Enhanced Literacy Stations

In this presentation, teachers and librarians will learn 4 tools that will enhance literacy stations in the K-2 classroom.  Today I challenge teachers to use tablets and computers during literacy stations as tools to expand student learning at school and at home to create 21^st Century Learners!

http://www.slideshare.net/AmyYoung17/enhancing-literacy-stations-k-2  

A Blog to Follow

My goal in finding a blog to follow was to search for one that spoke to me on a personal level.  I really enjoyed reading the blog, Dangerously Irrelevant.  http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/

I felt that Scott Mcleod had a lot of the same ideas as myself.  In his most recent post, he talked about the importance of students building and creating to make learning more meaningful.  He said that if a student comes home with a wrong answer marked, there is very little follow up conversation, but if a student comes home after making something they are proud of, they will want to share, explain, and discuss. 

In another blog post, he breaks down lesson planning and asks the teacher whether their lessons contain deeper thinking, student agency, authentic work, and digital tools.  All of these are broken down for the teacher.

I also LOVE and agree with his blog post about pushing academics on kindergarteners, even requiring they go to summer school.

AASL Best Websites for Teaching and Learning

The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) has a website that lists the best websites for teaching and learning.  What a great resource! 

http://www.ala.org/aasl/standards-guidelines/best-websites/2015

Today I took the time to explore the website and discovered many great tools.  Because I will soon be starting a presentation that highlights great tools to use with Literacy Work Stations, I chose to make this the focus of my investigations.  Below I will discuss the websites I discovered…

 

www.storybookthat.com

This is a website that you must sign up for.  The downfall is that teachers are only eligible for a 14 day free trial and then must pay to use the resources.  I decided to sign up to see the great resources available to me and there were some GREAT resources.  Let’s start with the main feature of the website, which is to create a storyboard.  The program allows users to create scenes and characters.  Users can use the search tool to add objects and other pictures to their scenes.  Users can also add audio to their story board.  I was able to create an all about me storyboard that included a teaching scene, a backyard scene with myself and my family, and a beach scene depicting my favorite vacation spot.  In each scene I added avatars that I created and copied to use the same avatar on each scene.  One complete I added text to each page and then recorded audio of me reading the text.  This program was easy to use and was saved under my classroom management tab.

After creating my storyboard, I started to further explore the website.  There were a huge number of great resources but I will only focus on a few of my favorite.  The website has a teacher’s guides option.  Here, there are tons of premade scenes and lesson plans.  There were many premade lesson plans that pair with common read-aloud books, such as Charlotte’s Web, Freckle Juice, Because of Winn Dixie, and many more.  Here you can also find printable or write on graphic organizers.  Users can use a very easy search guide to find something suitable for any grade or goal.  As a collaborative teacher, I was impressed with the number of options for special needs students, such as positive reinforcement boards, or social stories that can be customized to meet the needs of each student. 

I would like to explore this website more, but it looks like it could be a great investment. 

 

https://bookopolis.com

Another website I want to explore further is Bookopolis.  This website is considered a social network and seems to be a great way to get students to take charge of their own reading.  According to the tutorials, teachers can set up classes where students have their own logins.  They can add books they have read, write reviews, and reports.  Teachers can even earn free books if their students write reports.  This also seems to be a great way to recommend readings and to find a new book to read. 

I played around with the website a little, but ran into a couple of road blocks that I will explore in more detail.  The first issue is that the program does not work with Internet Explorer, easy enough to get around.  The other issue I had was the program wouldn’t let me build my bookshelf through Google+.  I will continue to work on this, as I’m sure there is an easy way around it.  I do think I would like to implement this in my classroom this year.  There is a printable Reading BINGO sheet, which I think would be great to send home to students to encourage outside reading.  I also think it would be great to add an incentive to having students read and review books with their family.  In my classroom, reading groups work in partners.  Parent volunteers and 5^th grade volunteers could also work in the library station with students to read books and write reviews with them.  As I teach first grade, this would not be an independent activity.  I also discovered an online reading log, which would be a great way to log reading for my students.  This could link to my classroom webpage.

I will continue to play with this website to learn to make into a social network I will be able to use in my classroom and in my future library.

 

www.storybook.com

I really liked Storybook.  It had much fewer options than Storyboard that, which is great for younger students.  It takes away some of the distractions of creating and allows them time to focus on writing a good story.  The functions are easy to use.  I teach first grade and I think towards the middle of the school year, students could be introduced to this website and be able to use it independently. 

One thing I like to do during at my writing table is put out a shared journal.  At the end of the year last year, we had a journal labeled “Letters to the teacher.”  Each student was responsible to write on the next page when they went to the writing station.  This would be a great way to incorporate technology into this station and make it a bit more interactive and engaging. 

The other great thing about this website is there is no sign up, so students can work on stories at home.  What a great resource to share with parents!

Presentation Tools

This week I explored lots of free presentation tools.  Below I have written about some that I would like to explore further...

