Small Town Tech

DailyBooth for the Classroom?

2010-08-12T09:01:00.000-05:00

The idea of taking an image of a student daily, weekly or monthly is actually a neat way to capture the changes in your students throughout a school year. This is not an new idea but many school filters do not allow access to social websites like Dailybooth and youtube. So, how can we do something similar to Dailybooth in an educational environment without accessing a social network like youtube or dailybooth? By using the tools available on your computer and school.

THE EQUIPMENT

Use a growth chart, a digital camera, and video editing tool such as Windows MovieMaker or Photostory2. If you want to use an online application, I would suggest something like Voicethread or Animoto. Those are usually safe online educational applications.

THE STEPS

Decide when you are going to take the pictures; daily, weekly, or monthly. Place one student at a time beside the growth chart and take their picture. Create a file for each student on your computer, so you can move the digital picture from the camera to the computer. Open moviemaker and import the media pictures for one student from the file you created on the computer. (Older students can create the movie themselves. Classroom teachers might want to work with their school's computer teacher to complete this project during lab time.) Drag the photos to the timeline in moviemaker. Add a title, transitions if wanted and any audio. Save as a movie.

If you have the capabilities at your school you could even consider burning the file to dvd in May to create a precious Mother's Day gift.

Here is an example posted by eoraphaely on youtube entitled, "Time Lapse-Grey Raphaely-11 mos", as an example for my early education teachers.

FURTHERING THE PROJECT
Take this digital project a step further for older students by recording the height of your student perhaps at the beginning of the year, middle of the year and end of the year. How many inches your student has grown? Include all of your student's totals to explore minimum number, maximum number, mean, median, mode, and range. Graph the results.

Or, have students plot their growth results on a free pediatric growth chart such as this one. Then, use the data on the chart to talk about percentages.

Older students could even compare and contrast the differences they see in themselves throughout the year after they create their movie project. Students could digitally record their thoughts and add the digital comparisons or contrasts to the moviemaker project.

Would rather not photograph each student? Elementary students could take turns taking a picture each day of the same scenery outside the school. Viewing the film will be a great way for the children to discuss seasonal changes.

Here is an example posted on youtube by eirikso called, "One year in 40 Seconds."

Another spin on this project might be for upper elementary, middle school or high school students studying a famous geographic area. Students could find as many images as possible of the area that were taken over time. Make sure to include maps. Put the images into the movie application following a chronological time period. Narrate the film sharing details about the changes the area has gone through over time.

Have you Filled a Bucket Today?

2010-02-12T05:08:00.000-06:00

Today's lesson is one in making others feel good about themselves and will fit well into your character education curriculum.

After reading the book, "Have You Filled a Bucket Today? A Guide to Daily Happiness for Kids," the class brain stormed a list of personality traits. Students came up with words like: kind, nice, respectful, responsible, caring, friendly, helpful, and so on. Each student was asked to expand upon his or her sentence in saying something similar to, "Sally is respectful because she never interrupts people." Instead of just saying, "Sally is respectful." If you have time, I would recommend using a template which has each student in the class listed. Encouraging students to write something nice to say about everyone by using the description words from the brainstorming activity.

After editing sentences, students design their own bucket in a paint/draw program. The images for this particular project were created in Pixie. Whatever you have access to will work. Team with the art teacher in your building and have students draw a bucket in art class then scan the image into the computer. Or during a reduce, reuse and recycle unit, have students build and design their bucket by reusing discarded items like an empty milk carton. Then, use a digital camera to take a picture.

Hopefully, you have access to a student drive and can create a single folder to save the images to. If not, you might invest in a thumb drive for projects such as this. I think you will find uploading images to the internet a little quicker than going into each student's folder and uploading one at a time.

Upload everyone's bucket to Voicethread. Then using a microphone, record the students reading their positive comment about each of their peers. Thus, filling one's bucket.

***With Valentine's Day approaching, you could easily turn this into a holiday lesson by drawing hearts instead of buckets.

Word of the Day

2010-02-11T03:03:00.000-06:00

Have fun introducing new vocabulary to your class by incorporating digital storytelling techniques. Try this. Present a word and allow students to use the new vocabulary word in a sentence. For today's example, I used Microsoft Powerpoint to create a my vocabulary word as an image. Then, I uploaded that image to Voicethread. All that is left now is to have students record themselves using the word of the day in a complete sentence.

SMART notebook Lesson: Verbs

2009-11-15T21:13:00.000-06:00

My new district is a SMART district. Let me clarify. We solely use SMART products such as interactive whiteboards, Airliners and Response systems. When I go in to a classroom to model a lesson for teacher training, I have been trying to create resource files that apply to the curriculum my teachers are currently teaching their students.

So, perhaps a few of you can benefit from the files I am creating for my teachers? This first file is a collection of resources I gathered in a notebook file for teaching verbs. (You will need to have the notebook software from SMART downloaded and installed on your computer in order to view this file. )

I hope you find something useful. Let me know if you have anything helpful to add to the file!

Mmm, Marshmallows!

