A New Adventure: Distance Learning

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Today was our first day back after Spring Break. It was supposed to be our first day back with students, but a few days before break, it was adjusted to be a Teacher Inservice Day, with students to come back tomorrow.

Things have been changing constantly and as it turns out: today is now our last day. And who knows when students will come back.

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Day 13: @DJ_NeckTie is on the Twitter

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Day 13: Name the top edtech tools that you use on a consistent basis in the classroom, and rank them in terms of their perceived (by you) effectiveness.

Being so lucky to be part of a 1:1 iPad school, I would think my edtech tools would have changed from when I didn't teach at a 1:1 iPad school. They're actually all the same.

The Twitter.

I found this bad boy way back during my first year of teaching. It was the best PD I had ever had and I was connected to so many educators and resources -- I didn't have time to sift through them all. Today, I'm not as Twitter-savvy as I used to be, but this year I am using it more than I have in the past and I can't believe that I have neglected it for so long. It is ripe with teachers sharing their successes and struggles, their lessons and philosophies, their classrooms and their students and so much more. If you are not on the Twitter, I highly suggest you get an account, or give me permission to create one for you. (@DJ_NeckTie)

Google Apps for Education.

I was so happy when my district moved to GAFE a few years ago. I had used the regular Google Apps my first few years teaching, and it streamlined almost everything I needed to do. There was a time where Evernote was competing for some of my cloud-based word processing and file organization, but now with the updated versions of Drive, Docs and Sheets (not to mention the newly released Google Classroom), I am quite pleased that I stuck it out with Google. Everything I need is in one place, or can be linked to one place, and the search feature has saved my butt so many times. If you are still creating things in Word or Excel and want to share it with a bunch of other people, you probably should just start it in Google Drive. Saves me some serious copy-paste conversion time.

Paper53.

True, so this tool was definitely not on my list before the 1:1 iPad revolution, but it's been so great to have. I've used it tons when I taught science and social studies. It was great for sketching flow charts, taking notes, labeling models and drafting posters. Then I found out that my math students loved showing their calculations in the paper app too. Worked as a quick and easy whiteboard for fluency practice. Plus, everyone's handwriting just looks 10x more beautiful in the Paper53 app.

Other things that are probably running in the background on my devices: Evernote, Notability & FreshGrade.

Comment Guide, revised

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Last year, I posted the comment guide that we would use with my students when we blog. Looking back on it, I think it's pretty good, but we'll add a few things to improve upon it.

Before we start doing that, we will have to revisit our expectations for leaving a comment. Hopefully they will recall our classroom discussions around leaving comments. We talked a lot about how sometimes our comments are the only way we are known on a blog or on the internet. We need to think about what kind of impression we are making when we leave comments.

Commenting Guide

Pertinent It should connect to the original post, or original comment.
Positive You want to encourage the author.
Purposeful Only leave a comment when you have something to say.
Professional Use your best writing conventions - capitalization, punctuation, spelling, etc.

 

In addition to this, I've added another point:
Personal Greet your blogger! "Dear Mr. Arakaki," or "Dear Billy Bob".

My original post drew ideas from Mrs. Yollis' Classroom Blog: How to Compose a Quality Comment.

Blogs

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We've started blogs this week. I posted this to my Monroe5A blog, the blog which I am using to model for my students this year.

First Day of Blogs

The students were so excited to sign up for their blogs today! It's been a few weeks in the making, but we finally did it. Everyone who came to school today was able to register their blogs!

During our Computer time today, I went with the class to help them log into their Google Apps for Education accounts and activate their Blogger services. Everyone was able to name their blog (appropriately, of course) and select an address for their blog.

In the next few days, we'll be experimenting with layouts, publishing drafts and preparing to launch our blogs to be shared. Watch this space for more information.

First Posts

The students are raging with excitement because today they were able to start drafting their first posts to their blogs! They were asked to introduce themselves to their readers and welcome them to their blog. We encouraged conversations and guided students to close their posts with questions.

A few students were able to finish drafting their posts and publish them. Take a look at them and leave them a comment if you could.

Dominik's Blog
Kamden's Blog

The remaining days this week we will start to post some of our writing ideas and start sharing links to each others' blogs.

Kickin' off with paper blogs

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Online blogs have been something I have done with my class every year that I've been a teacher, and it's something I believe really motivates my students to write, type and think.

