I thought Camp 2.0 was an excellent way to try out AND find out about so many different tools/programs out there. I learned way more than I thought I would... which is great! The best part was I really had to figure out how to use the program on my own (haha, which was also the most frustrating part, at times ... sometimes I had to walk away and come back to that project again later :)). That makes it so much more meaningful for me. Now I really feel like I remember how to use each program and could go back to create something for my first graders. That type of exploration works so much better for me as a learner than having someone show it to me at a meeting, for example.
For me, Prezi and Storybird were the two hardest tools to use... probably because they took me the longest amount of time. There was so much trial and error when I was creating my Prezi. For Storybird, I just had to make my brain think differently! That being said, I think now that I have a better idea of what I'm doing and how the programs work, maybe the next time around it would be easier. I've thought of so many ideas/ways to use the Screencast-o-matic in my classroom... along with my own Youtube account as well. So far I'm thinking some classroom training videos - "how to" videos (how to do your lunch count, how to get a new pencil, how to transition in the classroom, how to do Daily 5, etc.). One of the best activities for me was learning about Weebly and creating my own webpage. I'm SO excited to try it out as my classroom webpage this year!
I really liked that we used the blog as our format for turning in assignments and sharing with each other. I tried not to look at anyone else's activity posting before I did my own. That way I could compare what I did to another person's and see what I liked/didn't like about mine versus another project. Sometimes another camper's activity gave me ideas that I might use next time I create. This blog also inspired me to try out a classroom blog this year. We'll see how it goes! :)
Will there be another Camp 2.0... maybe a Camp 2.0 #2 so we can try out and learn about more tools????!!!! :)
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Activity 10: Free Choice
I created a webpage using Weebly. I'm actually going to try using this as my teacher webpage this year! I'm pretty excited :) I don't feel like the MV webpage allows you very many options. So, I thought I'd try out a free website this year. In the future, maybe I'll explore paying for a webpage (I'm sure that would give you many more options!). For now, though, Weebly seems like a good start.
I think it's turning out well... so far... it's still a work in progress! I'm hoping to have it all up and running by the time the letter goes home to welcome the kids and tell them about Meet the Teacher night. I want to list the webpage in there and possibly ask the kids to comment on the blog. Maybe I'll ask them a question to answer... not sure about all that yet. Like I said, a work in progress. If you take a look, check back again in a couple of weeks. I'm planning to take photos at school to use in place of those "plant" photos at the top of each page!
Classroom Webpage
I think it's turning out well... so far... it's still a work in progress! I'm hoping to have it all up and running by the time the letter goes home to welcome the kids and tell them about Meet the Teacher night. I want to list the webpage in there and possibly ask the kids to comment on the blog. Maybe I'll ask them a question to answer... not sure about all that yet. Like I said, a work in progress. If you take a look, check back again in a couple of weeks. I'm planning to take photos at school to use in place of those "plant" photos at the top of each page!
Classroom Webpage
Activity 9: Fitness Assessment
Scenario 3: Anonymous Blogging
I think Ms. Gifford had a couple key mistakes that made this blogging experience go badly. First of all, I think she should have informed parents about what she was going to be using the blog for. It's important to talk with students about how they will use it, but having parent support could have stopped some of the inappropriate comments. This also would have given parents the option to choose if they wanted their child to be commenting on a blog. I think Ms. Gifford should have looked for a blog that allowed her to preview the comments before posting them on the blog. That way, she could have kept the student's privacy (because each student still wouldn't have their own account with names) and she also could have closely monitored what was being said.
There are many ethical, safety, and well-being concerns. She has a whole class, possibly other students as well, that have read and/or written inappropriate statements. She shut down the blog, but that doesn't mean she won't have parent concerns related to the comments posted.
Like I mentioned above, I think Ms. Gifford should have done a little more research about what blog to use - including privacy controls, students accounts, and comments. I think it's a great idea to have a class blog, when used the correct way.
I'm going to try using a blog this year with my class. The kids won't have to set up any accounts, but they are allowed to comment. I set the privacy setting so that I can preview all comments before they are posted directly to the blog.