2009-09-07T13:45:00.000-05:00

Help your primary students learn the phonemic sound of letter M by using digital storytelling. Present your preschool or kindergarten students with the following sentence to complete by illustration. "Mmm! My favorite way to eat marshmallows..."

I like using Tuxpaint to allow students to draw on the computer because it is free. Use whatever is available to your students. Or, have them color on a piece of paper. Then, you can use a scanner to bring the paper can crayon image into a picture format the computer can recognize.

Log into voicethread.com and upload your students creations. Record students and share your final product with parents. If you have never been to voicethread you will need to sign up. I would suggest using the pro educator account for $10.00.

Below is an example...

I would love to hear how you are integrating technology to teach phonemic awareness in your classroom.

Goodbye Summer: A VoiceThread Activity

2009-08-12T19:53:00.000-05:00

Need a Back to School writing activity? Perhaps your class can send Summer a farewall?

Have your students write "Goodbye Summer" poems. Once the poetry is complete, students can illustrate the program using an program like TuxPaint. Then, you can combine all the poems in a class VoiceThread, Photostory, Smilebox, Mixbook, or PowerPoint and share with parents at the back to school night.

Back 2 School Activity: Venn Diagram

2009-08-10T22:45:00.000-05:00

To help classmates learn a little about each other, try this quick and easy technology lesson plan. Place students together in groups of two and have them record similarities and differences about themselves. Give the students a few questions to ask each other to get the conversions going. You can even try turning this activity into a contest to see which group can list the most similarities and differences on their diagram.

Creating the Venn Diagram can be done with a variety of software such as Inspiration, Powerpoint, and Microsoft Word. If using PowerPoint or Microsoft Word have your students use the draw tool to create the first circle. Then simply copy and paste to create an equal sized circle. Have the students click and drag to overlap the circles. Each student can fill their circle in with their favorite color. Then they should set the transparency to more than 50%, so the middle of the circles will be visible. (Right click and select "format the autoshape". Under "fill color" is the transpancy option.) Students can draw a text box or use Wordart to type on their Venn Diagram. Groups that finish before others can insert clipart that goes along with what has been shared on the diagram.

Welcome! 2009-2010

2009-08-09T16:18:00.000-05:00

I hope this post finds you ready for another engaging year in your classroom after a relaxing summer break.

My summer was adventurous. My husband and I moved our family to Missouri at the end of June. I now live in a city of 110,000 + and work for a district serving 14,000 students. Quite a change from my 1A small school of 280 students which included preschool through 12th grade!

I debated most of the summer about what to do with my blog. I thought of just giving it up, but a few of your stories have reached me. I know that there are some of you that do use my blog as a resource for your classrooms. Stories such as those give me inspiration to find time to create and post lessons. Thank you for that inspiration.

It is time to start thinking about back to school lesson plans. Let's start the year off with the classic "All About Me Poster". Although this lesson has been around for awhile, it is one that as teachers it can help us gain some insight into the lives of our students. In the past, I have had students use Inspiration software, Publisher or PowerPoint. I think it would be fun to see what your students can create using web2.0 apps such as Glogster, Animoto or Mixbook.

I have written about Glogster in the past. If you are unfamiliar with this web2.0 application. Glogster can be used to create online interactive posters. To begin this lesson, I would suggest to your class a few categories that you would like to see included on the poster (ie: family, hobbies, music, books etc..) Then, share an example just so students learn little about you. By doing this your students are given some insight on what can be done with Glogster. If you have time, record a welcome video and attach it to your glog. I do suggest that you spend a few minutes having students sketch out with paper and pencil what will be included on their poster and where it will be located at within their glogster. Be sure to include time for your students to share their completed posters with their classmates.

I would love to hear your favorite back to school lesson plans.

Travel Buddy exchange with the UK!

2009-05-07T12:16:00.000-05:00

Dyane Smokorowski has one of the best descriptions of travel buddies on her blog, Making Teachers Nerdy. Dyane wrote... “Travel buddies are exchange projects where a stuffed animal is chosen by a classroom to be an ambassador or an “exchange student” for research in another school anywhere on the globe. Using postal mail, students ship the travel buddy to the partner school. Both classes provide updates on the travel buddy’s visits via email, wikis, or blogs. Upon completion of the visit, the travel buddy is mailed back."

The Honeybees and our third graders were able to partner with schools this year to participate in the travel buddy program.

Our primary students exchanged travel buddies with children in the United Kingdom. Burrton Honeybees (aka First Graders) received Billy the bear from Pontnewydd Primary School in South Wales. Billy is a travel bear. We mailed Burrton Bear over to visit the primary students in UK. Then on May 6th, the Honeybees telaconferenced via Polycom with 5 and 6 year olds from Pontnewydd Primary School.

Our students kept a journal to document Billy's time here in the United States. We put our journal together using Mixbook.

| View Sample Photo Books | Create your own Photo Book

We shared our Mixbook with Pontnewydd Primary School. Then, Pontnewydd displayed two Photo Stories, a map of where the school is located and a powerpoint. Students were able to ask each other questions. My students were amazed to find out that we had to end the session so the Pontnewydd students could go home for the day. (It was only 9:00 a.m. here in Kansas but it was 3:00 p.m. in South Wales.)