Last year, our building went through Write Tools training, and I really liked the explicit format of teaching certain styles of writing. We only received the basic training, and I am very interested in learning more about their genre-specific workshops.

Anyway, this year, I want our blogs to drive our writing block, under the structure of the Write Tools program, using Being A Writer to navigate the various styles of writing.

Today, we started our Paper Blogs activity. This will be my first time introducing fifth graders to online blogs. Last year, my fifth graders moved up with me from fourth grade, where they first met blogs. I'm wondering what difference it will make having fifth graders starting to blog as opposed to fourth graders.

I do have a few ideas already. I noticed one of my twentyfive students could not decided on a topic to write about. I intro'd the task by asking them to think of topics that they could write about for more than five minutes and here is the list our class made:

IMG_1490.jpg

I gave him some time to think about it, while the rest of the class got busy writing, which always impresses me. They were fairly silent, with a whisper here and there about spelling. Just write - worry about gnilleps later! Anyway, I checked in with him to see how he was doing and to make sure he understood the task. He surely did, just couldn't decide on what to write about.

After fifteen minutes (I had originally told the class we'd write for five minutes, but before I knew it, fifteen had passed) we stopped the class and he still hadn't written anything. After a bunch of other kids stood on their chairs to share, I found out what the issue was.

He secretly wanted to write about hunting guns, but was unsure if he could or not. I got the feeling that in the past he was told he couldn't write about hunting guns. Maybe he was never given the choice, or perhaps he was asked to write about something other than guns.

Could just one more year of a bad experience with writing be enough to bring a student to the place where they are afraid to write?

Social Studies Extension + Computer

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Once a week, my 5th graders go to the Computer Lab for an hour. I'm so very lucky to have a Tech Facilitator that is super cooperative, flexible and willing to let me direct some of my kids' weekly computer time.

At this point in the year, there are a few things that my class is required to do when they get to the lab:
- A Fasttmath lesson
- Any outstanding AR tests (at their own motivation)
- Check their blogs to approve and reply to comments (to maintain good PR with their visitors)

Occasionally they may have an additional assignment from myself or the tech facilitator, but often they are isolated tasks simply directed at practicing skills in keyboarding, word processing, etc. It is rare (and exciting) when I'm able to extend a few classroom units/projects into the lab, which the students can independently complete.

Yesterday was one of those instances where my Social Studies Unit had a built-in extension with a website, where information on the excavation of the Jamestown settlement is available. I posted the assignment on my blog, and prepped my kids for two minutes about their task.

They were to visit my blog to find the assignment, follow the directions, and submit what they learned. They had two options to turn in their work: leave a comment or share a Google Doc.

What Happened

- Fifteen students left comments on the blog post
- Eight students worked through Google Docs and shared them with me
- One student was emailed the assignment since he was sick (still waiting for him to complete)
- All students in class completed the task without me there
- Variety of responses from students

Need to Tweak

- Students who chose to respond with a comment were able to instantly view their classmates' responses on the blog
- Do I want conversation between students in the comment section of the blog post?
- Students who submitted their learning through Google Docs received an embedded feedback from me in their Google Docs
- Do I want to provide individual feedback to all students? Is it necessary for this activity?

Verdict

I'd love to do something like this again. Luckily, the website was provided to me by my resources and it was completely student appropriate. Finding the right site to direct students to, and also have it pertain to our classroom learning will most likely be the obstacle that would prevent me from doing this type of computer lab activity soon.

Jeopardy Labs

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This is... not PowerPoint! (I totally lifted that from the site)

Found a potentially great resource for my classroom, which I've already shared with the other teachers in my building, that creates interactive Jeopardy templates.

JeopardyLabs features free template creation, and automatic sharing once the template is saved. You can search for existing templates, and also share yours. Each template you create is password protected, so you have the opportunity to go back and edit it later.

One of the things that drew me to this tool was the fact that it lends itself perfectly to my Promethean Board. It also features a scoreboard for teams where you can keep track of points.

It's free to create templates, but there is a donation required for signing up and getting an account, which features an easy way to view all of your created templates in one place and a "fancy template manager" as well. I think it's a great cause and it's by donation, so you can give anywhere between $1 and $20.

I'm considering making a donation as I'll be using this to help a few of my students practice for their Battle of the Books competition coming up in April. We'll see how this shakes out.