Blendspace

• Created for teachers
• Allows teachers to share resources from the internet
• Allows teachers to create quizzes to assess student learning
• Tracks student progress and adapts to student needs as they go

Prezi (the only one I have used in the past)

• Easy to use
• Create presentations with video, pictures, and text
• Cloud-based
• Has a sharing feature that allows multiple people to work on the project together

Pixton

• Allows you to create comics
• Has a sharing feature
• Has grading and assessment tools
• You can record a voice over to enhance the presentation

edu.buncee

• Has a classroom organization tool to allow teachers to manage students and track data
• You can drag and drop media
• Cloud-based
• Allows users to download PDFs
• Create and scan QR codes to access

As a future librarian, I am excited to start building a database of resources like the ones above.  Out of the presentation tools that I explored, I have only used Prezi.  However, there seems to be some great options that I would love to try throughout the school year this year.

Coding, Robots, 3-D printing

This week’s topics of conversation were scary to me, as I am just starting to feel comfortable with technology.  When I heard coding, I was immediately out of my comfort zone.  As I teach in an elementary school, I didn’t think I would read anything relevant when it comes to the topic.  However, the Huffington Post article we read was interesting because it talked about all of the ways to introduce young children to coding.  The article had examples of problem solving games and apps that you can use with children as young as preschool age.  Some of the apps the article suggested for younger children were Scratch Jr, Kodable, Sphero 2.0, and Hopscotch.  Code.org was a suggested website to use that has kid friendly tutorials by familiar names such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.  Something I recently learned about from a friend is a program that Capital One does where coders work with children in Henrico County to learn code.  They give them assignments and even offer free computers to those who are interested.  The program starts as early as elementary school.   I am no longer skeptical when it comes to coding and young children because I think it would be an engaging way to teach problem solving, which is applicable across every content area and something children can sometimes struggle with.

Another thing I definitely learned more about was the use of robots.  Musio is a robot created originally to teach kids in Asia how to speak English.  What a great idea!  Students who are ELL could definitely benefit from this kind of one-on-one tutor!  I also teach students with IEPs and I think the idea of having robots as a one-on-one teaching assistant could be helpful in certain instances.  I don’t think we should ever replace the authenticity of having a teacher or aide help those who need it, but I think having a robot to supplement teaching academic or behavioral strategies could be advantageous to students who need constant one on one.  I found MEDi very interesting, as it is a robot created to accompany kids in doctor’s offices.  Once again, engaging and distracting to children who need extra love and fun.

3-D printing is something I also struggled with at the elementary level.  I still think this is a technology that is much more geared toward older students, as most elementary students are not quite ready to create their own projects.  However, the SLJ article had a great example of high school students who created replicas of artifacts from Ancient Rome and shared them with 3^rd graders over Skype.  I do think that because of school budget issues, 3-D printing will not be something that will be readily available any time soon.  I am interested in seeing one in action on campus later this month.

 

Sources:

Tahnk, J. (2015).  Huffington Post: Cool products for teaching kids how to code.  Retrieved July 9, 2015 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeana-lee-tahnk/neat-products-for-teachin_b_7138030.html

Sansing, C. (2015).  School Library Journal: 3D printing, worth the hype?  Retrieved July 9, 2015 from http://www.slj.com/2015/05/technology/3-d-printing-worth-the-hype-the-maker-issue/#_

Hardawar, D. (2015). Engagdet.com: Adorable AI powered robot Musio just wants to be your friend.  Retrieved July 9, 2015 from http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/01/musio-ai-robot/

Yam, K. (2015).  Huffington Post: Cheery robot helps kids with pain during hospital procedures.  Retrieved July 9, 2015 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/14/medi-robot_n_7057168.html

QR Code

Here is a QR code that you can scan to link to my created website.  Remember, Young Elementary School Library is fictional, but enjoy exploring my first attempt at website design!



QR code created using I-nigma.com: Create Barcodes. (2013).  Retrieved July 2, 2015 from http://www.i-nigma.com/CreateBarcodes.html

Video Tools

Some great tools for creating video:

Shadow Puppet…So this app was NOT in the Toolbox shared in this class.  I actually accidentally downloaded it when I was really looking for Sock Puppet.  Because the program was EXACTLY what I wanted it, I didn’t even notice my mistake until after I posted it on the Discussion Board for our class.  I have to say, though, this program was great!  It was easy to use and my five year old was able to create a project with the program.  I teach first grade and we have classroom I-Pads.  In order for students to be able to use these I-Pads we need user friendly programs that can be manipulated by young children.  This program was great for this.  When playing with the program, my daughter and I made a video about the Life Cycle of a Butterfly but I think the uses for this program are limitless.  The thing I liked most about this program is that it allows users to uploads the own pictures and the user then records their voice and the user is able to add text and switch to the next picture quite easily.

 

Animoto…I loved seeing slideshows that people have posted on our discussion board using Animoto.  It would be a great program to use in the classroom to show pictures of a project coming together.  Last year my class participated in an Economic Project that I documented through pictures.  This would be a great program to use to showcase the process and products.  It would also be fun to pair the project with a matching song. 

 

Sharalike…seems like a very easy program to use in order to put together a slideshow with music.  I was able to login and upload 100 photos in less than one minute.  When I saw some of the samples used on Sharalike, I thought it would be a good program to use to chronicle pictures from a field trip.  This could be used more for the older student.  High school students could be expected to work in groups to take pictures with their phones and put it together with appropriate music and text.