Travel Buddy projects can reinforce writing skills, geography and history, math skills and reading. Using telaconferncing tools like Skype or our Polycom is a great way to take a cheap field trip! I hope that is not the last time we have the opportunity to visit with the students at Pontnewydd Elementary.

Water Cycle

2009-04-28T20:33:00.000-05:00

Third grade students worked through the Water Cycle Min Quest. I had my students create a poster explaining the water cycle using Microsoft Publisher. We saved the files as jpegs and uploaded the images to MagToo to create a slideshow.

Other water cycle resources
NASA Water Cycle
Droplet and the water cycle
Water cycle EPA
Region of Waterloo hydrologic cycle
BBC Water Cycle
Sweetwater.org
Water cycle
Southeastwater.com
Water science for schools:Water Cycle

Brainpop jr. water cycle
Brainpop water cycle

I am always looking to add to my resources. Please let me know what great sites you are using in your classrooms.

We Can Help the Earth!

2009-04-23T10:41:00.000-05:00

For an Earth Day project, my primary classes drew pictures in Tuxpaint of what they could do to help the Earth. We put everything together in PhotoStory.

Earth Day Games

2009-04-21T15:06:00.000-05:00

If you are looking for Earth Day Games here are a few that might work well during centers in your classroom this week. Within this list, you will find a variety of games for various elementary ages. Most of these games would also work well on your interactive whiteboard. Please let me know what else you are using with your students, so I can add to this list.

EarthDay FunSchool Games

3R's Most Extreme Challenge

Stop Disasters Game

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle

2009-04-14T15:16:00.000-05:00

Third grade students used Glogster to create virtual posters about reducing, reusing and recycling.

Travel Buddy Exchage

2009-04-07T09:30:00.000-05:00

My third graders recently participated in a travel buddy project with Rowland Norment Elementary School in North Carolina. This was our first travel buddy and I think the students really enjoyed the activity.

Students took Dino, their travel buddy, home each evening along with a school camera. Students were asked to take pictures and journal about their evening with Dino. We shared our Dino adventures on our blog, "Dino Visits Burrton".

I did try to use a variety of slide show applications to share the photographs that students took of Dino to expose myself to some apps and to give teachers an idea of what each had to offer. Animoto is still one of my favorites. Magtoo has many options to choose from when creating a slideshop. It unfortunately may have content on the website that is not child friendly. Voicethread would be a terrific option for a project like this. Easy to use and highly recommend. I struggle using VT in my district. There is something with our firewall that is not allowing my mic to connect to VT.

If you are unfamilar with Travel Buddies. Make sure and check out this informative post on travel buddies by Dyane Smokorowski (Smoke). Mrs. Smoke even included websites to look for travel buddy partners.

Places to find partner schools...
Global School Net
ePals
CAPSpace (for those with Polycoms)
Skype in Schools
Distance Collaboration on Classroom 2.0

Those that Inspire Us

2009-04-05T17:37:00.000-05:00

I visited with Dean Mantz on Friday when I attended an area Technology Integration meeting at ESSDACK. Dean works for USD 376 as an IT and instructional technology integrationist. He also teaches a class at Sterling College entitled, Technology in the Classroom.

Dean recently wrote a blog post about people that inspire us. Dean was kind enough to mention my name along side some women that I respect and consider to be my mentors. Dean, Kevin Honeycutt, Glenn Wiebe, Bentley Richert, and Adrian Howie are just a few male tech integrationists that inspire me. Ginger Lewman, Tammy Worcester, Tuanua Swartz, Dyane Smokorowski, and Mary Fraizer are some of women that I highly respect.

I wanted to pose the question to you. Who inspires you?

Looking for a way to integration this post into your classroom?
Use the above question in your classroom as a digital storytelling project to find out who inspires your students. Re-read this past post for ideas.

BeeBots

2009-04-03T12:25:00.000-05:00

While we have been giving our state assessments, my primary students have been in the gym with Dylan learning basic programming with our five BeeBots. Testing has been underway all week in our elementary lab. So primary classes were moved to our gym, where we had lots of room to use our Beebots. We received our BeeBots by participating in a grant from Wichita State University.

I downloaded and printed BeeBot cards from Sparklebox. We have copies of shapes, colors and the alphabet. We have used the BeeBots before, so students were asked to group the 6in cards together. Then the programmers told their partners where the Beebot would stop. If the programmer was correct, they earned a point. We designated one person in each group to keep a score. The kindergarten/turtles did not keep scores, they just took turns being the programmer.

Students were also asked to lay the alphabet cards down in one line. Then practice their spelling words by using the pause button on the BeeBot to signify a letter selection before moving on to the next selection.

With number cards, student can practice solving math facts. I would suggest using flash cards and asking the programmer to send the Bee-Bot to the correct answer.

Our third grade teacher, Emily Schmidt, uses the Beebots quite a bit in her classroom across the curriculum. She has several resources and video clips of using the beebots on her Weebly page.

