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.

So many ideas...

Today I looked at countless school library Weebly websites.  It was fun to look at them through a more critical eye.  I found lots of things I liked and lots of things I didn’t like.  Below are some of the things that I liked so much I want to remember to do this on my own library sight one day…

http://bhslibrary.weebly.com/   I love that this school library sight has a direct link to their library catalog and the Public Library catalog…a great way to extend into the community.  This would be a great resource for older students doing research AND parents!

 http://lowelibrary.weebly.com/   There was a lot that I liked at this school website.  First of all, I enjoyed that they had an online reading log that engaged summer student participation.   They also had some great resources under the student tab: databases, reading challenges, tools for projects, student showcase, kid’s search engines.

http://elementarylibrarian.weebly.com/1st.html  Here there was a clear lesson plan for the year with expectations of what each class would learn about in library throughout the year and activities to do at home.  I LOVE the parent link here as it gives all the information parents need to know to read with their child.  What a great resource to have for teachers to send parents to.

http://neslibrary.weebly.com/  Love the Shelfari widget.  Would like to learn how to add this to my own website.  I played around with it a little bit and haven’t figured it out yet.  I think it would be great to showcase each teacher throughout the school year.  They could build a shelf with their favorite books (no matter what grade or audience).  Here is the link to get your own shelf… http://www.shelfari.com/widget?WidgetId=237297

http://deslibrary.weebly.com/  This website seemed to have winning books selected by students.  That would be so much fun.  It is much like the Caldecott project we just finished up in our Children’s Literature class.

SO MANY FUN IDEAS!!!

A few good programs...

A few programs I use or think might be useful:

ChatterPix is a program that is installed on the I-Pads in my classroom.  My kids enjoy using this program and we have used it for various assignments.  They did a shape hunt.  They took pictures of different objects in the room.  Then they made the objects talk.  They recorded themselves saying things like, “I am a door.  I am a rectangle.  I have 4 sides.  2 sides are long, 2 sides are short.  I also have 4 vertices.”  They also used this program when we were learning about Famous Americans.  They took pictures of the people we were studying and each student had to say one fact about that person.  We have a cord that allows up to hook the I-Pads to the Promethean boards.  They kids love watching the ChaterPix they make!

In the library, I think it would be fun to take pictures of the characters in books and have the characters tell about themselves.

Blabberize is another program that seems to work like ChatterPix.  There aren’t as many features but it can be used on the computers and the pictures and sounds can be embedded or shared, which is a nice feature for older students and teachers to use.

Although I don’t have experience with the program Audacity.  It seems like a great program to create a Podcast.  At our elementary school, the librarian is in charge of the morning announcements.  I think a Podcast would be a fun and different way to do morning announcements in the classroom.  I also think that it would be a great way for teachers to create digital study guides. 

I was so excited to discover the podcast "Let's Get Busy."  It features interviews with authors and illustrators.  As a teacher, a station that I have in my classroom is the author study station.  Here is where I set up books that are written by an author.  We read the books and learn a little bit about the author, the pictures, characters in the books, etc.  This bank of podcasts are a great resource to use for this purpose.  Recently my class has read a few of Jon Klassen's books.  I would love to show them the interview with him on the podcast.

Let's Get Busy Podcast (2015).  Retrieved 6/11/2015 from http://lgbpodcast.blogspot.com/.

She's Happy!

I enjoyed playing around with some of the websites that allow you to add audio.  I think adding audio to a picture is fun!  There are a million ways to use this in the classroom. Below is an example of my daughter, Olivia, and I playing with blabberize.com.



Here is a link to our image: http://blabberize.com/view/id/1300977

Picture and sound created using Blabberize (2010). Retrieved 6/11/2015 from www.blabberize.com.

24 Books to Read in Under and Hour

I really liked the infographic “24 Books to Read in Under An Hour” and have embedded it below.

There were many reasons I thought this particular infographic was effective and well designed.  I will start by talking about the three effective principles of design that are stated in Presentationzen DESIGN.  In my opinion, this infographic had all three principles: restrain, reduce, and emphasize (Reynolds, 2014, p 152).  The designer showed restraint by focusing on 4 basic facts on how reading benefits the reader.  It then moves on to suggest 3 times a reader could easily fit in time to read a book, using 3 simple pictures.  As you scroll down, there are then 24 books that the average person could read.  This could sound overwhelming, but the designer simply has 2 book covers featured at a time, shown with a watch of how long it takes to read that particular book, leaving the emphasis on the goal: how long it takes to read that particular book.  After reading the chapter on color in our text book, I found great appreciation in the skill the designer used with each of the books and watches (Reynolds, 2014, p 84).  He used a technique where he match a color in each of the book covers and used this particular color on the face of the watch that represented that book.  This was effective and created harmony as I scrolled down the page.  I enjoyed looking at this infographic and felt it was simple, clean, and easy to read.

 

Reynolds, G. (2014). Presentationzen design. United States of America: New Riders.

Infographic taken from: EBook Friendly (2015). 24 books to read in under an hour. Retrieved from http://ebookfriendly.com/books-under-hour-infographic/ CC.

**A question about citation: This image said that it can be shared because of Creative Commons licensing, but I could not find any other information about the type.  I cited with just a CC, is this best practice?

