Educreations Week

I love Educreations! When I was a regular classroom teacher I used it in a couple different subjects so students could demonstrate their learning in a few areas.  Now that I'm a computer teacher, I wanted to bring the same love to the masses.

I thought Educreations Week would be one week, but it turned into two weeks.  I realized anew that students need time to learn new skills and younger ones need lots of time to process step by step instructions.  Every elementary student in my school (K-6) experimented with Educreations and many of them built their first presentations.

Each grade level took on different tasks based on what their teachers wanted or what I felt they could handle.  Some students knew what to do from exposure last year, and some were clueless.  Some needed me to walk through every minute step (multiple times) and some just needed me to say, "Create an Educreations about..."

In general, here are the steps we took.
1.  Decide on your topic.  (We used plants, animals, Native Americans, and something learned in a different class.)
2.  Go to Safari and find pictures to fit your topic.
3.  Save your pictures to the Photo Stream.  (In my younger grades, this was the entire first class period.)
4.  Put your pictures on Educreations.
5.  Record your voice and pen markings.
6.  Share it with classmates.  (This was done different ways.  In some classes, we utilized the AppleTV. In some classes, I had them walk to each other's iPads to view.  In other classes, we took advantage of the fact that they all used the same Educreations account to view other presentations via the Cloud.)

While the videos with photos were fun, I actually loved the student-created pictures.  Kids drew pyramids and they drew Native American homes.  It was great to see the things they made!  I also had one student talk about hearts.  He found a heart picture and kept changing the size of it to make it look like it was thumping.

Overall, it was very instruction-heavy with me creating tons of example presentations, but it was so much fun!  Now, my hope is that the students will take this new-found knowledge back to their regular teachers and beg to make Educreations videos to demonstrate learning!

Kids Don't Learn from These Interactive Apps!

At lunch the other day, one of our teachers told me how her students weren't learning from Tiny Countries. Apparently, students only need to guess and click their way through the game. If you get a question wrong, it's no big deal. Just click the only other option and run with it.  When the game is over, the kids can't tell you much, if anything, about geography, but they had fun clicking through the game.

I think there is a tendency for all of us when we delve into educational technology to let the program do the teaching.  We find a great app, software, or web site and think the students will learn from it.  Maybe they will... but often they will find ways to cut corners or beat the system.

I remember when we first downloaded Mathemagics to our iPads.  I gave the kids time to explore and enjoy the app, hoping they would learn a few multiplication tricks along the way.  What they learned (within minutes of getting their fingers on it) was a loophole in the system and how to "cheat" their way through the program.

Knowing that many of our students take the path of least resistance (like I admittedly do), here are some ways to help students learn AND use their digital tools.

1. I think it's important to use apps like Tiny Countries or Mathemagics as review, not as the main teaching.  Teach your math facts, your geography lesson, or whatever you are doing, then give them 10 minutes on the app of your choice.  This way, you still get to teach them and monitor their review of the information.
2. Turn it into a presentation instead of a game.  You probably know by now that I love Educreations, but there are other great presentation apps out there.  (StoryKit, Haiku Deck, Show Me, and SlideRocket to name a few) Find one or two you like and allow students to use them to present their new-found knowledge. You can expect the first round of presentations to take a day or so to create, but once students figure out the program, they can whip up a good one in a few minutes.  This also pushes for higher level thinking than just the rote recitation of facts.

Last week, I met with a different colleague about some courses she'll be picking up next year.  She wants to add a digital component and was asking for advice.  My biggest piece of advice? "Don't let the technology dictate your course. Let the content drive your direction and we'll find technology tools to help you along the way."

When you find a great digital tool, find ways to use it.  Just don't fall for the trap of thinking an app can teach the kids better than you can.

Educreations and KidBlog

A while back I wrote a post about how I love using Educreations and KidBlog together to assess student learning in math.  Recently, someone asked me how that works and to simplify it for first graders.

