Check out the one minute message/documentary of my third grade class using StoryJumper for the first time!
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BP10_2010053_CommentonBlog#3
Check out my comment on Melinda Kraft's blog post about the Web 2.0 Tool: DimDim.
BP9_2010053_Web2.0Tool#3_StoryJumper
This Web 2.0 tool enables students to publish their writing online in a web-based program and gives them the option of ordering their books in soft or hardcover that is sent to them. There are backgrounds, characters, props and text boxes that are available for students to include in their text. There are also options where you can scan in the pictures that the students draw and add them as backgrounds to their work. Another option for illustrating their stories is to create a Flickr account and bank pictures on there that pertain to their topic. For example, there is a student who wrote an informational book on the Praying Mantis, so I took some Creative Common photos and put them in an account he could access while creating his book. I found the program on Tuesday and spent a few days exploring it before presenting it to my students on Friday morning. We have the laptop cart for an hour and a half in the morning. The kids look forward to working on various projects, as well as learning new technology. They particularly love the things that we explore that they can access at home and at school.
The great thing about Storyjumper is that you can set up a free class list. So you tell the program how many students you have, input their names and create a class password and you're set! It literally took me 2 minutes. The program gives them screen names that make them giggle. And then all you have to do is print the class list. It gives you a master list of the kids' pseudonyms and then it prints out a sheet for each child with directions of how to sign on. I have third graders and I was surprised how easy it was for them to get started. All they had to do was trust the answers were on the sheet. It also gives them direction of how to access their books from home. The students were wicked excited to show their parents the work they did.
I set up a picture of a pirate on a ship with the first line saying "There once was a pirate named _____" and asked the kids to finish the book. I was amazed at their creativity. Some students chose to write stories about fairies, magicians, soccer, or insects. This program makes publishing books motivating and easy to do! I was so impressed with how independent they were. I just had to show them how to navigate through the pages and where "the good stuff" was. There were small quirks but my students quickly navigated around them and showed the class how to get around it on the Smartboard. We had a great time. I recorded the process for my one minute message as well as to create a documentary for our district website. This way the district can see how easy it is to use!
The only thing about this program, is that is a program meant for younger children. It is great for second, third and maybe fourth graders, but the graphics are very kid-like. I think it is wonderful for third grade, but it limits the age range that it is appropriate for.
Here are some of the first pages my students created:
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BP7_2010052_CommentOnBlog#2
Mollie posted about using Wordpress to create an online scrapbook for her children. What a great idea! I replied with ideas of how you use Wordpress in an elementary school.
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BP5_2010052_Web2.0ToolT2_Glogster
This week I researched the Web 2.0 tool named Glogster. This is a poster making site that lets you be as creative as you want making online posters. The purpose is to create dynamic, and motivating poster to display on your wiki or website. The site includes graphics, opportunities for text, hypertext, images, video, audio, and creative, colorful backgrounds.
I think this site has the potential to be fabulous. It does have a steep learning curve to it. When you first go to the site, it lets you create a beautiful poster all gussied up and wonderful. When you press save and publish, it brings you to the registration page and erases your “draft.” I know I was not the only one who did this, because several people put it on the blog roll they have on their site. Once you get past this point and get ready to recreate the poster you had before, you realize that you need to buy the deluxe version in order to have all the same gadgets. This is only $99.00 per year, and worth it for all the potential uses in the classroom, but a letdown nonetheless.
I was excited to include video and audio on these. It would be great to create a poster page with all sorts of information relative to the topic. Research links, informational videos, podcasts, pictures, and even kid-friendly directions for their projects. Students can visit these poster sites and explore creatively on their own. Students could create posters as their final project for a summative assessment. They could use this site to create book review posters. Other students would love to explore other children’s work. The possibilities are endless, if you can deal with a few loops of frustration.