BeeBot Resources
Kent ICT
BeeBot Wiki
SparkleBox 1000's of Free printables
Emily Schmidt's BeeBot resources

Save the Words: 5th grade vocabulary lesson

2009-03-30T12:39:00.000-05:00

Wondering where I have been? Sorry, I head up scheduling for our state assessments. And, we are in the middle of giving state assessments. It has been a busy two weeks. This week will hopefully wrap up our reading and math assessments. Yeah!

Today, I wanted to share a fun, simple vocabulary lesson. Open your web browser and head to savethewords.org I read about this site a few weeks ago on freetech4teachers. Save the Words is a collection of words that have been removed from the Oxford Dictionary due to a lack of use. The website lets you adopt one of these forgotten words and bring it back to life.

The site is actually very interesting. So, I made sure to allow time for my fifth graders to look through the site. Then, I asked my students to select a word to adopt. We did not go through the online process of adoption and entering email addresses. Instead, I had my students email their word selection to their classmates using ePals. Each student had to persuade their classmates to help them save their selected word. Basic requirements included having to list the chosen word, give the definition and use it in a sentence. A quick and simple assignment that can turn into something complex if you so chose. Step it up a notch by having students create videos or podcasts persuading the audience to save the word. Even having a debate and letting the audience pick the winner could be another fun option.

Our Animal Stories

2009-03-18T21:47:00.001-05:00

Primary students recently researched and wrote stories about animals. After typing the stories in Microsoft Word, students illustrated their stories using TuxPaint. I collected all the completed stories into one Microsoft Word document and uploaded into Calameo. Calameo is a website where people can publish and share work.

Calameo was very easy to use and it had several privacy options. I did become frustrated with the site. The students stories and pictures are suppose to be on one page. I have fiddled with the document, put in page breaks but I am still having problems. It might work better to convert your document to pdf format first. I usually use pdfonline, but for some reason I am having problems with receiving my completed document. So, I used Zamzar to convert our word document to a pdf. Once I uploaded the pdf to Calameo then the pictures stayed with the text on our animal stories. Click here to view the publication from the Calameo website.

Last year we did something similar only I borrowed an idea from Tammy Worcester and had the students create a zoo exhibit for their animal.

St. Patrick's Day Activities

2009-03-17T16:40:00.000-05:00

For St. Patrick's Day I choose to read the book, The Night Before St. Patrick's Day by Natasha Wing. After reading the book to our primary students, I had the students use TuxPaint to draw a picture of how they would try to catch a leprechaun. Pictures were upload in to Animoto.

Spring MACE '09

2009-03-11T11:25:00.000-05:00

I presented at MACE on March 5th with long time friend and colleague, Tuanua Swartz. I was relieved to see that attendance was great with all the recent talks of budget cuts. The MACE committee did a great job setting up and hosting the technology conference. It was nice to see the expansion over into the K-State Union. Hall Davidson was the Keynote speaker. I would recommend Hall to any of you needing a keynote speaker. He shared a wide variety of applications for classroom use.

I came away with several new contacts and some new resources. I also left knowing that there are still many elementary educators wanting ideas for integrating technology into their classrooms and that I need to do a better job of sharing resources on a regular basis. Thank you to the few of you that stopped to tell me you are using my blog as a resource!

If you were unable to attend MACE, presentation handouts can be found here. Make sure you make arrangements to attend summer MACE in Wichita, Kansas. On a side note, if you are wanting to build up your podcasting resources make sure to check out the first annual podstock which will be hosted in Wichita on May 1st and 2nd. Discover more by joining this Ning community.

Tuanua and I shared information at MACE '09 on building public learning networks and global collaboration. We used prezi and glogster as our main presentation applications. I plan on doing posts in the future on both applications. In fact, I have my third graders working on building recycling glogs.

Multiplication Baseball: A distance collaboration activity

2009-02-26T15:39:00.000-06:00

I want to thank Stephanie Wahlstrom for organizing this lesson. Today, our third graders used our Polycom system to play a game of multiplication baseball with students at R einhardt Elementary in Dallas, TX.

Stephanie created game pieces for our students using school mascots and the student's first names. She also created a ball diamond and used velco strips to hold the game pieces on each base. Students were shown a multiplication flash card and were asked to say the correct answer. If they answered correctly, dice were rolled. If the product of the dice was 0-5, the play was considered an out. 6-10 on the dice was single. 11-20 a double. 21-30 was a triple and 31-36 a home run. (That was actually just an example as I really do not remember how scoring went.) Three outs and it was the other school's turn.

As soon as school was out today our third grade teacher, Emily Schmidt, came down to talk to me about this lesson. She loved it and was already making plans to use the lesson in her classroom. Emily and I talked about how this could be done with Smartboard software. In a matter of minutes, Emily had created a game board to use on her Smartboard, so she could also use the basic format of this game across her curriuclum.

Let me know you have used a game such as multiplication baseball in your classroom. I would love to hear your stories and share ideas for implementation with teachers in Burrton.

Haiku

2009-02-23T16:28:00.000-06:00

A fun way to practice writing haiku is to have students write a book in haiku format. DogKu written by Andrew Clements is a great starting point for this writing project. After reading the book, third and fourth grade students wrote their own stories in Microsoft PowerPoint. Students were given the option to illustrate their stories using TuxPaint or the draw tools available in PowerPoint. Completed stories were uploaded to Issuu in pdf format.

