thing 16: Mapping & Geolocation Tools

Just spent some time playing GeoGuessr. It is very addictive.  I could use this to help teach strategy with my scholars class at the end of the year.  What do you need to look at to try and guess where in the world you are?  How should you go about determining where you have landed?  The kids will really enjoy trying to discover when they have landed.

I have used Google Maps with my second grade classes when they studied communities. We read about how communities work and then use the map to find our school and see the different views.  This might be interesting for students to use when we study different countries as well.  Or when they work on different states.  A street view would be interesting and fun for them to try. 

I took a look at SepiaTown.   There is nothing on the map for Saratoga.  It might be an interesting project for the fourth grade when studying local history to take pictures of their trip and vote on a few to add to the map that enhance the history of our town.  We could also to a little research and see if there are pictures of long ago that would work as well.

When looking at HistoryPin, there are two pictures for Saratoga.  One has a current street view.  Amazing how much it has changed in the small little piece of our town/city.  The students would enjoy seeing these little gems when they look at local history.  They can also pick another place to look at to get familiar with the website.  Might be interesting to see past and present of places they study in class. There are several paintings that are loaded in and would be good discussion starters for the kids.

thing 15: digital tatoo & digital citizenship

Love the term given to this topic!  As with most I didn't think about it this way. 

Would love to add in this unit on digital citizenship and cyberbullying with my fourth and fifth graders.  I don't think they realize what they are doing online and these few lessons are real eye openers!  We talk a little about it, but more on how to use resources.  This would really open their eyes to what they are doing, saying and writing when online.

I liked the scope and sequence on this site.  Commonsense Media has a nice array of technology skills as well and ones dedicated to our topic.  There is also a neat online passport which is free which might be a fun way to teach the kids.  A fun thing to use as the school year closes when we aren't doing a lot of book check out and there is more time to discuss.

Loved this activity about blogging with pen and paper before going online!  Very cool what for the kids to see and physically understand how it all works!  This would be a great opener when introducing blogs and blogging.

Just sat in on a meeting where one of the topics was cyberbullying and digital citizenship.  I am really going to try to squeeze in a few lessons with the first curriculum mentioned in June before they go home for the summer and spend endless time online.  I hope it will be an eye-opener and they will think twice before posting anything.

thing 14: app-apalooza

I have know about Smart Apps for Kids for a while. Over the last year or so have obtained many free apps to try out and learned about many others.  we have a limited number of iPad at schools and I have used them for one project.  I would like to integrate them into my school day more.  I have big dreams of trying library centers and having learning apps for one center.  I think the kid would be engaged and want to use that center, but finding time in an already packed fixed schedule has proved to be more than challenging.  looking for apps to use with materials I already teach might prove to be most useful.

I loved the poetry suggestions here... including Poetry Creater app and Word Mover app both of which are free and a student could use like magnetic poetry.  Could be used in a center or if students finish a project.  With more iPads these would be great for the kids to try out and share.

A few examples I was able to try... Here is Word Creator and Word Salad...



I liked how easy the apps were to move and create.  Because they were free, there isn't a huge level of choices, but enough.  Word Salad lets you type in a list and create more of the word cloud images and I was able to quickly go from one to a new version by changing amount of words, colors and layout fairly quickly.  Example is a list of my son's favorite things.  Poetry Creator let me add more words to my word draw and adjust the amount of the word "the", plus still add in 10 words of my own choice for free.  More words and options were available for a small fee, but for now, this would work.  Would be fun to attach the Ipad to the smartboard to demonstrate and have the kids show their work to all.  I also downloaded a "refrigerator magnet" app, but the words kept getting stuck which was frustrating. 

And then I stumbled across a site that had citation apps!  Oh my how cool and a great thing for the Library in your pocket folder you could create on you Ipads or Ipods!  This one is totally free!  EasyBib has you scan the barcode and it creates the entry for you!  Amazing!

A great Site I hadn't really spent time on before is.. http://www.educatorstechnology.com.  There I found a wealth of resources including a current post on Using Ipads and apps in the classroom.  Lots of tutorials and more!  When I have a few free baby minutes I will have to go back and explore more!

