Technology Centers

Technology centers seem to be one of the most brilliant ideas I've ever had although I'm sure I'm not the first person to have this ingenious idea! 2nd and 5th grade seem to be my rockstar grade levels with consistency and awesome collaboration taking place!

2nd graders worked on weather centers last week and teachers walked away with FOUR science grades which as a former classroom teacher is awesome!

Center #1- Students worked in pairs to scan QR Codes with new academic vocabulary words and seasonal pictures. For 3 questions had to determine the word, 3 questions what a plant or animal was doing in the picture (hibernation, migration, dormancy) and 3 questions were identifying the season based on a picture of a tree.

Center #2 - Students went to PebbleGo and researched Extreme Weather (Blizzard, Hurricanes, Drought, Thunder and Lightning, Tornados) and record 8-10 key words. Then they created word clouds using ABCYa. Here is one example!

Center #3- Students accessed 4 graphs on the iPad in Adobe Reader (created in Word and saved as PDF) and answered 10 questions on Google Forms! If you have not used Google Forms yet they are amazing and you don't have to grade a stack of papers which is a huge bonus! The ONLY complaint I have after using them with 2nd graders is that if they bump the back button or refresh the page they loose all of their answers and have to start over. This was our first time using Google Forms in 2nd grade and it worked so great besides that little glitch and a few friends had to redo their forms! Although this was a science grade center it could also be taken as a math grade getting us up to 5 grades!

Center #4- Students watched a Brainpop video about Climate and then completed this Clicker Quiz. They love watching Brainpop videos but most of the quiz was interpreting weather maps which also integrated social studies and math. Since this could be considered a social studies map interpretation this could get us up to 6 grades! WOW- two one hour sessions and six grades which students were highly engaged! Gotta love it!

Have you tried technology centers? Share your experience! New to technology centers? I suggest starting small at first just like you would when introducing literacy centers! Introduce one center and complete it as a whole class, move on to introduce a second the same way and then do two centers, etc. We have gotten up to four centers and it is really working perfectly!

Google Presentation ABC Book

I have raved and raved about Google Drive and here is just one more reason I love it, the collaboration and ability to work on the same project without much hassle. Another great feature is the Google search within Presentation which allows for you to easily insert images.

The ESOL teacher came to me and wanted to have a small group of students work on a collaborative ABC Book using technology. They had been researching different animals in the rainforest ecosystem with her and this was their culminating activity. The first thing I think of when it comes to book making is Scribble Press or Book Creator but those are more on an individual basis (each student would have to work on their pages at a different time using 1 ipad). Since we wanted to have all 5 students working at the same time I immediately thought of Google Drive and creating a Presentation which worked really well for a timeline project I did with 4th grade awhile back.

I created a template A is for, B is for, C is for, and the students did the rest. We weren't sure how long it would take and booked four twenty minute sessions together but we only ended up needing two since they are familiar with Google Drive. They typed and inserted pictures like little pros. I was so impressed with how far they've come from the beginning of the year when logging into the drive took 10 minutes alone haha! Check out their ABC book below which was easily inserted using the embed code right from the Drive (another thing I love, sharing and showing off becomes so easy)!