Get your own - Open publication

Free Tech for Teachers

2009-02-17T16:25:00.000-06:00

I want to send out a thank you to Richard Byrne for allowing me to be a guest blogger on Free Technology for Teachers, yesterday. If you missed the blog post, I shared that Mixbook has released their education version. If you have not already, I would suggest that you give Mixbook a try.

Comics in the Classroom

2009-02-16T00:17:00.000-06:00

Comic Life is one of my favorite comic generators. Comic life comes as a nice little perk on Apple computers, but for a price you can also install Comic Life on Windows. If you are looking to add comics to your iPhone or iPod Touch, Plasq.com has unveiled Comic Touch.

There are many comic creators available online. My favorite is Pixton. A general account with Pixton is free. Pixton does offer an education version (Pixton for Schools) starting at $1.00 per machine.

Elementary teachers might want to use an application that is not tied to a social network and that does not require students to sign into a website. Therefore, you might take a look at ReadWriteThink's Comic Creator or Make Beliefs Comixs. Both Makebeliefcomixs and ReadWriteThink offer the option to print a completed comic, however a save feature is not present.

To see a list of other online comic creators and ideas for integration take a look at resources that Tuanua Swartz and I have put together on wikispaces or blogger.

Let me know if you have a comic lesson plan or an application that works well for your classroom, I would be happy to have you share.

Punny Valentine

2009-02-13T15:19:00.000-06:00

Larry Ferlazzo helped us develop this holiday lesson plan. Larry shared a link on his blog from Mightybooks called Punny Valentine. After playing this talking book for my primary students, they had an opportunity to draw their own Punny Valentine. We used Mixbook to display our cards.

| View Sample Photo Books | Create your own Photo Book

Coming up with a pun was hard for some of my primary students, so we also recorded a Valentine greeting using Audacity. Students that had trouble creating a punny Valentine were just asked to create a Valentine card. I put the cards and the greeting together using Photostory.

5th graders used Comic Life to have a little fun creating Valentine comic strips.

The Digestive System

2009-02-11T16:40:00.000-06:00

After finishing a unit on the digestive system in science, fifth graders wrote, illustrated and narrated their own scripts for travels through the human digestive system. Students wrote scripts and illustrated pictures to go with their stories. Student drawings where then scanned and saved as images onto the computer where students then used Window's Movie Maker to build their movies. Kevin Honeycutt, TRC facilitator for Burrton, helped Mr. Robinson's class develop this lesson plan and used Garage Band to record story narrations. Two of our fifth grade girl's worked together to complete, "Life as Macaroni and Cheese".

Online Digestive System Resources:

Kitses: Digestion
Human Anatomy Online: The Digestive System
The Virtual Body: The Digestive System
BBC GGCSE Bitesize- What's for lunch?
Kid's Health: Your Stomach & Digestive System
Kid's Health: Digestive System
Digestive System: An Interactive Activity

If you subscribe to BrainPop here are two movies you might be interested in.
1. Digestive System
2. Human Body: All Systems Go

Nursery Rhymes

2009-02-10T08:37:00.000-06:00

Preschoolers have been working on learning various nursery rhymes. In computers, I recorded students reciting nursery rhymes using Audacity. Then students used TuxPaint to draw their favorite part of Humpty Dumpty and Hey Diddle Diddle. The recording and the drawings were put together to create a movie that the students can watch over and over again.

Online nursery rhyme resources

Speakaboos
students can listen to celebrities read animated fables, nursery rhymes, fairy tales, folktales and lullabies.

Northumberland NGfL: Read Along Nursery Rhymes A collection of activities to use with the Smartboard.

Teletubbies: Nursery Rhymes Sing along with the Teletubbies.

Mojo's Song Lyrics Find the lyrics and listen to your favorite children's songs. There are nursery rhymes listed under the traditional music heading located on the left side of the page.

What other online sites are you using with your students?

What is Hiding in My Mitten?

2009-02-03T22:44:00.000-06:00

This lesson plan originated from Michelle Brown of Jefferson Elementary in New York. I made contact with Michelle after Lisa Harris, Micro-Computer Specialist and AV Coordinator at Jefferson Elementary, posted a project request on CAPSpace.

After reading "The Mitten" by Jan Brett, primary students at Burrton Elementary drew pictures in TuxPaint. (I allowed the Turtles, our kindergarten, to use the stamps on TuxPaint. The first and second graders had to draw a picture of what animal was hiding in their mitten.) Using Microsoft Word, we imported the completed picture into a mitten template. Then the students typed three clues about what was hiding in their mitten. We printed the mittens, cut them apart and glued one end together.

The Turtles (aka kindergarters) printed their animal, cut out the animal, and took turns putting their animal between two large gloves that I brought from home. I filmed each student sharing what was hiding in the gloves.

On Friday, January 30th, we used our Polycom system to talk with the first graders at Jefferson Elementary in New York. The first graders from both schools took turns reading their clues and guessing what was hiding in the mittens. Afterwards, we spent about 15 minutes allowing the students to ask each other questions. Visiting with students in another region of the United States was great learning opportunity and a lot of fun.