Scenario 6: Course Management Overload
Ms. Carlson is taking all the right steps to use Edmodo in her class and is getting great results with rich learning experiences for the students! I think teachers put in a lot of time and effort researching the best tools for their class. I'm sure Ms. Carlson did the same thing. I don't think that there are specific ethical or safety issues with this scenario. Unless the school/teacher is receiving many requests about this same issue, I think it would be helpful to just offer that parent some advice about helping her son stay organized and continue to be an active participant in class. Give some suggestions about usernames/passwords. Maybe this parent could have her son use the same password for all the accounts, even if it's a different username. Have some type of sheet right next to the computer that has each class listed with the username and password written out. That way if her son forgets, they can easily locate the correct login information.
I think Ms. Gifford had a couple key mistakes that made this blogging experience go badly. First of all, I think she should have informed parents about what she was going to be using the blog for. It's important to talk with students about how they will use it, but having parent support could have stopped some of the inappropriate comments. This also would have given parents the option to choose if they wanted their child to be commenting on a blog. I think Ms. Gifford should have looked for a blog that allowed her to preview the comments before posting them on the blog. That way, she could have kept the student's privacy (because each student still wouldn't have their own account with names) and she also could have closely monitored what was being said.
There are many ethical, safety, and well-being concerns. She has a whole class, possibly other students as well, that have read and/or written inappropriate statements. She shut down the blog, but that doesn't mean she won't have parent concerns related to the comments posted.
Like I mentioned above, I think Ms. Gifford should have done a little more research about what blog to use - including privacy controls, students accounts, and comments. I think it's a great idea to have a class blog, when used the correct way.
I'm going to try using a blog this year with my class. The kids won't have to set up any accounts, but they are allowed to comment. I set the privacy setting so that I can preview all comments before they are posted directly to the blog.
Scenario 6: Course Management Overload
Ms. Carlson is taking all the right steps to use Edmodo in her class and is getting great results with rich learning experiences for the students! I think teachers put in a lot of time and effort researching the best tools for their class. I'm sure Ms. Carlson did the same thing. I don't think that there are specific ethical or safety issues with this scenario. Unless the school/teacher is receiving many requests about this same issue, I think it would be helpful to just offer that parent some advice about helping her son stay organized and continue to be an active participant in class. Give some suggestions about usernames/passwords. Maybe this parent could have her son use the same password for all the accounts, even if it's a different username. Have some type of sheet right next to the computer that has each class listed with the username and password written out. That way if her son forgets, they can easily locate the correct login information.
Activity 8: Polling & Data Gathering
I created a poll about favorite subjects to teach. This was super easy to do! No problems at all. This might be a fun activity to have the kids do... maybe assign it as homework so that parents could see how we're using different web tools in our classroom. Or maybe post a poll here and there on the classroom blog just for fun!
The Google form I made was to generate some ideas in our grade level about taking another field trip! Google forms was really easy to use. No problems creating the form! I'm not sure exactly how I'd use this with students. One thought I had was to create a form/test that students would have to answer during tech specialist. It would have to be a multiple choice. I'm also not sure how the kids would read it. There isn't a feature to have it read to them! There are many things to think about before having my first grade students use something like this! :)
The Google form I made was to generate some ideas in our grade level about taking another field trip! Google forms was really easy to use. No problems creating the form! I'm not sure exactly how I'd use this with students. One thought I had was to create a form/test that students would have to answer during tech specialist. It would have to be a multiple choice. I'm also not sure how the kids would read it. There isn't a feature to have it read to them! There are many things to think about before having my first grade students use something like this! :)
Activity 7: Cloud Computing
Another first grade teacher and I have been using this spreadsheet for a number of years. She created it as an Excel spreadsheet to help with tracking/data collecting for all the first grade teachers. I transferred it to Google drive because we started having issues with saving and resending the spreadsheet too many times. It got rather confusing trying to keep all the copies or copying/pasting back into one doc again! As a grade level there were many times that the scores was sorted or saved incorrectly, and that created a ton of work!!