In my new technology role, I don't teach any regular classes, so my student blogging days are on hold for now.  That means I haven't done this in a while.  The good news is that it's like riding a bike.  I picked it up again pretty quickly and made a short video to show you how to do it.

The steps are numerous and a bit confusing.  All I can say is that it's worth trying.  Practice yourself till you feel comfortable.  Then, write the instructions on the board for them to follow.  If you're with little kids, trying printing the icons and placing them next to the instructions.  (This link will get you to the post you see in the video.)

I hope this helps.  If not, ask away.


NOTE: I apologize for the low-tech recording session.  I propped one iPad on books to record another iPad. I was also in a room with noisy fans and air ducts.  There has to be a better way...

One Week Down

I'm one week into my new role and it's been a whirlwind.  I'm glad it's the weekend!

When we went into Christmas Break, my students had no idea what was happening.  That news got broken to them in an email the weekend before school started up again.  That meant that Monday was a day of talking through the process with my students.  They had a chance to meet their new teacher (Jessica) and introduce themselves to her.  Since Jessica wanted to see the iPads in action, we used Educreations and StoryKit for kids to introduce themselves.

Monday through Wednesday were used to transition Jessica into the role of the teacher in the classroom.  That meant that each day she saw more time in front of the kids while we spent a lot of planning period time talking through procedures, asking and answering questions, and getting her up to speed on everything behind the scenes.  I know I forgot how much they DON'T teach you in college about teaching. Jessica is going to be a great teacher and blessing in those kids' lives!

I also got to get some fingerprinting done for a must-have background check.  Never can be too cautious these days, I suppose. I had the joy of setting up and running a webinar in my room for a staff meeting as well.  

This transition time also involves meeting my new boss. Joe just moved here from Tennessee to become our new Technology Director.  We've spent a bit of time talking tech stuff, and I admit I've been lost for some of it.  There was one time I told him that he "might as well had said that last sentence in Russian." I recognized FAT32 and quickly got lost from there. I'm so happy to have Joe here getting our technology focused in one direction!

I also have a new office to move into.  The office is attached to the library, so it doubles as a library storage area, parent volunteer work space, and who knows what else?  My stuff was dumped in, and I'm trying to carve my niche into one half of the room. It took a week, but I have a computer set up, and the room looks livable.

By Thursday, I settled into my role of elementary computer teacher.  I had 4th, 3rd, and 1st graders that first day.  Today is Kindergarten, followed by 2nd grade.  I found a great web site for digital literacy and citizenship curriculum called Common Sense Media. This week's lesson for K-2 was about where to go while online, equating it to a field trip.  Well done.  For 3rd and 4th, I did more of an introductory lesson.  They had to type me a letter on Word, then they had an introduction to Sumdog.  Both levels got some typing practice as well:  Type to Lean Jr for K-2 and Mavis Beacon for 3-4.

So far, the biggest challenge is teaching the little ones.  I have been type-cast as an upper elementary teacher my entire career.  I started in 4th grade for two years, then I've been in 5th and 6th for the last 16 1/2 years. Add in my six years as a middle school youth leader, and I have no idea what to do with the kids under 44 inches tall. There were definitely some fun moments this week.

I will be adding middle schoolers to the mix soon.  They are on J-term for another week.  This means that next week will be a bit easier.  I'll have plenty of time for research, planning, and starting to help administration on various projects.

Educreations and a Parent Email

This morning, I had a student come in early to work on long division.  We spent about 15 minutes together, and I think I was able to help her figure out her problems.  However, I could tell that she still had a lingering doubt that she had mastered the skill. In my followup email to her parents, I struggled with how to put her mistake into words.  Then, it dawned on me -- EDUCREATIONS!  I was able to create a video and link it to my email in mere minutes. I hope it can help the parents understand the long division issues better.

Feel free to watch the video here.

How do you use Educreations to help make your job easier?

KidBlog and Educreations: A Beautiful Combination!

In my attempt to combine language arts and math, I have converted our note-taking process out of the spiral notebook and on the web. We're using KidBlog, which I'm learning to love.

