Technology Showcase

Tomorrow is our first annual Technology Showcase at school! The purpose of the event is to allow parents and other community members to see all of the amazing technology created projects as well as how technology is being used in the classroom. We (the librarian and myself have planned the event together) sent out a mass evite to the entire school community which was our first try at an evite school wide and we got quite a few responses!

Teachers nominated students in grade first through eighth by using a Google Form. Then formal invitations were sent to 30 presenters! Once we had all of the presenters selected we created a map of the area (which can be found below)! We also created a little welcome on the front explaining how the showcase was set up and what to do! We want parents to admire the student projects as well as learn a little more about the technology we are using and how we are using it so there are 5 "booths" in the center for parents to visit! We also created a resource guide of FREE or ALMOST free apps that our students love with a brief description of the app!

• Clicker Quiz- Parents can test their technology knowledge with this 10 question clicker quiz and see how the SMRT Response system works! 
• QR Code- "Name That App" QR Code Scavenger Hunt! I created a 10 app icon identification QR Code scavenger hunt on brightly colored iPads that will be located around the room! We will also be showing the video of students using QR Codes which we presented at FETC. 
• iPads/iPods- Parents can check out the apps we have, play an educational game or create their own project using one of our apps! 
• TodaysMeet- Since we don't have twitter and we DO LOVE TodaysMeet we are inviting parents to "join the conversation" about the Technology Showcase and see how to use this awesome Web 2.0 tool. 
• Geek Squad- Parents can meet the Geek Squad and see some of their finest projects including their School of Excellence video which is linked to the QR Code on our shirts this year. 

How cute are these presenter badges that I created?

I feel like there is lots more to share but I am exhausted and tomorrow is an even longer day 7:30 am technology training, a jam packed schedule of lessons followed by setup, the Technology Showcase and clean up:)! We are really excited about this event. I hope the night runs smoothly and we make it without too many "technological issues"! Follow up to come!

Technology Centers

I am absolutely LOVING technology centers which I have worked collaboratively on with MOST grade levels (1st - 8th) ! Initially it took some extra work on my part to get the "buy in" because it can be time consuming and there is a lot of preparation up front. Once I convinced them that it wasn't "something else" to do or more time away from instruction and it could be their science lesson (or whatever subject) with a ton of integration of content and technology they were in! I have worked the centers a little differently with each grade level and experimented with setup! One thing that is kind of fun about teaching the same lesson three times is that by the third class you have worked out all of the "glitches"!

The 2nd grade team has fallen in love with centers and they now come to me asking to schedule time together which is a-w-e-so-m-e! This was our first round of centers (above) to help them prepare for a unit ia (interactive achievement) test and to begin researching ecosystems.

Laptop/Clicker Center:

At the Laptop/Clicker Center students watched the Solid Shape BrainPopJr  and then took a 10 question Clicker Quiz to review the areas they were having trouble with! Our school has had "Clickers" (SMART Response LE System) for years and have been taking whole group assessments but this allows for students to work at their own pace, read the quiz on their own and refer back to the video for help. It was also a great opportunity for the teacher and myself to help anyone who was struggling. All of the data was nicely collected as usual and made an easy grade for the teacher!!! The SMART Notebook file was housed on the computer lab page which made for an easy download.

Laptop Center:

At the second laptop center students accessed PebbleGo which is a phenomenal resource where students began researching an ecosystem of their choice (looking for three living things, three nonliving things and three interesting facts). If you are not familiar with PebbleGo it is a website that has leveled nonfiction/content text and will read out loud. It is a bit pricey but the students love it and it seems to be a favorite new site for my kiddos in 1st and 2nd grade! I love that it is bright, colorful, easy to read, easy to use, has great pictures and graphics, highlights academic vocabulary words and provides definitions, etc. Check out one of the demos.

iPad Center:

The third center was the iPad center where students used an app called Ecosystem HD to continue finding out information about their chosen ecosystem. The app is paid but it is well worth the $1.99 as it will read to the students and has awesome facts, pictures and videos.

At a later session we used the ecosystem research from the app and PebbleGo to create a Prezi! Since this was 2nd graders first time with Prezi they worked in pairs. First they watched a screencast I made using Screenr (I am also in love with this tool). Then they got to work! Check out a few Prezi's that they created and aren't they so much better than a POSTER?!

