Kindergarten Day in the Lab

One of my favorite days of the week is Thursday's this year! Why? Because that is when my Kindergartners come! I had a little trouble in the past creating lessons for my kinders that weren't too simple. I don't want them to spend their computer time learning to click and drag or find their letters on the keyboard. Yes, I do believe those things are important, but I feel like that "stuff" can be incorporated in with more thought provoking lessons. When my students enter the lab I want them to be engaged in inquiring, analyzing, collaborating activities...yes, even my kindergartners!

A couple weeks ago, my kinders started a partner research project on the animal of their choice. All I gave them to begin was a pencil, paper, and a few links they might find useful. Ready, set...GO! I only see my kinders for an hour a week, so going into it I planned for multiple weeks.

The first week the students chose their animal and wrote a few things they already knew about it. They then came up with 2 questions they had about their animal.

Writing what we already know and 2 questions we have about our animal.

Week two, they began researching their animals. Along with finding the answers to their questions, they also had a place on their paper for WOW facts. These were things that really stood out and they would like to share with others.

Researching our animals, using Big Universe, Pebble Go, Discovery Education, & Enchanted Learning.

The third week the real fun began! Students got to use their Discovery Education accounts to create an interactive board in Board Builder. They are in the process, now, of putting all of their information onto their boards, along with some awesome videos, images, and sound effects from Discovery.

Building our boards using Discovery Education Board Builder.

Next week, we will be finishing our boards, and the students will become the teachers! They will use their boards to teach me and the class about their animals.
This is the first time that I have done a complete research project with my kindergarten students and they have blown me away! I truly believe that your students can accomplish anything you believe they can. It does take patience but it is so worth it! I am so excited to see their "lessons" on animals next week!

We Wove Weebly!

Sorry about the title. I just had to do it! My fifth grade students were recently researching various cultures around the globe and the affect that they had on the American culture. Rather than have the students make a boring PowerPoint or even the usual Prezi or Glog (which are all great but we use them a lot), I decided to take it one step further and have them create their own websites using Weebly for Education. They turned out AHHH-mazing! I was very impressed with my fifth grade kiddos! This was a very student centered project. The only requirements I gave them was that their website had to have at least 5 pages and 1 of those pages had to answer the question "How did this culture affect American culture?" The rest was completely up to them...the webmasters! For the first few minutes they flopped around like fish out of water because they aren't used to that kind of freedom of learning on their own (which opened my eyes greatly...but that's another post in itself.) Once they got with their groups of 3 or 4 and started organizing and coming up with their ideas on what they wanted to learn about their culture, they were off and running and the creativity was flowing! Weebly is a free website where I, as a teacher, created an account, and then had up to 40 student accounts. The websites can be published as private and are password protected so they are not out there for everyone to see. With the simple drag and drop interface it was easy for the kids to customize their pages with text and images. The kids had a great time with these websites and they presented their cultures like pros! Here's some screenshots below of their great creations!

Prezenting Prezi!

Ok, so don't get me wrong...PowerPoint is very cool. With all the animations and transitions and hyperlinks...yea. But have you ever wanted more? Last year I attended an awesome 2 day conference called NCTIES (North Carolina Technology In Education Society). It was my second time and wowza! I loved it! Being around people who speak my language...AWESOME! **Squirrel** So, back to the point...At that conference I learned about an wonderful online, free tool called Prezi. It is so much fun! With Prezi, you can create multimedias, similar to PowerPoint, but sooo much better! They zoom and twist, incorporate videos, photos and links! Instead of having slides, you have one space, kinda like a table top, where you can place everything and see it's relation to everything else. By incorporating frames and paths (which are what make it twist and turn and zoom) your Prezi moves on it's own. My students love it! They say it's like making their own movie! It can be a little tricky until you get the hang of it, so I haven't used it with any of my students younger than 2nd grade. But this year, I plan to do a simple Prezi with my first graders, who, last year in Kindergarten, created complete PowerPoints with transitions, photos, and sound. I think they're ready!
Now, there are 3 different licenses, 1 free and 2 that'll cost ya, but if you sign up with a valid school email, then you get the mid-grade for free. My kids don't have school emails, grrr, so I just let them  use my email address to sign in and just made a generic password. It's good because I can login and see all of their Prezi's on my profile and track their progress. What's really cool is your Prezi's can be downloaded to your computer and viewed offline at anytime! The creators of Prezi are always coming up with really cool advancements to the tool so there are always more neat things that you can do with them!

What's that You Say???

Ok, my new love is Voicethread! Voicethread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that can be used to display images, drawings, document, videos...ANYTHING really! I have known about it for quite awhile, but haven't really had the chance to use it with one of my classes until now I do believe I am addicted...(the first step, they say, is admitting your problem!) The application is suuuuuuuper easy! All you have to do is create an account, which of course, is FREE! You then upload whatever you want to display. I did this with my Cross Categorical class on Thanksgiving senses, so they had already typed up a little poem about what they sense on Thanksgiving in the previous week, so I uploaded those. After that you create an identity for each student. You can use their picture or a clip art image, just as long as it represents them. Once that is done the students open the Voicethread and they can then record what they want to say about their item. For example, we were working on fluency with the Cross Cat class, so they read their Thanksgiving Senses poem. Then they can comment, using voice recording, webcam, or text on other students slides. You can then decide whether you want the Voicethread to remain private or allow others to view and comment on the slides. You, as the creator, can also moderate the comments to make it safe! Very collaborative...Very interactive....VERY FUN! Below is our Thanksgiving Senses Voicethread! I was so proud of the students! I'd love to hear how you would use Voicethread in your classroom! Comment below!