My attempt at Infographics...

I created an infographic that I could use with my first graders.  When creating my own infographic, I struggled most with the free constraints.  The three websites listed in our sandbox all had challenges, the biggest being the free images that were available.  I think it would work best with using photos of my own.  The infographic I created compares wild and tame animals.  I would love to add more pictures and may take some of my own this summer at the zoo so that I can use this next year when I teach this unit.

Here is the link to my infographic...
https://www.canva.com/design/DABS4Cxp6vc/syTsQy1bHaOdj-Ul5dhw_w/view?cc_from_uid=UABSl0f2sx4&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_content=DABS4Cxp6vc&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sharebutton


Infographic created using a template on Canva.com (2015).  Retrieved June 3, 2015, https://www.canva.com/#your-designs. 

My Whole World

I want to introduce all of my readers to my family.  This picture was taken on a special day...the day we became a family of 4.  Meet Jesse, Olivia (who turned 5 today) and Allison (who is now 1 1/2).

Photo modified using Tuxpi.com: Photo Editor. (2015).  Retrieved May 27, 2015, http://www.tuxpi.com/

Image Creation Tools

I have explored several of the image creating tools recommended in this week’s sandbox…here are some ideas and critiques that I had for using these specific tools in the classroom…

http://foldplay.com/foldplay.action

Fold Book seems like a great resource to use with students.  They can be responsible for taking pictures and adding text to make the book their own.  This could be used with many different grade levels…I brainstormed a few ideas:

K-1         Take a picture of shapes in the environment and label them on each page.

                Create or locate patterns, take a picture, and label.

                Take pictures of objects and label them using words.

1-2          Take pictures of everyday objects and write sentences to match using sight words.

                Tell a story about you to introduce yourself to your classmates through pictures.

3-5          Retell a familiar text. 

                Create your own story with real-life pictures for illustrations.

                  Retelling important facts learned from a field trip (especially since the upper    

                grades often go to DC, Jamestown, etc.

 

It is limitless what students could create to present data through their own stories!

 

http://blog.pic-collage.com/2015/04/22/new-app-introducing-pic-collage-for-kids/

Although I was unable to play with Pic Collage, I think this would be a great app to consider getting on the school I-Pads.  When I read the description, I immediately thought about the famous American units each grade level teaches.  I pictured a photo of Benjamin Franklin with images all around him of things that he helped to create…lightening rod, library, fire department, swim fins, bifocals, the grabber, a post office, etc. 

 

http://www.imagechef.com/

Image chef seems like a fun program to use.  I don’t know if I would give students free reign of website, however because there were some images that would be inappropriate for school—one of someone’s bottom, cleavage, and a man sagging his pants with underwear hanging out.

 

http://bighugelabs.com/

This website seems like a great resource to tuck away and use for future projects.  I can already think of a way to use it for a student writing project we are doing this week. Student are writing what they would do if they were a fish.  We discussed having them paint a picture of them as a fish, taking their picture, printing it, cutting out their face and gluing it as the fishes face.  It seems to me that I could use this website and a drawing program to create a similar project.  We all know that first graders LOVE playing with technology!

 

Once again, going back to famous Americans, I think it would be fun to create trading cards about the famous Americans each grade level learns about.  Students could work in groups to create these cards to present important facts to their classmates.

Citing of my image and a disclaimer

In searching for an image to use in this week's blog assignment, I came across a poster that I would love to use in my classroom.  I think it embodies what I strive for with my students.  The poster was taken from Foter.com (2015). In our classroom. Retrieved from: http://foter.com/photo/in-our-classroom-1/ CC BY-NC-ND.

As I am just learning the basics of citing and blogging...I am going to give the disclaimer that I AM JUST LEARNING THE BASICS OF CITING AND BLOGGING!!!  Therefore, please forgive any missteps and give feedback of anything that needs work.  I am happy to learn new things!

A classroom poster

venspired / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND

Clean and Simple

If you were to walk into my house today, well, 5 years ago (before children) you would notice that my husband and I do not own "clutter."  We do not collect knickknacks.  The only decorations we have are curtains and some personal pictures on the wall.  I wanted my blog design and font choice to reflect my personality and home design choice...clean and simple.

In the book Presentationzen Design, the font choice, Helvetica was described as "neutral, simple, contemporary" (Reynolds, 2014, p. 40).  It was also described as a font that allow words to "express themselves with a feeling of trustworthiness and reliability" (Reynolds, 2014, p.47).  That is what I want to accomplish through my blog this semester and beyond.


Font choice and design inspired by:
Reynolds, G. (2014).  Presentationzen design: a simple visual approach to presenting in today's world. United States of America: Pearson Education.

A Brief Introduction

My name is Amy Young.  I am currently a first grade teacher and have made the decision to go back to school in order to get my endorsement to become a school librarian.  After ten years in the classroom, I knew I wanted to do something different.  My love of teaching, my love of books and literacy, and my desire to learn more about technology influenced my decision to enter the librarian program at ODU.  In order to get to know me better, I have created a word cloud to introduce myself...

 

Word Cloud was generated by...
Wordle - Create. (2013). Retrieved May 22, 2015, from http://www.wordle.net/create