Warm Weather Moves Students and Technology to the Outside

End of Year Technology Questionnaire

I want to thank all of you who participated in my end of the year technology questionnaire, the response has been great.  I will be sharing the results in a future post.  If you haven't participated yet there is still time, all feedback is greatly appreciated.  Click here to go to the survey.    It is just 8 quick questions.  

Sharing

Summer is the perfect time to relax and re-energize in preparation for the new school year.  I know there are tons of great activities occurring across the district and I encourage all of you to think about what you do and make it a goal to share it in 16-17.  In addition, I believe that all teachers have favorite sites they go to for resources, let me know what you use and how.  I bet there are others who could benefit from your favorite sites too.  For 2016-17 my blog goal is to encourage more sharing of resources and activities across the district by all staff.  As for my summer blog goal, I am seeking apps.  If you know of a really good app or find a great app during your summer browsing, send me a email and let me know about it.  Enjoy your summer! I am hoping while you are relaxing by the pool or at the beach you will have time to go back and check out all the great resources posted this past school year.  The more we share the more opportunity we all have to grow together.

Mrs. Gantz - 2nd Grade CTE- iPad Activity

Mrs. Gantz has been busy modeling technology in many ways.  She shared pictures of her students doing a 3D shape hunt. One group found a cylinder and another group found a rectangular prism. She had the students follow up the picture taking activity by using Skitch to add labels to their pictures.  In addition, she used iMovie to create a movie trailer of her student's trip to Strawberry Hill.  I am sure the readers seeing this can think of tons of ways to creatively engage students with iMovie or other video creation tools. See Mrs. Selby's video below too.  Thank you to Mrs. Gantz for sharing your activities.

Mrs. Gantz iPad Movie

Mrs. Gantz used iMovie to create a video trailer of her students trip .  Click here to see the final product.

Mrs. Selby - 2nd Grade CTE - Strawberry Hill - Creating Memories with Technology

Animoto is an easy to use tool and a great way to create a video in for this showcase a field trip.  If you are looking for ways for students to show creativity and demonstrate understanding, consider Animoto as a means for them to present the steps in a lab experiment, record the steps to solving a math problem, presenting their understanding of the judicial process, and on and on, the ideas are endless. Check out Mrs. Selby's Animoto of her second grade class trip to Strawberry Hill.  Thanks for sharing the great tool! Mrs. Selby's 2nd Grade click here to see the final product.

Mrs. Weikert - 7th Grade Math - Quizziz - FREE!

Mrs. Weikert invited me in to see a new tool she was using with her students.  It is quizizz.com/.  Here is an overview of how it was used. students compete individually to answer questions.  The questions are self-paced.  Students receive points for being correct, but they receive higher points for answering quickly.  The computer tells students their rank after each question.  Final rankings are determined after all students finish the questions or when the teachers decides to end the game.  Teachers may create their own questions ahead of time or use questions already created by other teachers.  Mrs. Weikert shared that there were a number of items already created by other teachers that she could choose from to get started.  She also like the fact that the students could join with a pin number so she didn't have to do much with regard to set up to use this tool.  As you will see by the video, the students were very engaged.  This would be an excellent tool to use across any content area for review and practice. I took a quick video below in which you can see the focus, excitement and ongoing emotions the students displayed while working with this tool.  They really seemed to be motivated to do well.

Mrs. Weikert - 7th Grade Math Quizletlive - FREE!

Thank you to Mrs. Weikert for sharing another great tool.  Below is an overview of how it worked.

​quizletlive.com - Students compete in teams of 3-4, which are randomly assigned by the computer.  The first team to get 12 correct answers is the winner.  However, only 1 person in the team will have the correct answer on their screen.  Students must collaborate to decide who has the correct answer.   Teams who enter an incorrect answer lose their points and start over with zero.  Teachers may create their own questions ahead of time or use "study sets" already created by other teachers.  This would not work in a computer lab because students must be able to move after logging into the game to sit with their teams as assigned by the computer.  Every time you start a new game, the teams are reassigned so students will need to move again.

I love the fact that this would work in any content area for review or informal feedback.  Mrs. Weikert shared that this tool was also easy to use in that the students joined without her having to type in all their names.  She said that at the end of each session she saw there was an option to export the information from the session.  I also loved the fact that students worked in random teams that were computer generated and that each had a possible answer but only one was correct and together they had to determine which member of the group had that.  

Thank you Mrs. Weikert for sharing these two wonderful tools for K-12.  These are two fantastic tools to engage students!