This Week in Tech (2)...

Image: Emily Haddon

CHVE Technology

What are students doing in technology?  Each week, come here to take a peek...The tools students use: CHVE Links.

Want to buy your child a computer and need a recommendation?

Read about experiences with 5th Graders using a Chat Room.

Week of: Dec 10, 2012

Kindies - SheppardSoftware.com: Practiced number sense using a fantastic primary Math site (great for older kids as well) 

1st Grade - Mrs. Wilkinson

• Dance Mat Mondays!  
• Education City: click here to gain access at home.
• Wixie: Began researching a topic through Tumblebooks.  Students looked at the section on Non-Fiction and Videos to investigate something they are curious about.  After taking notes, the students followed a template on how to build an online book in Wixie.  Contact me and Ask for help if your child lost his password to get into Wixie.  Students did not finish this book and will continue during the next rotation.  Eventually all "books" will be linked so students can view each other's work.

2nd Grade - Mrs. Feltz

• Dance Mat Mondays! 
• Began 2 days with Math Lines
• Education City: click here to gain access at home.  Goal: self-monitor: Their job was to look at the assessment chart of their Education City activities and find a score they would like to improve.  Their work syncs with the scoreboard giving them immediate feedback on their performance.  If a parent or teacher ever wants to the scoreboard, please let Mr. Krulish know and he will give you directions.
• Wixie: Began researching a topic through Tumblebooks.  Students looked at the section on Non-Fiction Books and Science Videos to investigate something they are curious about.  After taking notes, the students followed a template on how to build an online book in Wixie.  Contact me and Ask for help if your child lost his password to get into Wixie.  Students did not finish this book and will continue during the next rotation.  Eventually all "books" will be linked so students can view each other's work.

3rd Grade - Mr. Weiss 

• Dance Mat Mondays! 
• Worked on a book poster in ComicLife & learned the new way to save ComicLife projects in GoogleDrive.  Students designed posters of their favorite book.  They also learned to use the 3 different safe image searches for kids.  (Click here to see "Image search 1, 2, and 3").  Learned some design techniques.  Goal: to add more posters to our library to promote books.  Get ComicLife at home for $4.99 on your iPad!  Click here to download it to your computer for $30.
• Spent one day using a new program: Timez Attack.  This will soon be available at home for no cost.  Directions will be added to GoogleDrive via the Learning Links very soon.  This is an AMAZING program to increase recall speed with Multiplication and Division.  Requirement: 3-4, 20min sessions/week.

4th Grade - Mrs. Yoffe 

• Dance Mat Mondays! 
• Started a Google Earth, Holiday Tour project:  With a partner, students collaborated on 4 different winter celebrations.  They each worked from their own computer but edited the same page using Google Drawing to create a diagram of their research.  Then, they copied and pasted their information into Google Earth "pins" to build a tour around the earth of the ways different cultures celebrate the holidays.  For resources they used the "Holidays from around the world" box to find their info.  But how did they save their Google Earth "tours"?  Google Earth saves "pins" as .kmz files.  They saved these to their Google Drive so that they could work on this at home.  Saving this way is a new process and we do not have 100% mastery...yet.
• For those that finished their Holiday Tour, Students spent one day using a new program: Timez Attack.  This will soon be available at home for no cost.  Directions will be added to GoogleDrive via the Learning Links very soon.  This is an AMAZING program to increase recall speed with Multiplication and Division.  Requirement: 3-4, 20min sessions/week.

5th Grade - Mrs. Chavez - A GREAT WEEK...