For example, I decided while I was playing around that I would put some sound into my poster. I used their “grabbing” software and it was extremely easy to use! The recording came out sounding nice, but I couldn’t for the life of me get the sound into the poster. It just kept coming up with the default harp-like sound. You can supposedly upload through a file made in garage band, but this would add difficult step for the typical third grader to do. Well, difficult even for an adult. I created a file in garage band, uploaded it without a hitch but it still won’t insert into the Glog. Hmm. I wonder what the hold up is? Hopefully I can work out this kink soon.
Here is the link to the Glog I created for a poetry assignment. I envision students doing audio recordings of the poem(s) that inspired them to write and then a video recording of themselves reciting their poem. We could put these Glogs on our Blog and students can comment on each other’s work. I think this would very much motivate the students to expand their creativity in poetry. And if anyone has any insight into adding sound, please let me know!
**p.s. I tried the sound again just five short hours later when I awoke in the morning and lo and behold it worked! I did nothing differently, so no answers there, but it worked! Click on the arrow on the old phonograph to see!**
http://roberla0.glogster.com/poetry/
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BP4_2010051_Web2.0Tools
I have to say that before I started at Full Sail, I had no idea there was a such thing as Web 2.0. I use the sites all day, I’ve seen the little orange square, read RSS feed about a million times and posted on blogs frequently, but I didn’t know I was interacting with Web 2.0 tools. Once I started exploring these avenues I found a ton of great free tools out there just waiting to be used! As a matter of fact, one of the sites that I have on my RSS feed through Google Reader brought up a blog post this morning from iLearn Technology another Web 2.0 program out there that kids can use to create comics. I played around with it a lot today. The site is called Stage’d and you can create these digital stories using the templates they give you. I can see my students having a ball with this site.
I did not create a usable work of art with this program yet, I am still playing around. I did however work on a presentation that I am going to give to the entire staff about teaching students that reading bigger books doesn’t necessarily mean students are understanding bigger books. Teaching students what characteristics are found in different leveled books will give students a focus and something to look for in their reading outside of simply reading the words and understanding the events that happened. This presentation is going to be given in September and I have to say I’m a little nervous about it.
I was introduced to a program named Prezi through a group member in my degree program, Michelle, and I thought it would be a perfect avenue for guiding our discussion about books. I’ve had a grand old time creating this presentation and I’m getting pretty good at working the tools. I am in no way finished with this presentation. It has all the information and pictures and it set in an order that I like, I just don’t like what the final project looks like so far. So more work is to be done, but here it is for your viewing pleasure: http://prezi.com/dlbafotgalxs/.
It took awhile to become good at Prezi. Just like in other presentation tools, the demos and examples they give you are so pleasing to the eye and then when it is time to make one yourself, it is a lot less simple than they made it look. I watched the same two tutorials about 5 times each before I moved with fluidity through the creation of this presentation. I am still learning the benefits and hierarchy of size in the program and how to aesthetically please the viewer in each frame.
Basically you start off with a blank canvas. That is always intimidating. I can visualize, but have a hard time putting it down on paper. But the program is easy to use. You just double click on the mat and type in the word you want to display. There is a “zebra tool” you use to resize, rotate, duplicate, or move your word. Inserting pictures is easier here than on Powerpoint, I believe. Once you master the “way of the zebra” you can swiftly move around your canvas with ease and precision. The cool thing is that the canvas doesn’t have a set size. It can be as large as you want it. The frame tool lets you set the viewing size to show more than one item at a time.
The best parts about Prezi?
- It is not linear (it jives well with those right-brained thinkers)
- Overall view (it can show all your information in overview form, something Powerpoint cannot)
- Zoomed View (this trumps Powerpoint in that it can zoom in on one aspect, removing all other distractors from view. Giving the listener a clear focus)
- It is internet based (no more lugging around flash drives or emailing presentations in progress)
Give the program a try and let me know how it worked out for you!