Solar System QRs, Google Drive, Clickers and Graphs

I know more about our solar system today than I did a week ago thanks to VA SOL 4.7 and 4.8. I've had so much fun working with the fourth graders on these objectives! During our first whole class lesson they used QRStuff and QR Code Maker to create their QR Codes. They used QRStuff to link to a cool fact about the planet they had researched in the library and QR Coder Maker to link to a picture of their planet. During the second lesson I had a small group (10 students) use Google Drive to create quiz questions from the curriculum and the class study guide. On their third lesson they learned how to copy and paste from Google Drive into SMART Response software (SMART Notebook) and set up a Clicker Quiz. On the fourth visit the whole class came again and took the Clicker quiz as a review before their big unit test. They did A-W-E-S-O-M-E and cheered upon walking in and being told they were taking a Clicker quiz haha! Today I worked with the same small group and Google Drive again to create graphs from their quiz scores and find the range, mean, median and mode of their scores (2 math objectives which I don't know of the top of my head). They did such a great job! I was beyond impressed and absolutely L<3VE using Google Drive with students! Check out their Google Drive Graphing Activity over here.  

I printed the Clicker quiz and their Google Drive document to hang in the hallway and I put a little blurb in our STAR Points about what 4th grade had been up to with me! I mentioned that if anyone had a similar SOL objective or if they wanted their kids to have practice scanning QR Codes that the 4th grade hallway was the place to be. I suggested students visit the hallway as a center with their iPod and a clipboard to record facts and didn't think much of it! This afternoon the 6th grade science teacher flagged down the fourth grade teachers and asked if it was ok for her kids to come scan the posters, had them send their clicker quizes for her to give to her 6th graders as review AND asked me to help her create a QR Code scavenger hunt slash space timeline activity for her 6th graders for next week! I showed her how to link text and pictures to QR Codes and got her started on the lesson! She was so excited about the activity and couldn't believe how easy it was to make! Needless to say I was SOOO happy leaving school today :)!

PS I was stalking the 4th grade unit test scores this afternoon since we use an online software and I have access! All three classes did very well on their test and ONE even earned a denim pass for next Friday! (Since we are a traditional school and we wear uniforms jeans are very special at our school. You can get a denim pass by earning a class average on a test of 95 or higher).

Google Docs and Clickers

Last week I had a blast working with the fourth graders! They are currently learning about our solar system! They conducted research in the library about the 8 planets. When they came to the lab as a class they made two QR Codes (one linked to a cool fact about their planet and one linked to a picture of their planet)! I wasn't sure how they would do BUT they did amazing even with the few glitches that we ran into! I am learning that teaching something THREE times (we have 3 teachers per grade level) allows for you to reflect and make any changes and really perfect a lesson! They were so excited about the QR Codes that they continue to bring me ones they made at home daily! I have a huge pile on my desk.

Then I took a small group for extension and they used Google Docs while working in teams of 2-3 to create test questions for a clicker quiz that they will be giving to their classmates this week! First I had them "marry their laptops" so they were side by side which they thought was the funniest and grossest thing EVER! One person opened the planning document and the other had the curriculum. They LOVED logging into gmail.com and thought it was beyond cool that they could see what the other teams were writing. They used their research as well as the 4th grade curriculum (Science SOL 4.7 & 4.8) to create questions. I asked the teachers to give me a few things that they wanted me to make sure was on the test but there was no need for my guidance. They rocked it and came up with awesome questions. I was VERY impressed. They begged to stay and finish on the first day so I told them they could work from home and over half of them accessed it from home! On the second day I taught them CTRL. C and CTRL. V which they thought was magic and they copied and pasted their questions and answers into SMART Notebook SMART Response.

I was worried that by taking this position (ITRT) I would miss all those funny things that kids say in the classroom but I am not missing out one bit! On the 2nd day the class was working on editing the questions for proper spelling, capitalization, punctuation and marking the correct answer with an * to make the copy/paste process go faster and to stay occupied while their classmates added questions. I sure wish SMART Notebook could be in Google Docs! Anyways, while working with a student at my desk on adding her question to the notebook I heard another girl say, "Who put "your mama" as a choice for "What's the hottest planet?" It took everything in me not to crack up laughing but when I got it together I told them that they were being inappropriate. If you're wondering... Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system!