What a Year!

I completely agree with Betsy. It's difficult to stop and reflect on our use of technology in the past year since we're wrapped up in the craziness of the end of the year. Also, I think we're all hard on ourselves since we have such high hopes and expectations. Then again, when I look back on all that my students have accomplished in the past year, particularly the projects that involved technology, I am so proud of them!

The Power to Learn grant served over 100 of my 7th grade students, including both my language arts students and our newspaper students. Plus, this grant served all 8th grade students. I can't wait to see how my 7th grade students who used the technology all year will thrive next year in 8th grade. I imagine (or at least I hope) that the students will continue to shine as they benefit from the easy access to ipods, netbooks, and flip cameras.

My students just recently created book trailers. Throughout the year, we have used different video formats, so by now, the students are familiar with several different programs including iMovie, GoAnimate.com, XtraNormal.com, Animoto.com, and the flip cameras. After choosing their favorite book that they read this year, students planned out a book trailer for their book. They watched several examples of other book trailers on the ipods. Much like movie trailers, we discussed how a book trailer should "sell" people on the book. The trailers should encourage people to read the book. And, therefore, students wrote scripts highlighting their favorite parts of the books without giving away the ending. After planning their book trailer and writing a script, students chose a video format for their trailer. It was pretty cool to see some groups combine more than one program for their book trailers. In general, I think students seemed to like iMovie, Animoto, and the flip cameras the best...and several groups combined a few of these programs. So cool! Now we have a huge collection of book trailers on the ipods, so students can browse these trailers when they are looking for a good book to read.

Honestly, I can't wait for next year. I think that as successful as this year was, next year will be so much better! We can use the technology right from the start of the year, and by next year, I really think it will be seamless. I have gotten much better about integrating technology into my lessons, and that really took some time to get used to thinking differently. It was exciting to offer my students so many awesome opportunities and different ways of learning that would not be possible without this technology in my room. Next year, I want to use this technology from day one. And I can only imagine how much more successful next year will be. Teaching with access to so much technology has allowed me to be more creative...and our students' use of this technology has definitely helped them!

The End is in Sight

Well, it's the end of May. We only have a few more days until finals and everything is crazy right now. I've got students using iPods to assist them as they finish reading Daniel's Story or Night. Students are using computers to finish typing essays, paragraphs, poems, and to conduct research. We've had some printing problems which have delayed getting some work printed for portfolios, and I'm still not sure how all of that is going to be resolved.

Overall, it's a little hard to reflect when I'm still in the middle of all the craziness. However, I know that is what I'm supposed to do right now, so I'm going to try. I think this year has had some great successes. I don't know if we exactly "lived the dream" as far as technology goes, but we definitely made some great progress. The problem with evaluating this year is that our expectations for ourselves are so high. Every time we try something, we always look at what we have done and say, "How can we do this better next time?" That means it's hard to look back on this year without looking at the areas for improvement.

I do know that my 8th grade team agrees that using the technology has been a great motivator for the kids, and for us, as well. We are so happy that we applied for this grant and cannot imagine teaching without it now. Our successes have been in working together to troubleshoot and to come up with ideas for great lessons. I know our kids really enjoyed using the iPods to view videos that connected to our curriculum, talking about what they read on Ning, and designing their own heroes online on HeroMachine. They also enjoyed just being able to access info on a computer or to be able to type up their writing whenever they needed to do so. The challenges have been finding the time to seamlessly fit the technology into our lessons. We've had a million great ideas, but we don't always have the time to carry them out or to fit them into the curriculum.

I think we've learned so much, and we're excited to actually start next year with the technology and everything we have learned this year. I know starting from Day 1 with all of our expertise will make next year run much more smoothly. We're ready for a break and some time for reflection, but we'll be excited when it comes time to get started next year!

