"Creativity is contagious, pass it on." ~Albert Einstein

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

A couple of weeks ago, one of our Kindergarten teachers came to me and asked if I had any ideas on how to integrate some technology into a unit they were doing on Penguins.  It caught me off guard a little bit, but my response was something like, "Why don't we email the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha and see if someone would Skype with us about their Penguins?"
I sent the email, and within two hours we had a response from the official Penguin Keeper!  She agreed to Skype with us and answer the questions that our Kindergarteners had about Penguins.

What's holding you back from sending a simple email or making a phone call to a professional in your community? In your state?  In the United States?  In another country?   I have had great success when asking others to share knowledge of their profession with our students.                                                        
Go ahead, do it!  It will take you five minutes to compose that email.   Take a chance.  Shoot for the moon.  Think of the authentic experience you will be creating for your classroom! 

Enjoy, engage, and empower your students!




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Wednesday, January 23, 2013

I was having a conversation with one of our wonderful first grade teachers named Charis High a couple of weeks ago.  During our conversation, Mrs. High mentioned that her students would be studying Ocean habitats soon and that it would "cool"  to Skype with someone that lived near an ocean.  If I had had that conversation five years ago, I wouldn't have been able to help at all.  But thanks to my wonderful PLN on Twitter, I remembered that one of my members, Holly Clark, lives in California.  She had responded to a tweet I sent out earlier this year asking for PLN members to Skype in and explain to my second graders how they use Skype in their jobs.

Mrs. High contacted Ms. Clark, the gears started turning and before you knew it, we had planned to video chat with Ms. Clark via FaceTime while she stood on the beach in California!

Mrs. High and her students prepared for our virtual visit by brainstorming questions that they would like to ask Ms. Clark.  The students were so excited when Mrs. High unveiled the news to them. Especially when they realized that our call would take place on the 100th day of school!   A majority of the students in Mrs. High's class had never been to the ocean, so this was going to be a great experience for them.

We made the call this morning and it was AWESOME!  As soon as Ms. Clark answered her phone a student exclaimed, "I can hear the ocean!"  I will have to admit, I have only been to the ocean once and the first time I heard it, I was enthralled!  Think of all the students that heard the ocean for the first time while sitting in their classroom in Nebraska.  Ms. Clark did a wonderful job teaching and showing us several different things about the ocean as she stood along the Pacific Coast Highway answering our questions.

We had an authentic learning activity today utilizing a relatively simple technology tool.  Whether you use Skype, a Google Hangout our FaceTime you can literally take your class anywhere in the world.  It's not rocket science.  We didn't have a major project planned, we weren't using a cart of laptops or iPads, we simply tied what the students were doing in Science and made it "come to life."  Sure we could have just looked in their textbook.  We could have pulled up a video on YouTube or watched a documentary on oceans.  Instead we chose to let the students experience firsthand what it was like to be standing next to the Pacific Ocean.  Thank you Mrs. High and Ms. Clark for providing such a wonderful opportunity for our students!

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Thursday, January 17, 2013


I apologize if you were looking for real Monsters.  You won't find them here!   What you will find is an awesome project that we did with our 3rd graders that deals with writing about Monsters. And it all came about because of a connection I made on Twitter.
This summer I created a sign-up site for Mystery Skypes and was interested in giving credit to the original "founder" of the Mystery Skype idea.  I did a little digging and eventually found that person.  Her name is Caren MacConnell and she is an awesome Tech Coach in New Jersey.  Well, long story short, we exchanged a couple of emails and she told me about an awesome project that she had done in the past called the "Monster Project" and asked if I would be interested in participating.   It piqued my interest and I was all in!  
The "Monster Project" is a descriptive writing project.  Students from different locations are paired up, each student has to describe a monster in writing that they imagine, then draw it.  Teachers in each 3rd grade collected the descriptive writings and we "snail mailed" them to New Jersey.  Mrs. MacConnell's 3rd grade classes did the same.  Students then draw a picture based on their partners descriptive writing.  After each student finished their drawing,  Skype sessions were planned so that each student could share their Monster with their assigned partner to see how well they did with their descriptive writing.

Well, we had one major problem while trying to complete our project.   Hurricane Sandy got in the way!  Mrs. MacConnell's classes were affected by this disastrous storm and were out of school for two weeks!  Once they returned back to school, we had a hard time finding a time before Christmas break to share our drawings, so we kicked off the new year with some amazing Skype sessions!
The students were excited to see how well their partners followed their descriptive writings while drawing their Monsters.  Some of the Monster drawings could have passed for cousins, some could have passed for twins!
I love the fact that this project made students focus on the writing process and how they really needed to pay attention to details when writing.  Even better was the fact that we were able to integrate a very simple tool in Skype.  Students were not only working on their writing skills, but their speaking skills as well.

Go ahead, contact a teacher you know from another state and ask them if they would be interested in participating in a "Monster Project."  This is such an easy way to integrate a simple technology into your classroom while working on writing!

Comparing our Monsters




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Saturday, January 12, 2013

Tons of possibilities for the classroom!  That was my first thought when I ran across ifaketext.com.  This site will allow you to create a fake iPhone conversation. You could use this in any curricular area, all you need is a little imagination.  The tool is very easy to use.  Simply enter the name of the person sending the text message, choose a carrier, then add the conversation between the characters you choose.

In the example below I created a fake conversation between Thomas Jefferson and Meriwether Lewis:
 

Once your students generate their screenshot, they have a variety of options when it comes to sharing their image with you:
 
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Saturday, January 5, 2013

One of the best things about my job as the pK-12 Integration Specialist for the #aurorahuskies is that I get to start every Monday in Mrs. Arndt's Kindergarten classroom.  Plain and simple, kindergarteners ROCK!  Mrs Arndt is doing some amazing things in regards to technology integration and I love being along for the ride.  To see some of the things her students are doing with technology, I know that they will be well prepared for their futures!

An interesting thing happened a couple of weeks before Christmas break.   I received a tweet from Melissa Scott (@mmreesescott) an awesome Integration Specialist in Northern Virginia.  She wanted to do a #mysteryskype with some of our kinders.  Mystery Skypes are an amazing event, but I knew that there were some skills that the kindergarteners would struggle with so I suggested we modify our Skype sessions into something very basic for Kindergarteners. 

I created a Google Doc to plan our Kinder Skypes and away we went!  I had three of our teachers sign up to do the Kinder Skypes and Melissa did some great organizing and planning on her end.  Before you knew it, we were ready to press the " Video Call" button. 

Before we Skyped, I had the opportunity to teach our students about the tool that we were using and even showed them where the other students were located by using Google Earth.   We talked about how to effectively use the tool and then made our call.  The students were SO excited!  Each student was able to introduce themselves and then each class took turns sharing interesting facts about our respective states.  We learned some pretty cool things about Virginia! We wrapped up our Skypes by singing a class song and then gave a "tour" of what our classrooms looked like by simply holding up and turning our devices. 
I know it might not sound like much, but what an amazing experience for these kindergarten students!  Many had never used Skype before, let alone heard of it.  We modeled and utilized a great tool with our students. 

Teach your students how to effectively use the tools that you are integrating into your curriculum.  Empower them with a skill set that will engage, inspire, and teach.
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