Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

I was working with a second grade class the other day using the Google Pages app (we used/modified the visual report template within Pages to create an animal report) . I was telling the teacher about the "magic move" feature in the Keynote app (free) and how it could be used to create a cute adaptations video. I created the above sample project to show her and also to test if I thought her second graders could handle it (there is no sound). Her second graders could definitely do it. I think the problems would come up with research and writing. Students would have to find 5-10 adaptations to highlight (I think I only came up with seven or eight for the penguin in this video). Second graders researching and reading skills are a bit all over the board, which is why I thought this step might need to be differentiated (high readers can pick their own animals, middle readers can choose from a list of animals and you can give them links to find the adaptations,emerging reade...

I was working with fourth graders teaching them how to use their Keynote app prior to a big project they are going to be working on. I was looking up different ways to use Keynote and I came across the magic move feature on this YouTube video .  It was a feature I hadn't used before so I applied it to a mini lesson on pluralizing words that end in -f and -fe to -ves. The video above is one of the student's finished product. The only problem is sharing it loses the motion (darn!). We had to grade it by having students come up to us and showing us that they got the words correct and the motions to work. 

I am super excited...I finally got my Studio in a Box by TouchCast. I ordered it this past summer when I went to the ISTE conference in Philadelphia and attended a TouchCast session (read my rave review of that session HERE ). The session attendees were offered "Early Bird" pricing for this product with the understanding that they weren't finished in production yet (hence why it took awhile to get). The "Early Bird" price was $59 (fabulous price). I was hoping that my department would reimburse me for the purchase but apparently it is easier to get permission to buy something then it is to get reimbursed for something. I purchased it at the time knowing that I might have to absorb the cost and I was fine with that. I bought it to evaluate it for school/teacher purchasing purposes. A lot of our schools and classrooms want to set up green screen rooms for projects and morning new programs and this looked like an inexpensive way to make that happen (in...

Our school district has rolled out iPads to all students in grades 3-5 (and Dell Venue 11 Tablets with detachable keyboards to students in grades 6-12). This has kept us (all the tech coaches) BUSY this year!  One thing I am trying to do is incorporate the use of iPads with the notebooks. One web tool I use a lot is bingobaker.com  . It is free bingo game card generator that you can either print out or play using your tablet.  For students I created a QR code (using QRstuff.com ) and put it at the bottom of their science vocabulary sheet that goes in their notebook (see second picture). When we are ready to play students take out their iPad, scan the code and it goes straight to a randomized bingo board (no two bingo boards are the same). Students touch the screen to make the square light up and touch it again to make it go back if they made a mistake. Once a winner has been declared students touch the "refresh" circle and they get a new randomized board...