Imagine a blog site built just for students to use.  However, it looks and acts just like WordPress.  My personal blog is on WordPress, and I love working within that format!  In addition, the blog is private, presumably only in our class. I love the privacy and security! Toward the end of this post, I'm going to give you links to good examples.  You'll have to let me know if you can access them.

The teacher creates the class and uploads a class list with passwords.  The kids log in and start typing away.  So far, we've done simple things. This last post was "summarize chapter three."  In essence, students merely wrote the lesson headings rather than really summarize.  Soon I'll be giving them harder writing assignments.  "Tell me the steps in long division."  I'm looking forward to them putting these steps into words. 

Since I am a blogger (maintaining both a professional and personal blog), I want to see my students doing their writing online as well.  Publishing online is a great practice to learn in a safe environment and helps them see that their work is important to others.

I've added another piece to the puzzle -- an Educreations presentation.  I give the students a specific problem they need to solve and talk through using Educreations. This gives me a chance to see exactly how a student solves a problem and hopefully gives me the reasoning too.  

In one blog post, I can read, see, and hear how a student solves a problem and can connect writing and math together.

I had one glitch connecting Educreations and KidBlog.  The steps to embed the video to the blog were complicated for a 10 year old.  Since it's set up like WordPress, I could figure it out, but it was too many steps for the students to put together.  So, I emailed both companies.  Chris at Educreations, Matt at KidBlog, and I had multiple emails back and forth (and I assume between them) to make the process easier.  Once again, I love how these developers work along with teachers to make sure things work easily in our rooms. 

Feel free to look at some of the best blog entries below.
http://kidblog.org/6thGradeAdvancedMath/e82b9e69-04ba-4dbf-b388-c856d50200df/chapter-3-summary/#comments
http://kidblog.org/5thGradeAdvancedMath/9aae1923-d97b-428b-948b-4130119cb357/what-i-learned-in-chapter-3/

Gearing Up For Back to School

It's been quite a summer for me.  I jokingly call it the laziest summer of my life.  The weekend that school let out, I was hospitalized with Guillain-Barre Syndrome and spent the rest of the summer recovering and recouping.  Needless to say, school was the last thing on my mind for most of the summer.

In less than two weeks, I need to be at an inservice day, so it's time to start thinking about school starting.  Get ready for some random thoughts.

I have been given the title of Tech Lead this year, which means that I get a five hours a week to read about technology happenings in the world and try to implement them in our school.  My first job in this role is to lead a round table discussion about our acceptable use policy for technology.  Please feel free to read what we have and make comments on the Google doc.  

If you've been reading this blog, you know that we are an iPad school.  The iPads were used well in 5th and 6th grade, but we found that they were not quite so well received in middle school and high school.  Also, we had a number of 6th graders bringing Kindle Fires and other technology.  For this reason, we are morphing into combination of iPads and BYOD.  Here is an interesting article about how BYOD is working in other schools.  I intend to sit down and read this closely, taking copious notes, before school starts.  I think it will be a good foundation to build our program on.  Your thoughts? How does your school focus on BYOD?

My course load has changed a bit.  I will be teaching Advanced Math for 5th and 6th grades.  You know that I struggled last year to excellently integrate technology into my math curriculum.  I will be using Kid Blog as an online math journal for kids to take notes.  As we get comfortable in this setting, I expect to be able to use this in a flipped classroom model as well as having students use Educreations to put their examples on their blogs.  How do you use Kid Blog?

Question?  Does your school issue email addresses to each student?  What is the benefit of each student having a school-issued email address?  Since we are using Google Drive this year, I am pushing for each student (and teacher) to have a school-issued gmail address.  Can you give me any ammo for my discussions?

Finally, I thought briefly about having no posters on my walls this year... just QR Codes to poster links.  Then, I realized that it's probably not aesthetically pleasing.  Oh well!

Enjoy the last few weeks of freedom.  Thanks for reading and commenting!