Holy NETA!

Holy #Neta14!

What an amazing experience! I definitely feel blessed that I was able to attend the two day event. I thought I should "share some of the goods" that I received at the conference. Here goes:

PeekYou.com-this website is AWESOME to show students to teach them about digital citizenship. You simply type in a name and you can see all of the public things found online. It will show all the information accessible by others. Kids can try typing in themselves and see all that is available to the public eye. You can also search usernames....so those kids that play games "live and online" with people via PS3 or XBox etc. can type the username of the person they are playing against and find out things about them as well. I thought this lesson will IMPACT students a lot-great for beginning of the year/digital citizenship.

Monster Skype Activity...have the students draw a monster...write a very detailed descriptive writing about their monster...send the description to a "penpal" in another classroom....ask that student to recreate their  partner's monster based solely on the description...Skype/GHO to show them and see how they did (helps focus on descriptive writing...)  create a competition to see whose is closest to original!!!

App-Random Name Selector Pro--similar to having sticks in the classroom, but will allow you to tell it how many times a name is "allowed" to be drawn...pulls name out of a hat

Blendspace.com.....independently study....intro to new material...similar to educational Pinterest....search within website....pre-created ones available....insert videos text quizzes documents....helps with times where students take longer on things than other kids do...collage/menu board of assignments or things to read or watch etc. Students don't have to create an account. If they don't, some features will be unavailable, however. 

 Touchcast App.....video app where you can pick themes....free for a limited time!!! Download it soon! Record a video and live action things....add apps within the video so it is on the screen over the live video....can fade out the apps so they are faint....can put a map in background for instance....as you give report things can be popping up...you can have a TelePrompTer...green screen.....white board....becomes interactive if you click on it and have it take you to the map or website. Can export file out to parents or to a blog via YouTube. 

Virtual Field Trips-
This website allows you to search for specific topics to find interactive, virtual field trips. Some are free, some cost...but you CAN search for JUST the free ones!
This other website will take you to NASA's distance learning website!

Some Apps to Check Out:

  This app is similar to the fav "Write About This" but offers diff options! Can use avatars and voice recording/typing to talk about different topics.....can be randomized...

This is similar to WORDLE [it does cost 1.99 but seems pretty awesome!] but when you type in the words, the words form the picture-a picture you choose from camera roll to use....the entire picture becomes a compilation of the words you typed in

  This website allows students [and teachers] to type in a book that they have read and enjoyed...and it will give recommendations of similarly themed books/authors.

www.rewordify.com allows students/teachers to copy and paste text into it...and the website will take some of the "tougher" words out and replace them with an easier synonym. Great way to differentiate for those struggling readers, especially with those difficult texts.

  www.theproblemsite.com is a website that provides challenge problems for those kids that need some extra "push".

www.jeopardylabs.com Great website that allows you to create your own Jeopardy games. A great way to spice up those review days!

safeshare.tv is a website that allows you to put links from YouTube into and then you and your students can watch your video with NO advertisements or those side movies...it just puts a black screen around the actual video you are watching. No more worrying about what "pops up" while showing that video/clip!

  Remind101.com is a site that allows you to send out text messages to mass amounts of people without them knowing your number OR you knowing their number. I think this will be a great tool for my basketball parents [I coach high school girls] and even possibly for parents of my 6th graders in the future to let them know about projects/tests/reminders/etc.

thedigitialscoop.com is her website of all of these amazing apps/websites/ideas plus WAY more....just in case you are curious!