Technology Update

I don't know where the year has gone. It is just flying by, and I just realized it had been way too long since I had posted anything on our blog. My students have definitely been using technology. One lesson they particularly enjoyed was one we did using VoiceThread. We were studying persuasive appeals and techniques, so I found commercials that I thought showed certain techniques and appeals my students had studied. I posted them on VoiceThread and then students viewed them there and pointed out the appeals used in each commercial. I had a written part to the assignment, as well, but of course, the part they got the most out of was getting to type in or record their answers on the VoiceThread. After that lesson, students then had to choose a cause and plan their own Public Service Announcement using persuasive appeals and techniques. They used the Dell minis to research and some used Flip cameras to record people to include in the PSA. All but one group created their PSA on iMovie. Some also used Garage Band to create their own music. Most chose music from Freeplaymusic.com. We are still trying to finish these PSAs right now. I already have eleven groups' PSAs posted on the T3 Grant's SBwiki. I plan on posting more. I just tried to load one here, but it didn't work. I never have any luck getting my videos here. I'll try again if I have time. Overall, I'd have to say that the students really did a great job with this project. Their PSAs were very emotional and persuasive, and I think the students completely enjoyed working on the project. I'm excited to use the Macs for another project!

Book Clubs

My academic students finished reading Mississippi Trial, 1955 and my pre-AP students finished their book clubs. Each of these books was related to slavery and/or the Civil Rights Movement.

Students responded to blogs and led discussions on our class Ning and in the Ning book club groups.

Throughout our class discussions and the book club group discussions, students learned from the novels and from each other. Because the students seemed to have a growing fascination with this period of history, each group chose a topic that they wanted to research. After researching on the internet, students created Animoto videos to present their information to the rest of the class.

I was so proud to see my students going above and beyond my expectations. The students were so thrilled to create videos, and they went out of their way to learn new things.

Animoto videos

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.




Little Rock Nine




Rosa Parks




KKK




Underground Railroad




NAACP

Social Networking Safety

Yes, I know this video is pretty lame, but my students actually had a good discussion about social networking safety. Just wanted to share.

TCEA Conference

I spent two days in Austin at the TCEA conference. I attended some interesting presentations while I was there. Since I just got back and have to plan for tomorrow's classes, I don't have time to explain everything I learned while I was there, but I do want to go ahead and post some websites that I heard about at some of my sessions. I thought this would be an easy way to store the information and that my grant team members might benefit from these ideas, as well.

I will post more that I learned soon.

Cool Websites/Tools I'd Heard of Before:
http://www.jingproject.com/- Jing easily captures screen shots and you can add comments to them

http://wallwisher.com/- On Wallwisher students can leave digital sticky notes and even add video or pictures; all the comments could appear on the ActivBoard all at once

http://www.wordle.net/- Wordle is where students can copy and paste text and it will pull out the most commonly used words and make a word cloud. (This could be cool for students to use when looking at persuasive speeches in order to focus on the word choice.)

http://animoto.com/- I'm sure most people have heard of Animoto, but what I liked about the example I saw was how it was used. They showed an example of a teacher using a video he made to introduce himself on the first day of school and to introduce his classroom rules. That's a much more interesting way to start off the school year than with a traditional packet and letter.

http://www.glogster.com/- Glogster is a way for students to create online posters. This has many possibilities.

http://www.imaginationcubed.com/ Share ideas by drawing on GE's multi-user online whiteboard.