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BP3_2010051_RSS Feeds
In my Google Reader, I have five websites that I follow.
http://twowritingteachers.wordpress.com/
The first site has to be my favorite site that I have been following for years. It is called: Two Writing Teachers. It is written by two elementary school teachers who teach 565 miles apart from each other and help each other implement quality writing instruction. Their ideas are just amazing and I am excited to have their thoughts delivered directly to me.
The second site that I have on my RSS feed is the Literacy Bytes site. I was originally interested in the Reader’s Workshop portion of this site, but it is not still up and running on a regular basis. The notes from the Literacy Coach are still intriguing and helpful and I’m excited to implement some of the ideas presented.
http://blog.classroomteacher.ca/
This website shows ways in which school teachers use technology in their classrooms. This site also provides a place for teachers to ask questions about more effective and creative ways to include technology into their classroom.
I really like this site. It is about integrating technology into an elementary school setting. The technology provided is appropriate for the grade level which I teach and the blog is written by an actual technology integration specialist for grades 3-5 and who was a classroom teacher herself! She has a great perspective on things and creates a blog.
http://www.educationtechnologyblog.com/index.html
This site summarizes the author’s RSS reader that fills up with education technology information. The author who happens to be an Elementary school teacher from the midwest tries out the new tools and posts about the most useful ones for teachers.
I’m excited to have one central place to go to read about these topics.
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In an article entitled Digital Discussion: Take Your Class to the Internet, author Helena Echlin (2007) discusses five approaches in which a teacher can structure their blog. At the very basic level, one can structure their class blog to manage the distribution of homework, handouts or announcements. Some teachers post information about the day and require students to summarize important topics or events. Another approach for constructing a functioning blog for your classroom is to use it as a place to keep journal entries of student learning. Students can reflect upon their classroom
performance and create goals for themselves. The third option Echlin describes for the reader is for the teacher to create a class discussion on their blog. A teacher posts an essential question and students respond to the prompt and to each other on the blog. My husband uses this method while teaching reading clubs. The last approach she suggests is to create a blog to foster the personal expression of your students. Create a space for students to blog about whatever they want. Encourage students to share personally written poetry, or reactions to books and articles that they read and most importantly, respond to each other to create a web-based dialogue.
I have always been a big fan of blogging. Being my school’s webmaster, I’ve been encouraging people to create a blog and use it as their webpage. Communication is easier and more freely given when the site is live and interactive. This year I really encouraged my third grade students to go on the blog and use it as a discussion board. A group of children asked if they could do a book group on it and document their thoughts on reading. The students mostly access the blog to comment on the day’s happenings. I like to post a question related to our learning and link websites to the post so students can explore the topic and respond. I’ve had a great number of students engage in these extracurricular exploratory opportunities. On Fridays I post a suggestion for a fun educational activity for the kids to explore and report back on. For example, in previous weeks students were challenged to make a parachute and do time trials with it tied to an action figure. Another week students were encouraged to put seeds out for the hungry, migrating birds in the region. I feel like the use of a classroom blog that encourages students, parents and teachers to interact, only strengthen the bonds between home and school.
I found another interesting article written in 2009 by Momo Chang that describes a unique idea that I think i might like to implement next school year. In third grade we teach about the history of Connecticut and explore the many reasons why West Hartford is such a great place to be. The article is written as a how-to create a blog about the places that the children live in. Each child would get their own blog and use it as a kind of informational journal describing what makes West Hartford and Connecticut such a great place. Students could choose a perspective such as entertainment or history and write through the lens of that topic or students could just journal about their adventures in our wonderful state. I think this would be a motivational and exciting use of time during Writer’s Workshop.
Chang, M. (2009). How to: Start a place-based blog. Edutopia. Retrieved May 7, 2010, from
http://www.edutopia.org/place-based-blogging-how-to
Echlin, H. (2007). Digital discussion: Take your class to the internet. Edutopia. Retrieved May 5, 2010,
from http://www.edutopia.org/digital-discussion-take-your-class-to-internet
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