ANOTHER amazing website I am SUPER excited about is www.zondle.com. HERE is a video tutorial on how to set it up and use it step by step. To try to summarize in little words, it's very much like Stick Around in that you can create reviews....OR the students can create review questions. This is web based, though, and has a few different features. Students can search topics to find other students'/teachers' reviews they have made. The BIG difference is this...after a student gets a question right, they get to play a very small clip of a game....then answer again correctly...play a short snippet of the game again....if they get the answer WRONG, it sends the question on to the end [tacked on]. Teachers can get reports showing the scores students are getting on the questions, how many times they attempted it, the hardest question for that student, AND what day and time they kid played the game. I went to a presentation on this that featured TWO 5th grade boys that couldn't stop talking about how fun this site is! They said they play it at home A LOT, and parents are happy with it because the kids are LEARNING throughout the entire process. I love that kids are able to create their own review questions AND they are able to create their own GAMES!!! So, if you have students that like to work with graphics and creating on computers...THIS is the site for you. If you have students that need some motivation to go through studying...THIS is the site for you. Kids earn Zollars and there is a leader board, etc. Teachers can assign students specific games [even embed them on iTunesU course or in an email, etc...] OR allow students to search and select random topics OR search their friends' games.....I'm SO pumped to see how this will run with my students!

I also won 25 licenses for MAD LEARN!!!! It's a one year subscription that I will start in the Fall with my students. MAD LEARN is an app that allows students to BUILD and CREATE apps of their own! I can't wait to research and PLAY with this app. I'm even MORE excited to see what they end up creating!

Whew. I think I'll stop there. I just wanted to jot down some of my favorites from the conference. I can't wait to collaborate with the other #ipadacademy peeps and see what they learned. I'm still trying to soak everything in. Let me know if you have any amazing ideas to use with any of the above apps or ones you have found to work in your room. My brain is still on overload!

Raz Kids, Alternative GHO option, SS projects.....

Hello! I am very eager to head back to work this week [YES! I am definitely saying I will be happy to see Monday!] After reading Michelle Klamm's post about conducting Running Records via Raz Kids, I did some investigating on my own. I will be starting my own this week via Raz Kids. I'm excited to see the breakdown of skills and how much the kids and I enjoy doing it this way versus the way we have been doing it. It's always fun to experiment, right? I can't wait to see what the kids think as well! It seems all I have to do is "assign" them their level book assessment and then they can do it on their iPad or any computer. It records their reading which will give me time to analyze it in a quiet environment that enables me to pause and replay if I don't hear the reading the first time. It will then ask the student to summarize what they read-and this again is a recording that I can listen to at a different time. Raz Kids assessment sheet gives me a 0-3 scoring rubric for their answers. It also gives them a 5 question comprehension quiz and reports the scores to me. Questions: Has anyone else used these as running records? Likes or dislikes about it? How did the kids like doing it this way? For kids on the lower levels, did any of you [teachers] find the need to READ the comprehension questions aloud? I can see this as a need for a couple of my kiddos. Any input, opinion, comments, etc would be greatly appreciated!!

I recently had a class contact us about doing a GHO...due to major time zone differences, we could not do a "live GHO". So, we decided to start doing videos and posting them to each other on Twitter via YouTube. In each video, we answer their question and pose a new question....then they do the same....we have done several now.....click on the links below to see a small "taste" of what we have been sending/doing. We have two students in charge of recording the questions and answers we have received thus far. The students still enjoy the competition of guessing their location before they guess ours. Critical reasoning, logical thinking, geography knowledge are just a few of the skills we are practicing. What was your best GHO thus far??

They made the first video! 

Our response/first question to them...... 

 They're 2nd video with response/new question

Our response/2nd question to them.... 

And so on...we will update you on our Mystery Class GHO as we get more clues!!!

 
The students will be presenting their social studies projects starting next Tuesday. I am excited to see what they have created! We had them choose a topic, and basically take on the role of teacher in that they needed to lesson plan! They have to have some kind of notes about their topic that sum up the information, a visual aid of some sort, and a follow up activity for their classmates to practice the new information they received. I have seen many students creating Stick Arounds, using Thinglinks, Keynotes, and I even taught them about Google Forms [but I believe these can only be CREATED on a computer, correct?] I know the students are eager and excited to show off what they have created and to see what their fellow peers have done as well. 

Our favorite apps from the past couple weeks have been AURASMA [still having problems with scanning images from ANY ipad versus the ipad that it was taken/created on]. The kids are also eager to try some coloring pages from colAR Mix app and Chromville app. Thank you Ann for hooking us up to a GHO with Sue G. that showed us these awesome AR apps!