• Dance Mat Mondays!
• Finished document formatting practice in Google Docs (left vs right jusify, Font tools, use "Research Tools" to add images [discussed plagiarism], used the drawing feature).  
• Created Badge by using the video as a guide and each other as resources, NOT A TEACHEr!!  Photos stored in GoogleDrive.  Discussion: Didn't Mr. Krulish say to NEVER put your photo or anything personal on the web?  So why are photos in gDrive?  Issue with "Sharing".  Rule: cannot share without Teacher or Parent permission.  Discussed issues with Sharing (ALMOST all problems with sharing happened because students forget to logout of their account at home or at school.  Kids don't realize they are in someone else's account; Another issue is the mischievous older brother or sister).
• Began a VERY successful research project that involves the use of chat rooms.  Click here to read more about it!  Eventually this will culminate into a News Broadcast project focusing on the 13 Colonies using iPad's:  
• We didn't have time for: Timez Attack.  This will soon be available at home for no cost.  Directions will be added to GoogleDrive via the Learning Links very soon.  This is an AMAZING program to increase recall speed with Multiplication and Division.  Requirement: 3-4, 20min sessions/week.  

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Chat Rooms and 5th Graders

A chat room, a 5th Grade Classroom, and total silence...

Below is an expansion of my weekly posting covering Tech in an Elementary school (Technology is a Specials Rotation at Cherry Hills Village Elementary - students go to 5 specials).  The blog is an effort to be transparent to parents in our community about what kids are doing with Technology.  The 5th Grade chat room activity was so successful, I though I'd share it independently:

Big Picture: The overall project for 5th grade is to build a news-broadcast on the iPads covering the life and times of a Colonial.  First, using laptops and their GoogleDrive accounts, they needed to build a GooglePresentation.  Here is what we did:

 
First they answered 2 big-picture questions by creating their own thinking map in GoogleDrawing.  Here was the best part: Since everyone was connected to the same big-picture page, we opened up the chat box for all to access.  Scarry?  Sure, but not without a lesson on how chat boxes can be used as a RESOURCE.  If you walked into the room, kids were working on their diagrams.  If any of the 5th graders needed to know how to do something in GoogleDrawing (how to change the color of a box, etc.,) they posted their questions in the chat room.  So this means they had at least 2 windows going at the same time: The big-picture questions, and their own GoogleDrawing document.  They were directed to post questions in the chat room when they didn't know how to use the drawing tools (fyi - I had the students use Google Drawing at the beginning of the year...so this was not there first time creating a Google Drawing).  It was AMAZING how well they responded to that.  Kids are natural multitaskers.  

While they were working on their own diagram, they kept an eye on the chat room.  Whenever someone posted a question, several kids were right there to post answers.  The entire class was completely interdependent.  I, the teacher, was simply a facilitator.  I jumped in the chat room and clarified directions but did not respond to any "how do I" questions.  For 30 min. straight, you could hear a pin drop in the room.

THIS TOOK GROUNDWORK!  

In the beginning, we set some ground rules:
I told them they needed to monitor each other.  If someone posted something silly or goofy, a peer kindly was instructed to walk over to them and respectfully ask them to stop.  Initially, they couldn't see why they had to walk over to them..."can't I just post it in the chat room?"  We discussed how the chat box is reserved for positive posts only.  Telling someone not to do something is negative.  When kids start critiquing one another, the beginnings of cyber-bullying takes shape.  Anyway, If the silly/goofy comments persisted, even after peer-intervention, I took away their laptop for 2 min.  The time doubles for each additional infraction.  We discussed: 

Is there a time to be Goofy?  SURE!  But not in a place of learning.  Everyone has a right to learn without distraction.  If you are causing distraction by posting silly things, there are consequences for that.  If you want to be goofy, great!  Get with a buddy at home and knock yourselves out (this also led to a conversation on cyber-bullying and gossiping).  Not one kid lost their laptop for 2 min.  When they finished their responses (which they gathered from a BrainPop resource about Colonies), they "Shared" their diagram with me, I inserted Comments on their diagram letting them know if they received an A for their work, or guided them (through inserting comments) on their misperceptions.  When they finished, they moved onto the next task...
(view my tech-blog to learn about the rest of the project)

I shared the experience with the teacher in hopes that it might provide insight into a new way to instruct.  I also let the kids know they should encourage their teacher to use this tool in lessons where it might be appropriate.  It was a fantastic week and look forward to pursuing this with all 5 classes.

If you are interested in seeing what I've done with any or all grades, I post weekly here (I don't like the organization...but will live with it till I have time to attend to it)