Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

  One of my favorite activities to do with students is this visual vocabulary project using Google Slides. I've done it in grades 3-5 and the children love it! I came up with the idea after taking Tony Vincent's Classy Creations course. Think of it as a high tech Frayer Model. The idea is to reinforce vocabulary with the use of images.  In this case: found GIF's, created GIF's, found pictures, and created pictures. It introduces children to new tech skills and sites ( Brush Ninja and Chrome Canvas ) As a teacher I go over the activity with students and we do the first four slides together. This works well in a face-to-face environment. In a virtual environment you may have to adjust. I would recommend making a video for each of the first four slides so students can reference and complete them on their own. Google Slides allows you to "house" videos off the side of the slide so it doesn't interfere with work on the actual slide which makes it a handy place...

This summer I was testing out the full version of Loom and made a video that tested out their limited online drawing tools and capability to create a link inside of a presentation. The general idea is that I could share the video with students, prior to our first online meeting, and post to my Google Classroom for reference. I definitely liked that you could embed the link to the presentation on the video, using their "Call to Action" button , but felt like, unless you explicitly told viewers to hover over the video (like I did at the end of the video above), viewers could easily miss that feature. I also found the online drawing tool to have a delay. That could have been an internet buffering issue on my end so I would need to retest that. Please note the drawing tools option is only available on the desktop app version - not the Chrome extension. The biggest problem with the desktop app versus the chrome extension is that the desktop app requires a download...

Video Link -  https://bit.ly/2YygqEK I was recently asked what the best program is to record a read aloud. This got me thinking about one of my favorite read aloud follows on YouTube, Glenn Malcolm. He does  read alouds for his grandson  and posts them to YouTube. I like how his face is on the screen during the read aloud in a moveable "dot". The only program I know that can do a circle webcam like that is Loom. Luckily Loom is offering their full account  FREE (forever) to educators . I recorded the  read aloud b elow to test the program. I used a children's book that I found online in one of four places I have access to online children's books: - Hoopla Digital (offered through our local library) - cloudLibrary eBooks (offered through our local library) - Sora (our district's online library for students) -  Epic  (library website that is free for teachers to use in the classroom) dagd I could have snapped pictures of each pa...

I love the idea of stop motion animation but not the headache of it. It is something I have always wanted to try in the classroom but when I started thinking about all the "stuff" it requires - props, lighting, storage space, a fixed camera, software, oddles of time...I pretty much said: I follow an art teacher (Tricia Fuglestad) on Twitter who does an excellent job blending art and technology together and she did a recent post on stop motion .  This got me thinking about a "Flipbook with Google Slides" session I took at a conference last summer with Abby Schiferl where I created a vocabulary animation for science .  I decided to use digital tools to try and re-create some of Tricia's samples. They were super easy to make. I did find one of the best and most helpful blog post  from Matt Miller regarding formatting tips for animating with Google Slides, which helped greatly, I made the "cheat sheet" below from it....

Sorry for the overload of holiday ideas. We have one more week of school here in South Carolina (which involved a hurricane makeup day) and teachers are looking for creative ways to keep students engaged. This idea of making emoji book trailers came from working with staff at Whale Branch Elementary School. Their Literacy Coach wanted to have every teacher in the school record a book trailer. The idea was to share one a week (Friday) on the morning news but she needed help planning and recording staff.  We met up to record our sample trailers and to discus the project and potential pitfalls. Initially I think we were both thinking of recording the teachers using the green screen but for a school wide project that would have been a lot of work. I was also thinking of the teachers who would refuse because they ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY don't want to be recorded.  That is when Flipgrid popped back on my radar. It fell off my radar last year when Microsoft took it over ...