Guided Reading, Apps, and GHOs

Hello all!

THe days just seem to go by SO fast that I forget to update things on my lovely blog. My co-workers and I decided at the start of 4th quarter to NOT departmentalize [t just teach all subjects to our own kids "without switching"]. This has been surprisingly...AMAZING! It has opened up options with the iPads that I didn't even think about. We are able to incorporate and CREATE on the iPad for ALL subjects ALL the time. The days just FLY by, as I said above....it's just crazy...I feel like as soon as I get here in the morning I am in a dead sprint until 4pm when I look up and realize it's time to call it a day.

STICK AROUND-we have done a LOT of puzzles in Stick Around [I have dumped all of the puzzles I have created for Science, Grammar, Reading, SS, etc into the 6th grade BPS folder Brent made for us]. Last week, however, was our first FORMAL assignment of CREATING a puzzle. I had them do this for 9-7 which was finding a pattern and continuing it. It definitely challenged a lot of the kids...many asked "can we just do the worksheet?", which tells me the worksheets are not making them think as hard as we hope or NEED them to. I told them no...this was their assignment and that they could do it-it would just take some patience and knowledge. The kids did a great job for the most part-we will need to talk in the future about CHALLENGING ourselves and others by creating puzzles that are 6th grade appropriate. Some kids, for example, did problems like 0, 5, 10, 15, __, ___, ____. A little easy, but at least they were creating and exploring this amazing app.

Ask3-via Twitter I read that they are going to discontinue/get rid of this app. Does anyone know why? Did anyone else hear or read this? My kids LOVE LOVE LOVE this app for math....we use it several times a week as one of our "choice activities" for Math. If they are discontinuing it, is there another app out there like it? I know Explain Everything...but I love that in Ask3 all the students in the class can view each others' videos, post comments/videos of their own within a classmate's video....WITHOUT uploading it to YouTube. Comments? Advice?

Guided Reading-we have taken off with our "menu of options" [see a previous post for pic]. The kids have enjoyed the variation of activities. We have asked students to put 1-2 pieces into their Google Drive "Guided Reading" folder they created and shared with us. This allows us to see the games they have played via screenshot or uploaded their videos on Chatterpix and Sock Puppets and Tellagamis. If you do a Chatterpix....these do NOT directly upload into Google Drive. Once students create a fluency practice in Chatterpix, we have to plop it into Explain Everything....save the project....and then upload VIDEO file via GOOGLE DRIVE and export it to their guided reading folder. Here, we [Sarah Armstrong and I] can check our kids' folders on a weekly basis to make sure they have done at least ONE activity a week, and within 5 weeks, they will have done ONE from each of the daily 5 activities.

GHO-our recent GHO was with a school in Irvine, California. When I email the teacher about setting up a date and time, we decide if we want to do state ONLY or if we want to do city and state. [once someone gets our state, city is easy as very few cities in Nebraska have 50,000+ residents...which we tell them in our intro of the class/town]. It was very challenging for my students to guess their city as California of course has thousands and thousands of cities....many with a lot of people. After we guessed city and state, we did a short Q and A session. It was fun to see what the kids wanted to ask each other. See URL below for the student-created iMovie trailer and iMovie slideshow.....after every hangout we write about it on our kidblog.org/MissSaliesClass and include the link to one of the two media sources above. We also have connected with classrooms on the blog that we have had a GHO with! I recently re-emailed parents the link to our blog page so they know we WELCOME their comments ALWAYS!!! 

Upcoming: GHO with Tony Vincent and teachers at 3:20pm today, iPad Academy tomorrow....

New apps: Math splat, Everyday Mathematics Equivalent Fractions [thanks Chelsea Hoglund], Thinglink, Athens City Walk [great for Ancient Greece]

iMovie SLIDESHOW for GHO w Cali

iMovie TRAILER GHO w Cali