View Larger Map

During our Polycom session, I filmed and took pictures. However, I later discovered that the way I had my camera hooked up, it caused a lot of static. I had the Honeybees (grade 1) and Buffaloes (grade 2) read their clues to me during computers on Monday while I filmed once again. Windows Movie Maker was used to edit our movie. The mitten movie was then published on TeacherTube. (I put all the primary students into one movie.)

Snowmen at Night

2009-01-26T16:27:00.000-06:00

We have been working at learning Microsoft Word basics in my primary classroom over the last two weeks. Students as young as kindergartners are learning many skills including demonstrating how to center, underline and bold the text. When you have a room with 26 students, this does take patience and it is nice to have help. I am thankful for my very patient aid, Dylan. I borrowed an idea from Lisa Harris and Michelle Brown on CAPspace to put some of our skills to use.

I read the book, Snowmen at Night, by Caralyn Buehner to my primary students. Then, students used TuxPaint to illustrate what they would do at night if they were a snowperson. The Turtles (aka kindergarten) did their typing within TuxPaint. The Honeybees and Buffaloes (aka grade 1 and grade 2) imported their picture into Microsoft Word where they were asked to type and center the title of their paper, right align the body of their text, print and save their document. This turned out to be such a cute project that I uploaded the student TuxPaint drawings into MixBook and copied in the text into the book in order to spread a smile or two. This Mixbook project could be a great collaborative project to share and work on with other schools around the world.

| View Sample Photo Books | Create your own Photo Book

I do have some great news that I want to share about Mixbook. After I first discovered Mixbook, I sent an email off letting Mixbook know that I thought they had a terrific product and with a few tweaks could be a wonderful educational tool. You have to know in the back of my mind, I was not really expecting any response. So you can imagine my surprise last year when I received an email from Andrew Lafoon, co-creator and founder of Mixbook. We ended up Skyping and discussing Mixbook. Through our conversion, I discovered that Mixbook had been talking with a few other teachers and was working to develop an educational version.

Over Christmas break, Marcel Sanchez, head of the educational division, contacted me to ask me a few more questions about Mixbook and to give me an update. Last week, I received another Mixbook update via email. Mixbook is just about ready to release their educational version.

Here is a quick overview. Mixbook is looking at charging educators a 1 time fee of $10.00. Mixbook is also looking at giving educators a 20% discount when we publish a hard copy of our books. In fact, the discount for teachers is already in effect. There will also be a wide array tools and features that will help teachers persuade their districts to unblock Mixbook and let the learning begin. When Mixbook comes out with the new educational version, make sure to sign up again if you already have an existing account with them, so you do not miss out. Mixbook is a wonderful tool to aid in digital storytelling and I am impressed that the team at Mixbook took time to speak with this small town tech!

I also read Snowmen at Night to my preschool classes. Then we used Audacity to create a podcast of what they would do if they were snowmen at night. I used podOmatic to host our podcast. I will link the show to this blog, but note that I had problems with the podOmatic player last week when I gave this a try on my Martin Luther King, jr post. The podcasts seem to download okay but I cannot play them from the web. So I hope you are able to view the preschool episode as preschoolers are always so cute to listen to.

Snowmen at Night
by the Preschoolers

Martin Luther King Junior

2009-01-19T16:11:00.000-06:00

To celebrate and learn about the life of Martin Luther King, jr. my primary classes watched a Brainpop video. After discussing the video and the impact Mr. King made on our country, we used Audacity to record our own dream. I used podOmatic to share our mp3 file. It was very easy to create and use the website.

I Have a Dream
by the Burrton Primary Students

My upper elementary classes were challenged to spend some time becoming experts about Martin Luther King, jr. The third graders started listing major events in King's life taking turns discussing and verifying information the students were discovering on the web. I wanted to use Timetoast to create a time line. Class ended before we had enough time to complete our time line. So Mrs. Schmidt returned to her classroom and later finished up the TimeToast time line in her classroom with her third graders using laptop computers.

Earlier in the day, I used our Polycom system to talk with teachers at Wheatland. I tried to review material and answer questions that anyone might have had from a previous technology in-service that I gave back in October.

In October, we covered various topics like blogging, Google docs and Google Forms.

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I also covered public learning networks (Twitter, Plurk, Ning, Delicious, etc..) and a few web2.0 applications (Animoto, Voicethread, Mixbook etc..).

One of the teachers was looking for a free quiz application that he could embed in his blog. I usually use Google Forms to create quizzes and embed into my blog, so I decided to do some research and see what else was available as I know there are several quiz creators out there. I decided to give ProProfs a try. It looked interesting and after I explored the site a little, I think it has potential. I like that you can embed video pictures and external links into your quiz. I wish the site was a less cluttered with ads, as it seems to take away from the sites good qualities. I found ProProf easy to use. I ended up creating a three question quiz to go along with Martin Luther King, jr's famed, "I Have a Dream" speech. I embedded the sample quiz into my blog.

