Canada 2.0

For the last month my students have been emailing their pen pals from Canada. We exchanged a video and hope to Skype soon. For those that haven't heard of it, ePals is a great website for meeting classes. Initially I helped the students draft their own emails and edit for spelling. Now I'm letting the process occur more organically and allowing the students a lot of freedom to send their own emails. With ePals all the incoming and outgoing emails get sent to me for approval so I feel it is very safe. Some students have even showed their parents their emails and sent an email from home. They are all have their own email and password and are proficient at composing, attaching files, and sending and replying to emails.

We used Google Earth to look at our partner school and we sent and received pictures from our respective schools. It has been a blast!

Voki.com

On voki.com students can create personalized speaking avatars. This is a great way to teach the students how to present what they have learned. This can be used in many creative ways in the classroom,and the children will be motivated. Below you can find the voki that I created using Voki for Educators.(voki.com) I made this really quickly as an example, but am very excited to use this project with my students.This activity will allow them to focus on structuring their sentences and become better writers. It is also great for our second language learners because they will be able to hear their mistakes that they have written. Some words like Sacagawea, are difficult for the character to say, but you are able to spell it phonetically so the character can pronounce it more clearly. Some ways to use voki.com in the classroom: 1) Create a character to give a book talk/book report. 2) Create a character to persuade. 3) Create a character to summarize or paraphrase a story. 4) Bring a fictional character to life. 5) Teachers can use this to grab their attention and motivate them about a topic.(introductory) I even thought about implementing this for our IB exhibition. Children have chosen people like Elvis Presley, Christopher Columbus, and Rosa Parks. They can create a character on Voki.com and the character can tell a story about their life. On voki.com the children can type in the text and choose a voice,or they can record their own voice. Once you create the character you can send it to an email address or post it to a blog. There are many lesson plans and ideas for educators on the website, so check it out, if you haven't looked at this before.

I just made a new Voki. See it here:

April

When writing these posts I usually try to set goals for myself. I heard once that if you make your goals public you are more apt to achieve them, so I here's my goal for this month: Engage my student teacher in more technology.
She is feeling more confident with technology each day, but I know that more practice and guidance from me, she will become proficient in technology usage.
This month my TC and I will be implementing clickers into math and reading which will allow us to collect and analyze data more closely.
I'm also teaching her how to create more engaging, yet simple, smartbaord resources for her to use in every subject.
As for my March projects, they both were a success! The kids created Toondoos that revolved around the beginning, middle and ending of a Junior Great Books story we had read. They blogged about the experience, but I have yet to click 'publish' on that one..still figuring out some details.
Happy Spring!

Great Ways to Use a Blog: Concept Cartoons

I was poking around the Adams14 Instructional Technology Site and reviewed the slideshow about creative ways to use your class blog. I was especially inspired by the idea of Concept Cartoons, which is a site that uses comics to introduce science concepts. While this program is for purchase, I think you could use ToonDoo or any other graphic/comic program or application to create your own comic to spark inquiry. Thoughts or ideas?

One Laptop Per Child

So I recently applied for a teaching fellowship in Rwanda with SEVEN Fund which is a non-profit organization working to find enterprise solutions to poverty by investing in local entreprenurs. They are working specifically in Rwanda in all fields. The fellowship would allow me to travel to Rwanda this summer and experience the schools and current practices. I have read about the One Laptop Per Child program that Rwanda has been involved in and their President is committed to continuing.
If I am chosen for the fellowship my goal is to use what I have used as a Global Learner to support this program and communicate with schools in Rwanda using my class blog. I would also create lessons on solutions to poverty and do several presentations upon completion of the fellowship.
If I am not chosen, I still feel very compelled to be a part of this global movement to support education and eliminate poverty. I will still used what I have learned this year to create lessons and virtual resources to increase awareness and action.
I would love to hear any thoughts or ideas on how to integrate technology into lessons on poverty!!
Thanks and cross fingers for me!
Jenny

Graphing Data on Cities

I was unable to do many technology related lessons because of CSAP and my student teacher is taking over. We did a project that had students researching the 10 day forecast, demographics, and population over time for a chosen city. For the 10 day forecast we used www.weather.com . For the demographics we used http://www.zip-codes.com/ (use “other free lookups” and then click the first time your city appears). For the population over time we used http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0763098.html. It was awesome because the students were excited about being on computers and looking up information of the city of their choice. I created a packet that gave directions on what to do and tables for the students to write their information. I provided graph paper and the students had to decide which graph to use for each set of information.