new things on the internet. 

One last video "Solomon's Story - Online Searching" could be used to teach kids how to find the most reliable information. It teaches kids that there is a lot of information on the internet, but you can't trust all of it. It also teaches them how to search for information using key words/phrases. 

#Spedmath Twitter Chat - 2/26/15

Thursday evening I joined #sped math twitter chat. It was a little confusing at the beginning trying to figure out why my posts would not show up on the newsfeed. I did figure it out and kept up the best I could. 

I was surprised by how quickly it all happened. It's pretty neat to know that you are having conversations with people all over the country that are teaching the same things and dealing with many of the same concerns. 

There was a lot of discussion on whether or not students with IEPs should be exposed to general curriculum standards or functional curriculum standards. Most agreed that it is dependent on the skills of each individual student. It was good to hear from others and confirm my feelings on the issue. I also appreciated hearing about specific resources some are using to help support their struggling math students. Some of the resources were ones that I have used and others were new. I look forward to looking into a couple of the new ones that were mentioned in the chat. 

Feb 14 - Preparing Students for the 21st Century

Feb 14 - Preparing Students for the 21^st Century

There are many new skills involved in integrating technology into student learning. I work with a group of 2^nd graders who all struggle in reading and writing. This quarter in writing we have been working on Animal Research. We are finishing up the rough draft and some will start their final copy next week. Each student has researched their animal using textbooks and Pebble Go. Pebble Go was a learning experience for them as they had to learn how to navigate the web site, locate appropriate information that was based on the essential questions (what they look like, what they eat, where they live and interesting facts) and then gather the appropriate notes. Once the final copy is finished, I would like to take this project one step further. I plan to introduce the students to Shadow Puppet. The students will download or illustrate a picture to represent the four essential questions for their animal. These will be downloaded onto Shadow Puppet and then the student will read each section of their report and record it under the appropriate picture. Once they are finished they will have the opportunity to share it with their classmates. In addition, they will have the opportunity to learn how to attach the document to an email and share it with their family and/or friends. I look forward to seeing their final products!

Tech Goals

TEAC 880 J
1/27/15

My goal for this class is to learn how to integrate technology into my lessons. I look forward to collaborating with other educators about technology and how it can be used in the classroom.