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.