Our school has Windows based devices. In the past we have used Microsoft's free software Photostory and Movie Maker Live with students to create videos. Unfortunately Microsoft has discontinued both and replaced them with their new Windows 10 Photos App. It took me some time to make the switch but I am happy to report that I don't hate it. There are some things I would change but overall it is fairly easy for students to grasp. I like the effects and 3D options and for short videos it is an adequate (and free) app. The video summary above of "Harry the Dirty Dog" will highlight what students can do. I always liked the time before a holiday break to introduce students to a new tool. It helps to set them up to use the tool independently with future projects. If you want to try this with students I would recommend making a project yourself so you are familiar with how the tools work. My suggestion is to introduce a short holiday read aloud and have students w...

I am following a Seesaw teacher's Facebook group  and one of the teacher's posted an animated avatar message she left for her students using Memoji which is available on the iPhoneXS, iPhoneXS Max, and iPhone XR. It was super cute but sadly unavailable to me with my sad iPhone 7. This got me thinking about other ways I could use leave creative messages for students if I was going to be out. I couldn't find another free avatar program that made a close approximation of my face so I branched out to messaging apps.  I made the two videos below using the Facebook messenger app (you could also use Snapchat as well). Both allow you to save videos to your phones camera roll. I put the Seesaw app on my phone and uploaded it from there but I could have easily emailed them to myself from my phone and uploaded it via my computer.  If you are looking for a fun way to leave messages for your students you might want to give these apps a try!   ...

Looking for a fun back-to-school activity to kick off the New Year? Try this digital Google Drawings goals template . The idea is to take the numbers in 2019 and use them as both numbers AND letters to create four goals for the new year.  Students would identify: 2 things they would like to do, try, or read 0 ne thing they would like to accomplish or stop doing something they would like to 1 earn (personal or school) and someplace they would like to 9 o, get or give this coming year You may want to have students sketch out their ideas on scratch paper before they open up the template in Google Drawings. I had a couple of my friends try out the template and here is what they came up with: This is great activity to introduce students to some Google Drawing tools that could be used later in the year to create content posters. Layers of the Atmosphere Poster Google Drawings I made a video  explaining the project in gre...

This week I have been working with several schools as they start putting together their morning news program for the school year. Almost exclusively schools are using Touchcast to produce their morning show. It is super cool free software with lots of templates and green screen capability (plus so much more...really I need to apply to become an ambassador!). The only downfall is that it is an app and software only for Apple devices (most schools have bought an iPad to record their shows...it is that good!). We have one school that just started their morning show and the person in charge (Mr. Blaine Peltier at Robert Smalls International Academy)  has done an OUTSTANDING job. I went in to see how he is doing some of his graphics and learned he has been doing them on his personal Mac at home (which, sadly, I do not have). My favorite effect on his video is the Pledge of Allegiance where he has a two video overlays with words scrolling on the screen. I was determined to fi...

StoryLine Online just released a new book just in time Jazz Appreciation Month (April). It is called Rent Party Jazz and is read by Viola Davis (of "How to Getaway with Murder" fame). Rent Party Jazz tells the story of:  "Sonny Comeaux, a young boy living in New Orleans during the 1930’s. Sonny works before school and during the weekends to help his mother make ends meet, but they continuously struggle to make the monthly rent. When Sonny’s mother loses her job, all seems lost – until Sonny encounters and befriends jazz trumpeter Smilin’ Jack. When Jack hears about Sonny’s troubles, the musician offers to help Sonny and his mother put on a party consisting of tasty food, good company and great music in order to raise the rent money." There is an activity guide for teachers as well. The activity guide is recommended for grades 2/3.  Enjoy! For an additional jazz tie in type in "jazz for kids" on YouTube for music that you can play in the classr...

On my news feed at the beginning of the month StoryLine Online posted that a new book was added to their growing library of videos where celebrities read books online. This one is called As Fast As Words Could Fly written by Pamela M. Tuck and read by Dule Hill. The video tells the story of Mason Steel, a young African-American boy living in the south during the civil rights movement, who supports his activist father with the help of a typewriting in the fight for racial equality and ending segregation. According to the press release the video comes with supplemental activity guides for both home and school, aimed at students in 3rd - 5th grades. Since February is Black History month it would make an excellent read aloud (that you don't actually have to read aloud) in the classroom.

