What 4 iPads can do

My heartfelt thank you goes to both SBISD's J. Landon Short and Donor's Choose for providing me with an iPad mini and 2 iPads.  Add that to my teacher iPad and I have a genuine station!  Finally!  I have applied again to Donor's Choose because it is time consuming doing one's best work to be published.  The waiting gets tedious for these 7 year olds, but we are ever so grateful for what we do have. 




Imagine my concern when over the Columbus Day holiday, a group of students broke into a classroom that had extra technology in it...technology for the purpose of assisting students who may be struggling with reading and writing.  Then we had theft in my classroom of 2 iTouches, which were eventually returned.  Even as we are working to give more access and opportunities, students are confused enough to take that away from the environment.  So we continue to discuss good citizenship, and I have changed where the technology is kept during the nights and weekends and holidays.  Yes, Monday mornings will now be about recharging devices, but that is a consequence that students will understand.

Without delay we began use of the devices for science demos, math explanations and digital storytelling.  The students are learning how important preparation is before publishing!  Awesome lesson!  Students are clamoring to show me edited writing and using vocabulary such as, "I am working on the resolution now" and "I tried to explain 3 digit addition with regrouping, but I was not quite successful."

We have had a few fits while using Telegammi (with thanks to Angelique Moulton for sharing this app) in publishing Flat Stanley stories in the style of author, Jeff Brown.  Telegammi is limited in length, and some students took this personally, instead of saving, and then finishing with a second video. Other students are competently telling and retelling their stories.  Here are a couple of working segments.



Flat Stanley

Flat Rosie

Conversations such as,"Does your story follow the rubric?" and "If your story shows Flat Stanley as a criminal, is that in keeping with the Flat Stanley character?" have invited rigor to the exciting use of technology. 

Students constructing their own understanding

How could we use questions or problems to assist in helping students construct their own understanding?
"Education research has shown that an effective technique for developing problem-solving and critical-thinking skills is to expose students early and often to “ill-defined” problems in their field. An ill-defined problem is one that addresses complex issues and thus cannot easily be described in a concise, complete manner. However educators are also required to have specific objectives and outcomes for students to reach. Often students stray from or miss the path you would like like them to take to reach your objectives and outcomes. How would you facilitate and guide students, during a project, who are “lost or off track” to help them reach the stated course objectives and outcomes?"

My homework for Week 4 is to consider the above.  It goes perfectly with what I found from last spring, when organizing photos from a recent trip: a video of students working in groups to answer a complicated math problem.  

I interviewed the students as they were busily using and creating representation of items in the problem. The question involved how many given items would be divided equally into 3 baskets. There were many different ways to solve the problem, especially since 2nd graders had limited exposure to formal lessons on division.  I interviewed a boy who had flat checked out, and was designing a basket with blocks.  It was interesting listening to myself try to get him back on track.  His partner had solved the problem without him, and he didn't care.  I think if he had seen himself in the video, he would have paid more attention in the next opportunity to shine mathematically.

Others had divided the problem evenly into tasks, having no idea how to mentally solve it without concrete objects.  So they were all super busy, but they took so long creating the visuals that they ran out of time.

Another table had self-divided into two groups who were attacking the challenge differently.  One GT student quickly mentally calculated and colored in a graphic, then back tracked to show a more hands on explanation.  The others used blocks instead of laborious other means of creating manipulatives.  They also discussed and paid strict attention to the tally marks.  This table was entirely successful.

All of the students in the class were successful in some way.  Was the teacher successful?  I think the follow through was missing.  I wished I had highlighted the successful and unsucessful efforts through showing the video, and asking the students to evaluate and propose suggestions for each group.

What is needed for my future problem-solving and critical-thinking opportunities is time.  I need time for the set-up, the exploration of a solution, the solving and explaining, and then the sharing and evaluating with a relevant audience.  

coLAR Mix and International Dot Day

Just had to share about a great activity that happened during the Digital Storytelling ACE program.  After we read Ish by Peter Reynolds and talked about International Dot Day, the students partnered to decorate a dot provided by the coLAR Mix app.  They opened the app on the iPad and hovered over their dots.  The dots came to life!  Spiraling spheres of various sizes entertained the students with music coming on and off.  That app is enthralling!

I'm trying to print the bird coloring page for the app as that looks even cooler.  

Building Rapport with the Distance Learner

Building rapport in distance education sounds a lot like building a physical classroom community and atmosphere, just with technology.  This reminds me of the SAMR model with the substitution enhancement.

Instead of sitting on the floor together in community circle, we could either type an introduction, share through a Google hangout or post an avatar with description.  

In watching my son take distance classes years ago in high school, this community building was not done.  It was very difficult to communicate with the teacher, so I also know how important viewing the teacher as approachable is.

Timely feedback, encouraging words, an understanding online countenance, and willingness to bend for emergencies are all vital in running a distance course.

Assignment for week 2 of How To Teach Online

First 2nd Saturday Showcase

Today I attended a great professional development led by my friends Annie and Jeanette!
http://edtech.springbranchisd.com/educationaltechnology/edtechnewsevents/tabid/7138/default.aspx

 They started with talking about the SAMR model with this video:



 We considered how to redefine, modify, augment or substitute stations with technology for the tradition pen and paper stations. Here are some suggestions.

 Encourage students to write and submit reviews and poetry to http://www.stonesoup.com/stone-soup-contributor-guideline/

 Have a website that is easily found outside of school. Annie uses the NHE campus website and her page is easily found by searching for Ms. Mitchell's website NHE 

http://nhe.springbranchisd.com/Curriculum/ThirdGrade/AnnieMitchell/tabid/30171/Default.aspx

Sign up the class for SumDog
http://www.sumdog.com/
In playing the games I've discovered some of it will be over the 2nd grader's math levels.  Sometimes I clicked on games and got the message that I didn't have access.  I am not very sure on this one.

For student created books, try http://epubbud.com/
This looked very exciting for publishing and consuming ebooks!

For allowing students to show what they know:

and

http://www.showme.com/

And my new friend, Sydnie, at Valley Oaks, suggested this for Singapore Math practice:
http://thesingaporemaths.com/
While there is no Primary 2, there is Primary 3. 

So, thanks for a fun Saturday morning!

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What is your favorite team?... at AnswerGarden.ch.