Martin Luther King Junior » Quiz School

'09 Inauguration Links

2009-01-13T15:22:00.000-06:00

Glen Wiebe recently shared a bookmarking resource at a tech meeting called ShareTabs. I used Sharetabs to share inauguration links with teachers in my district. I plurked the link and made a comment that it would be nice to be able to embed the visual bookmarks. TammyW (aka Tammy Worcester) plurked back that I should give WebSnips a try. Maybe you will find something useful within this list of resources.

My Year in One Sentence

2009-01-08T14:54:00.000-06:00

Third grade students were asked to summarize their year in one sentence. To begin the project, the third graders used Microsoft Word to type and edit their sentences. Then, they used TuxPaint to illustrate an image for their stories.

I created an account on Gabcast and used my cellphone to dial into my account and create a podcast recording. Students took turns recording their sentence.

Gabcast! Burrton Third Graders #1 - My Year in One Sentence

Third graders describe their year in 2008 in one sentence.

Where's Prancer?

2008-12-18T13:45:00.000-06:00

First graders participated in a Polycom distance collaboration project with South Street Elementary in Vermilion, Ohio on December 11th called, "Where's Prancer?" This activity was posted on CAPSpace website by Heidi Boone.

To begin the activity, students read the book, "Where's Prancer?" by SYD Hoff in their classrooms. Then students took on the roll as Prancer. They created postcards letting Santa know where they where at. To create our postcards, students drew a picture in TuxPaint. I created a PowerPoint template for this project. The PowerPoint template was a slide that I divided in half. (The idea for using PowerPoint as a postcard came from Tammy Worcester.) I also added a stamp from Stamps.com After importing the TuxPaint picture in to our PowerPoint template, I helped students type a letter to Santa from Prancer.

Vermilion is located close to Lake Erie.

View Larger Map

Burrton and South Street Elementary Students met via Polycom to read their post cards and share their drawings with each others. It took about 30 minutes to share our postcards. It would have been fun to upload this presentation into Voicethread and have the students record the greeting on their postcards. However, we ran out of time. Our students begin Christmas Break at the end of today.

Where's Prancer?

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: christmas prancer)

What was Santa's First Job?

2008-12-17T13:43:00.000-06:00

The Buffaloes (a.k.a second graders) were asked the question, "What was Santa's First Job?" Using TuxPaint and Photo Story 3 this is what we came up with!

Santa Letters

2008-12-15T13:25:00.001-06:00

Here is a fun way to personalize letters to Santa.

My primary students (prek-3) started this lesson by drawing pictures in TuxPaint of what they would like to receive from Santa Claus for Christmas. For the younger students, prek-grade 2, I created a postcard template from Microsoft PowerPoint for the students to use. I divided the slide in half by using the line tool. If you would like specific instructions you might check out this book by Tammy Worcester, called 50 Quick and Easy Computer Activities.

I created the stamp by using Stamps.com to create a photo stamp. (Notice as I was typing this entry, that the direct link to the photo stamps was not working. Hopefully, that is only temporary.) Then I took a screen shot of the completed stamp and copied the image into the postcard. I used PowerPoint's crop tool to get rid of the extra stuff around the stamp, then saved the template for student use.

Tuxpaint imagines were inserted into the template. My aid and I helped the younger students type their letters to Santa. (Third grade students did all of this on their own. Second grade students typed the letter to Santa, but had help inserting the image into the template.)

I did combine all the postcards into one PowerPoint before printing. I printed the letters as handouts 2 per page and laminated each post card. Then I made a display in the hallway to hang the postcards. As student's leave for Christmas break, I will give them their Santa letter to take home to their parents as a keepsake.

I wanted to display our letters on my blog. I choose MagToo SlideShow and was really happy with the ease of this application. I saved the PowerPoint presentation in jpeg format. This made it easy to upload each Santa letter. I selected a style, skin and theme. This app was really uncluttered and easy to use. The user can even set the timing of the show and add music. It would be nice if MagToo would offer an education side where students might not be exposed to improper examples. They have a good product.

Twelve Days of Christmas

2008-12-11T11:47:00.001-06:00

Third graders created their own version of the 12 Days of Christmas using Microsoft PowerPoint. Pictures were drawn in TuxPaint by the students and imported into the slides. Students were also asked to add slide transitions and custom animations to each of their slides. I unloaded a student's finished product to Slideshare and easily posted the presentation to Blogger.

Britney's Twelve Days of Christmas

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

A Thankful Lesson

2008-11-21T16:26:00.001-06:00

The Wordle part of this lesson is one that I picked up from someone on Plurk. I apologize for not paying attention to whom it was and giving proper credit.

We began our primary lesson (k-2) by watching a movie about Thanksgiving on brainpopjr. (It is listed as one of their free resources this month.) We also visited Scholastic's First Thanksgiving website. We opened a Microsoft Word document on the Smartboard and listed things that we are thankful for. I told my students that it was okay to repeat what someone else had previously said. After everyone had a chance to say what they were thankful for, I copied the list and pasted it into wordle.

Then while using the SmartBoard, I opened up a Venn diagram template in Inspiration. (If you do not have Inspiration, try one of this online graphic organizers or just use Microsoft Word. As a class, we completed the Venn discussing the differences between the first Thanksgiving and what the students experience today. This is what they came up with.