Cool Ideas That Were New to Me:
http://museumbox.e2bn.org/-great way to present research; This site provides the tools for you to build up an argument or description of an event, person or historical period by placing items in a virtual box.

http://blabberize.com/- Blabberize can make any of your pictures talk. You could use it in a presentation and students could use it, as well.

http://www.google.com/squared- Google Squared takes a category and creates a starter 'square' of information, automatically fetching and organizing facts from across the web.

http://www.jamstudio.com/Studio/index.htm- Jam Studio creates music beats for free.

http://www.myavatareditor.com/- My Avatar Editor lets students create avatars like the ones on Wii. These can be used instead of pictures for profile page on Ning or a blog, or can be used in other writing assignments and projects.

http://sketch.odopod.com/#featured -Odo Sketch is a more advanced online drawing site.

http://classtools.net/ Classtools.net allows you to create free educational games, activities and diagrams in a Flash! Host them on your own blog, website or intranet! The presenter shared one called the Random Name Picker that seemed like it had multiple possibilities. I have not looked at everything else that is offered yet, but the site seems full of options.

http://storybird.com/tour/- Storybird is a collaborative story-telling site. The art on the site inspires the stories.

Open House

We had our Power to Learn Open House today. Because the 8th grade students were on a field trip, we had the opportunity to borrow their laptops, so we had tons of technology! With 24 computers and 8 ipods, every student had either a computer or an ipod at all times. Clearly, the students were actively engaged!

Our assignments today will lead into the book clubs that we're beginning next week. Because the books relate to civil rights, and because Monday is M.L.K. Day, today's assignments allowed students the opportunity to explore the historical background of this time period. Additionally, their writing assignments required the students to formulate opinions about "the way things were" in comparison to "the way things are today."

After explaining the assignment to the students, they referred back to the ActivBoard for instructions when they forgot what to do or when they got confused. I encouraged the students to choose what they wanted to do first, work on the ipods or the computers. It was actually pretty funny (and amazing!) to see the students who used both the ipods and computers at the same time. Multi-taskers!

The students who were using the computers responded to two blog posts on our Ning network. Both blog prompts related to civil rights. In fact, the students responded to M.L.K.'s "I Have a Dream" in one of their responses.

Because students are using our class Ning to write their responses, we discussed the importance of different types of writing and the importance of identifying the audience. For instance, we agreed that it's okay to use all lowercase letters or abbreviations when sending a message to a friend or when writing on another student's wall. However, we also agreed that students must use proper capitalization, spelling, and punctuation when typing assignments for class. For the most part, the students did pretty well with this.

The students used the ipods to watch two videos, M.L.K.'s video of "I Have a Dream" and the music video "A Dream" by Will.I.Am. While watching these videos, students were responsible for annotating their thoughts and examples of figurative language in "I Have a Dream." Students made excellent connections between the music video and the speech.

Students were actively engaged, and, therefore, there were no classroom management issues. Honestly, the students were perfect. Even my most challenging class worked silently all period, only whispering to help other students. This was definitely a pleasant surprise! If only we could do this every day... Our rotations usually work well, but nothing can compare to having extra computers in class. Today was amazing!

New Year!

On top of what was previously mentioned in regards to the 8th grade team, I have found that students enjoy being on the laptops for ANYTHING, even if it is something as simple as typing a paper instead of writing it by hand. With so many students who do not have computer access at home, this gives them a great opportunity to learn more about technology.

I have still found that one of my biggest problems rests in the fact that there is a significant number of students who never turned in permission slips (whether it be for e-mail or the social networking), but as stated before, I think this will go much smoother when we are able to start handing out permission slips at the beginning of the school year. Though I can say that some students became quickly motivated to turn in permission slips after having seen what other students were doing with things like the Ning.

As we get a steady grasp on the technology and all of its potential, we continue to come up with more and more ideas to integrate it into our classrooms. The 8th grade students will be completing a web scavenger hunt over the Civil War. This gives students the opportunity to both learn about the war and enhance their web navigation skills. We are also using audio books once again on the iPod Touches. Some students prefer to read to themselves, but the audio books have really helped engage students, as well as keep them at a steady pace. I definitely see it as being beneficial.

As a reading lab teacher, I have also found websites that are beneficial to providing practice over TAKS objectives for my students. It makes the drills much more exciting for them, and the students are always happy to have the technology out.

We are always thinking up (or discovering) new ways to integrate the technology, and the more we learn about it, the smoother the process becomes.