Wish there was more time to devote to Ipads in the library.  I was able to do a project last Sept with having the fifth graders reread a favorite picture book, write a few lines about it, record with an app, then I made a QR code to link them and posted them on the books.  Then anyone could scan the code and hear the review.  Would love to hear or learn of some quick projects and applications for Ipads in the library.  or I could brainstorm and create all summer I guess...

updated: 3/22/15 -- just saw a neat website (or really a search engine) to look for apps called app crawler.  Lets you search by device, topic, age level, free or paid and more.

thing 13: school web presence

Well, I am more of a email kind of girl when I want to get resources in people's hands, so I thought I would try out smore.com.  And create a quick spring resource fun sheet to highlight what our library has.

https://www.smore.com/app/pages/preview/9svg2

Super easy to use.  If you had all your resources gathered at your finger tips, this is super quick.  I can see how it can be addicting to make new ones and keep great resources.  Good to Pin to the schools Pinterest board (which I have created, but haven't had a chance to use at school yet.)  Plus I like to idea that it is free and printable.  I can see kids having fun creating some great posters as final projects to go along with their learning.  I would even have them use the links as their bibliography which might be challenging, but fun.  Last year I had my fifth graders working with magazines and creating a newspaper -- one sheet print off-- of a topic from their magazine.  This tool might be a step up and make it super fancy.

I have to work a little harder getting my presence heard and in the for front... I am looking forward to the infographics thing to do this as well.

thing 12: media skills

Trying out the quote maker www.quozio.com... so fun and there are endless possibilities here...

Kids could choose there favorite quote from a book they read as a small child and create a printed display for back to school night or a board meeting, gather an important quote from a current book they are reading or even write a small poem and have it displayed in this new meaningful way.  Could even have them pin it to the library's Pinterest board as an extra fun display so all my classes could see everyone's work.

Also went and played with the free photo editor on http://www.photoshop.com/.  not a hug amount of bells and whistles, but for a quick tune on a photo or turning it black and white, it would due in a pinch.  Simple enough for students to use to tweak a photo for a project.  Could see them creating a slide show of photos on a theme or for a school tour.. a day in the life of a fourth grader, etc.

Here are two that I tweaked with colors, rotating, cropping and highlighting.
Enzo at 3 months:

and Brothers:

Pushing on to graphics and word clouds as I have used wordle and tagxedo but I want to try a simpler version for my younger students to create a list of words and use the cloud on http://www.abcya.com/word_clouds.htm.  here the students can change a few things like colors, fonts, layouts etc. 

I had my five year old son give me words for the theme he is learning about at preschool which happens to be Arctic!

here is one example from abcya:

here is the same list from tagxedo:

 

First one is super manageable for younger students, but I do like that the other can be shaped.

Thing 11: hour of code

I write this with a sleeping baby on my shoulder... some how the last few months have gotten away from me and I am heading back to work in another week.  Yikes where did the time go.  With any luck at all I can get several posts and topics done and be "somewhat" caught up as I so have enjoyed the previous cool tools workshops.

I have spent the last two days delving into "The hour of code".  I know I missed the big kick off back in December, but wanted to look into this topic with new eyes... albeit sleepy eyes.  I was interested in the "My Robot Friend".  How fantastic is this!  No computers needed and it is a great thing to have kids working in groups and talking strategy.  I can see doing this with younger kids grades 2-3 as a whole group then breaking them down into smaller groups to write the "code" and switching directions with another group to see if they figured things out.  Could have them try it in front of the room so that everyone was focused on each one.  I could also see this as an intro class for my scholars and using it as a stepping stone into other forms of coding.

From there I did the hour of code at the Khan academy.  it is set up with a short video as explanation to writing java script.  Then you as the participant get to try what you learned.  I really liked how this was set up and could see my fifth graders really having fun with it as the product is instantaneous on the screen.  a little frustrating as hey don't show everything, but I am sure they have a video to explain more of the functions on the site.  Ending the hour with a create a creature from the functions learned...

Spin-off of "Project: Wild Animal"

Made using: Khan Academy Computer Science.

Not my finest project, but I will need some more practice if I teach this to my students. 
I was also remembering teaching my 5th graders about fifteen years ago how to write HTML code to create websites and how they loved it!  Very interesting how it all comes around again.  But my knowledge of HTML has helped me many times over the years including posting code in the blog!