We enter student scores each month from AIMSweb. This helps us track and create our guided reading groups. It's helpful that we can just enter scores online instead of emailing the spreadsheet back and forth. We've found it super helpful that we can both look at the document at the same time, while on our own computers. It also helps us to make decisions about our groups - do we need to change a few students around because of growth, should we change teachers, etc.
I do think that cloud computing is helpful for teachers to share/edit documents related to their grade levels. I find that creating a doc in the drive is sometimes cumbersome. Drive doesn't seem to have all the features like Word or Excel does. That can be frustrating, I think.
Reading Spreadsheet
We enter student scores each month from AIMSweb. This helps us track and create our guided reading groups. It's helpful that we can just enter scores online instead of emailing the spreadsheet back and forth. We've found it super helpful that we can both look at the document at the same time, while on our own computers. It also helps us to make decisions about our groups - do we need to change a few students around because of growth, should we change teachers, etc.
I do think that cloud computing is helpful for teachers to share/edit documents related to their grade levels. I find that creating a doc in the drive is sometimes cumbersome. Drive doesn't seem to have all the features like Word or Excel does. That can be frustrating, I think.
Reading Spreadsheet
Activity 6: Study Tools
I chose to use tagxedo to make a word cloud. I thought the program was really easy to use. The frustrating part for me was that I couldn't get it to work on my computer at home. I tried uploading the current version of silverlight, like it said... that didn't help. Instead, I worked at Sunnyside to make it... got tagxedo to work just fine here! I made a word cloud about butterflies. We study the life cycle of a butterfly and insects in first grade. I thought that a word cloud might be a fun way to learn the vocabulary words for our butterfly study. I'd use my word cloud as an introduction and then refer back to see if there are new words we should learn and/or review ones we've covered already.
Spicynodes was my second study tool. Again, this program is easy to use. I didn't have any problems adding the next node or going back to fix what I had just completed. I used the preview button after each node in the first sequence. That gave me a good idea of how it looked, and if it looked like I had anticipated it would! ;) For the next two main nodes, I didn't have to use the preview as much. I made this Nodemap about first graders being respectful, responsible and safe. This is the same information that's included on my classroom matrix. I thought that the kids would think this was more fun to look at than a piece of paper with it all written out! If I ever make the videos about classroom behavior/routines that I talked about in the last couple of posts, I think it would be cool to add them to this Nodemap. We'll see if that works out... to be continued :)
Spicynodes was my second study tool. Again, this program is easy to use. I didn't have any problems adding the next node or going back to fix what I had just completed. I used the preview button after each node in the first sequence. That gave me a good idea of how it looked, and if it looked like I had anticipated it would! ;) For the next two main nodes, I didn't have to use the preview as much. I made this Nodemap about first graders being respectful, responsible and safe. This is the same information that's included on my classroom matrix. I thought that the kids would think this was more fun to look at than a piece of paper with it all written out! If I ever make the videos about classroom behavior/routines that I talked about in the last couple of posts, I think it would be cool to add them to this Nodemap. We'll see if that works out... to be continued :)
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Activity 5: Creating a MV YouTube Channel
Creating the MV account was easy. The steps that were given on the assignment page were easy to follow. I thought the uploading process was fairly easy also... after I figured out that I needed to download the video to my computer first before I uploaded it to YouTube. I did notice that when I first made my screencast, it gave me the option to upload it right to YouTube. I didn't choose that option the first time because I hadn't looked at the next assignment! :) I'm not sure how that part would work, but I'm sure it would be easy enough to figure out.
I think it would be kind of fun to create and introduction video for my students. Maybe I could talk about my summer, show the kids some things in my yard, record Gus on it too?!? I'd like to do some thinking before I do the video. My hope is to create one before the "Meet the Teacher" night in August!
I think it would be kind of fun to create and introduction video for my students. Maybe I could talk about my summer, show the kids some things in my yard, record Gus on it too?!? I'd like to do some thinking before I do the video. My hope is to create one before the "Meet the Teacher" night in August!
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