Check out the Berry College Bald Eagle Cam at  http://www.berry.edu/eaglecam/ It is super addictive! I love showing it to children and having them make observations in the nest. Right now there is a little chick under the eagle and students get excited when the eagle moves and they can catch a glimpse of it. They are less thrilled with the dead fish and squirrels but it does reinforce the food chain :).

February is Black History Month and I am working with some teachers to help students produce research videos. The video above is one I completed as a student/teacher sample. The students have to produce a video that has 12 slides (or pictures). When I broke it down as follows to them they really only had to find eight facts: 1. The first slide has to contain a title and the students name  2. Where and when the person was born 3.    Fact #1 (full sentence) 4. Fact #2 5. Fact #3 (by now tell me what he/she is famous for) 6. Fact #4 7. Fact #5 8. Fact #6 9. Fact #7 10. Fact #8 11. T he year they died (or anything of note after they died) 12. Credit slide – where did they get their facts (This was made in their educreations app. They took a screen shot of it and edited it in the photo editor) I was giving students three class periods to do the project. Day 1 – Pick your person and do your research (if they couldn’t pick some...

This past week I worked with an elementary school that is putting on a production of The Lion King Jr. They are a project based learning (PBL) school. In an attempt to get all students involved in the process of the production they modified the specials schedule for a week. Every special area became something related to theater production and students got to choose what special they wanted. They had that special for two days before switching to another area of interest. The areas they had were (this ran Monday – Friday with Friday being a review of what they learned and did): Morning (K2 students) -           Hand craft beading and Jewelry (run by a community volunteer) -           Fabric Design (run by the art teacher) -           Singing (run by the music teacher) -           Choreo...

Click on THIS LINK to view the student video Yesterday I worked with two groups of third graders at the end of their matter unit. The teacher and I are working together to try and incorporate a tech project at the end of each of her science units.  I would like to claim this snowflake idea...but I got it from a friend of mine who is a science lab teacher at another school. She was showing me how she had her third graders make dipped wax snowflakes as part of their study of matter. She awesomely lent me all her supplies so I could do it with the students I had. The tech component was they had to make an iMovie (new skill for them) explaining what they did (in the iMovie they had to have one definition, they had to use at least two unit vocabulary words, and have a safety tip...we kept it pretty basic because we had to finish it that day but the requirements could certainly be increased based on grade and available time).  The teacher very nicely gave up a ...

I finally figured out how to do a Touchcast video...after lots of practice...and attending a webinar put on by the company. I used my Studio in a Box green screen to film it. After watching it learned I definitely won't be a YouTube star, and I need some lipstick, but it was pretty easy...once I had storyboarded the whole thing out (I used the remote app on my phone to control the camera...filming it by myself...I really like that feature!). Students would really have to plan out any video they made (not a strong suit for a lot of students but this would be good practice). Now that I have an academic sample and worked through how to put it together I think I can train students. I would like to try something "bigger" like a morning show and I have one school that wants to try it. Right now my only two questions I have (that I need to email the company) are: (1) Why isn't the poll at the end interactive? I tried clicking it and voting but nothing happened and...

I saw this "flextangle" activity on Facebook and thought I could modify it for academic content. In the example I choose WW2 (primarily because I recently worked with a Social Studies teacher and her standards were fresh on my mind). It was pretty easy. The student would need to come up with 12 short facts about a topic and be able to illustrate it somehow (my illustrations range from good to poor but I was able to depict my thinking so really that is all that mattered). It could work with science as well as social studies. The end product is pretty small size wise which is why I recommend short facts. A teacher friend of mine posted that - they actually demonstrate the math concepts of frieze patterns, reflection, rotation, and translation (here I was thinking they were just "cool" :). The original post I took the idea from can be found HERE . This is also where you go to get the instructions for putting it together and the pattern.  If yo...