Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Prezi

For those of you who have been affected by Hurricane Sandy, please know you are in my thoughts! While northern Virginia appeared to be right in the path of the storm my area did not get hit nearly as hard as meteorologists were anticipating although we were beyond prepared. School was closed Monday and Tuesday and we resume as usual tomorrow morning.

Are you ever amazed at what even the tiniest kids can do? I never underestimate the little ones as I've worked with first graders for years but it still blows me away when they are able to produce awesome products while using technology. I think sometimes people think that they are just too little to handle technology but that is NOT true at all!

I have been working with third graders on their animal research. They created QR Codes linked to a cool fact and a picture during our last two lessons. This past week I introduced them to Prezi and the app Scribble Press which I blogged about over here. The third grade teachers were not familiar with either so I had to come up with a way to make this lesson work while being in two places at once. I have been reading a lot on the flipped classroom and I decided to create a video tutorial for the students doing Prezi. This couldn't have worked more P E R F E C T L Y! I was able to get both groups started and then circulate and help everyone. This is three tech tips in one.

1. I used SMART Recorded which is a SMART Technology resource that I adore but didn't even know about until I found it on accident. If you have SMART Notebook you likely have it! It is a great screen recorder.
2. YouTube can be such a powerful "tool." Don't discount it :)!
3. "How to" videos can be extremely beneficial for students! Everyone was able to watch at their own pace. I gave little instruction on the "how" part of video watching. Some students watched the whole thing through and got right to work, others watched a part, paused and completed the step then went back to the video watched a part, paused and completed the step, so on and so forth and some watched in entirety and then used the video to troubleshoot when they couldn't remember what to do or if something went wrong.

I was so impressed with how well that this lesson went and the amount of work that was completed during a short time period! I am VERY interested in learning more about "The Flipped Classroom."


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