Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

We are within a three week window of our state testing here in South Carolina and the test most teachers are worried about is the writing portion of the ELA test. The ELA test is divided into two days with the writing test on the first day and the reading test on the second day. The writing test has a text dependent analysis question (TDA) which requires a lot of higher order thinking/writing for our students (many of whom are taking it for the first time...on a computer). I am super sympathetic, having taught writing. That is why I got SUPER EXCITED when I ran across the Writable site  at conference in February. The site has a lot of TDA type questions and passages already put together in a format that mimics what students will see in May. It is not an exact match (the site corrects spelling and has a read-to-me option...which they won't see on the state test) but for the most part it is a way to give students the opportunity to see a writing passage on one side and a TDA on ...

It is that time of year where classroom teachers are in full test prep mode. We are about six weeks out here in South Carolina and a big concern in a lot of our schools is the TDA part of the test (Text Dependent Analysis). The TDA part of the test requires students to analyze a piece of text and respond to a prompt that where they have to pull evidence from the text to support their writing. Great idea, and certainly brings in those higher order thinking skills, but it is also a lot for students to process particularly if this is the first time taking the test or they are struggling readers and writers. I definitely feel their pain but sadly that doesn't make the test go away. This leaves me trying to think of ways to get these struggling students writing and reading as often as possible. Luckily the test uses shorter reading passages so I try to pull high interest articles off the internet, ReadWorks, Newela, Writable, Teachers Pay Teachers, etc - pretty much any place I c...

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!   ...

If you have ever painstakingly highlighted each letter in a word to get a r a i n b o w effect you no longer have to! There is this cool add on into Google Docs and Slides that allows you to highlight an entire word and turn it r a i n b o w ’ i s h . From Docs or Slides you can also copy and paste your r a i n b o w e d word into Word, PowerPoint, and email as well. It sadly doesn’t copy and paste over to Facebook or Twitter (I’ve tried!). For this blog post I tried to make the title r a i n b o w ’ i s h but that didn't work. However, it worked when I cut and paste the text in from a Google Doc into the body of this post. It is still a cool tool regardless of its limitations. I used it for these cool Valentine's Day cards. If you find another great use...please let me know either in the comments below or on Twitter @atechcoachlife.   

Last week I worked with K-2 teachers in preparation of Read Across America Week teaching them how to use the Doink Green Screen App  with Dr. Seuss characters and book covers.  In the training I placed them into iconic Dr. Seuss book covers...much to their delight! We are using this concept for a Seuess themed family literacy night as well.  One question I repeatedly received was how I was able to mask the image on the cover. In all honesty I got the idea from an art teacher I follow on Twitter - Tricia Fuglestad . I have her blog bookmarked and I love all her ideas...particularly the ones related to green screening.  The difference between Tricia and me is that she is SUPER artistically talented and sadly I am not. She is also an iPad wiz and, while I have an iPad, I am more comfortable with a PC. So when I see her projects I am always thinking...how can I duplicate it on a PC? When she masks the covers of books she uses an iPad app c...

Picture Source If you have not heard of the app Novel Effect you may want to give it a try for Read Across America Week. The free app brings popular kid's books to life by playing sound effects, music, and character's voices as you read out loud. Novel Effect works when you read aloud from the corresponding book using voice recognition. I heard about the app while attending the TCEA conference in San Antonio earlier in the month. I was recently a guest reader in a fifth grade class and decided to give it a try. I downloaded the app to both my iPhone and iPad. I looked through the list of books in the Novel Effect library of soundscapes and found a corresponding book in our school's digital library (Overdrive). If I had a hard copy of the book it would have worked as well. I then practiced at home. I had the book  (Rosie Revere Engineer) open on my laptop and the Novel Effect app open on my iPad. I also tried reading the book from my Overdrive app on my iPad...

Tonight I am having fun making Bitmoji Valentines for an upcoming staff training that happens to fall on February 14th. I used the Bitmoji extension in Google Chrome and put it together in Google Drawings. I could insert a 2x4 table into Drawings to get my dimensions set for printing (I printed four to a piece of card stock). I used the Google add on "Magic Rainbow Unicorn" to make the word "magical" rainbow colored. The add on only works in Google Docs but I cut and paste my words into my Google Drawings.template. I bought the lollipops on Amazon but I am not sure I would recommend it. A lot of them were broken in the shipping process...which was packaged really poorly. I really wanted the twisty lollipops and couldn't think of any place in town that would sell them. There are several Bitmoji characters that would have worked for Valentine's Day cards. Here were my runner up ideas: If you plan on making Valentines for your staff or studen...