Descriptive Turkeys

2008-11-21T12:29:00.001-06:00

My third graders are participating in a distance collaboration Thanksgiving project called, "Descriptive Turkeys" with another school in Kansas. Students at both schools created turkeys and wrote descriptions about their turkeys.

My third graders used Microsoft PowerPoint to display their work. Students wrote their turkey description on slide 1. Then, they inserted an outline of a turkey and layered it underneath their writing. (abcteach.com provided the template of a turkey outline.) On to slide #2, third graders inserted the photograph of their turkey that we took with our digital camera. We printed the slides and stapled slide one on top of slide #2. This way students can read their turkey description to our partner school and then flip the page to show the matching turkey. It also make a nice display for the hallway.

On Tuesday, November 25 both schools will visit via Polycom to read our turkey descriptions and see if the other students can pick out which turkey belongs to each student based on their descriptive writing.

Leaf Man Visits Burrton

2008-11-09T15:52:00.000-06:00

My primary students (K-2) recently participated in a web project created by Marci McGowan called, Leaf Man, Leaf Man What Do You See? Students were able to learn about the fall season while sharing writing, artwork and pictures of their communities on the Internet.

To begin the project, I read the book, Leaf Man to my students. Our Art teacher, Mrs. Cutting, created the frame of our Leaf Man. Then, my children and I decorated Leaf Man. Leaf Man is around 6 ft. tall. We used fake leaves on Leaf Man in hopes that he could be stored for future Autumn resources. After Leaf Man was decorated, he posed for several pictures around our small community.

The Primary (k-1) completed a VoiceThread. I uploaded the pictures and recorded during two class sessions of 20 minutes. This probably could have been done in one session, but we brainstormed things to say on each thread. Here is our end product.

I also wanted to play with a website that was recently introduced to me by Tammy Worcester called Issuu. With Issuu, we were able to publish student drawings from TuxPaint. The students were asked to draw pictures of what they would like to do with Leaf Man if he were alive. I copied the student drawings into Microsoft PowerPoint and then saved the file in ppt format. I used the pdfonline to convert the ppt to a pdf file. Then, I uploaded the pdf file to Issuu. Under "My Library" in Issuu, I found the html code to embed the book into my blog. Lots of steps, but this is the finished product.

Get your own - Open publication

With our Buffaloes (aka Second Graders), we used Mixbook.com to create an online book. I uploaded the pictures and choose a page template to use. Then, the students helped write the text.

| View | Create Your Own Photoproject

If I Built a Car

2008-11-05T13:19:00.000-06:00

My primary students, (k-2) just finished a digital storytelling project using Photostory. We began our project by reading the children's book, "If I Built a Car," by Chris Van Dusen to the students. Then students were asked to think about what they would add to a car that they had the opportunity to build. Student created their cars by drawing pictures in TuxPaint . Student drawings were imported into PhotoStory and audio was added.

Hero Project

2008-11-02T16:05:00.001-06:00

Fifth graders recently used PhotoStory3 to create a story about their heroes. This was an activity designed to introduce the students to PhotoStory. First, we had students use Microsoft Word to write a paragraph about their hero. Then students used TuxPaint to draw a picture of their hero. We imported the pictures into one PhotoStory and recorded the students reading their paragraph about their hero. Below is the end result.

Halloween Lesson Plan: Shrunken Heads

2008-10-29T22:15:00.000-05:00

Reading through the student worksheet will give you an idea of how this lesson works as I have not typed up a lesson plan for this activity yet.

This lesson can be a lot of fun during the Halloween season and it is also a great way to hit several Math and Science standards at one time. Incorporate writing standards into this lesson by having students write a descriptive paper about their finished shrunken head. Then read the papers out loud to the class. See if the students can pick out which shrunken head belongs with each paper.

Permission to Post

2008-10-29T21:54:00.000-05:00

I think it is wonderful to be able to post student work to the web. I know my students love to view their work online!

I thought I would go ahead and share the form my district uses as the Permission to Post document. I have seen many versions of this document. You might find something out there that you like better. Or take this sample and adapt it to be whatever you need.

We hand the Permission to Post form out at the beginning of the year during Enrollment. We keep our list updated throughout the year and notify teachers of changes and additions to our "no list".

Skittle Math

2008-10-29T20:31:00.000-05:00

The concept of using Skittles or M&M's in mathematics at the primary level has been around for a while. That is because it is a great project that can hit many standards and the kids love it! Click here for the lesson plan.

Put a twist onto this lesson by having students use Google Forms to help collect data. Then create an animated pictograph using Microsoft PowerPoint to display the data. Make sure to have students in the upper elementary grades that will be taking state assessments, share data results for tested items: minimum value, maximum value, range, mode, median, and mean.

Example of a Form which can be created within Google Docs.
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Below is screen capture of an animated graph created in PowerPoint by one of my third grade students. I realized until after I posted the video, that this student left out the maximum value. But, you will get the idea of the project! I did not have my third graders figure the mean.

Video of my third grade students entering data into their Excel document to complete estimations of the total amount in an individual bag of Skittles as well as the amount of each color.