New Toys

Whoa, this is a lot of new toys. I am working through a number of thoughts as I try to narrow down a topic and a tool. I am not there yet on either front.

I started out with the links that were provided in the opening of this class. I followed to Scoop It and got to work. I was working under the theory that if I do not try it I have no idea how it will work. There were parts of Scoop It that were nice. It was automatically polished, where Diigo that I have used previously is just nuts and bolts to look at.

I do not think Scoop It is what I will use in the end because I can not figure out how to get it to run blogs and tweets. This is quite possibly a user failure.Scoop It also seems more restrictive in what you can do on the free version. Here is what I ended up at: http://www.scoop.it/t/interactive-textbook
**** Update, I might be having a change of heart. I have figured out how to post tweets for a hashtag. I am still learning everything that I can do!*****

Paper.li is successfully pulling blogs and tweets for me. Since our goal is to have RSS feeds, articles and #tags running on our paper, I think that it makes it the better tool. I only switched over to it last night after I became frustrated with my creation on Scoop It. Paper.li has so many fuctions that I have only scratched the surface with. What I have found is that it was easier to to get to static sites with Scoop It. I wonder if in the end I will or can use a combination of the two with the Paper.li feeding from the Scoop It?



I am looking for sources that have great technical know how. I am still on the search for users. I think that part of my struggle for users is the technical vocabulary. I am finding the words that publishers and technical bloggers use, but not what the teachers are calling it. What do teachers who are using interactive textbook and other participative technologies call it? I love both of those phrases. Interactive Textbooks seems to be too narrow a topic, so I am broadening it to including other interactive teaching methods. I do worry that then I have become to broad. I don't know that I would include educational games. I feel that educational gaming alone would be a topic. I want to look the interactive end that is not clearly a game. This is something I will work on as I continue to define exactly what I know and share. Because I started with interactive textbooks, which started with it being mentioned on the curate mind map which I will have to go back and find again to share with you here, the technical wording led me to experts and publishers. I need to hone in on the vocabulary that teachers are using. Specifically, I would love to find elementary and middle school teachers who are blogging and tweeting about these teaching technologies.

When I am looking at these sources I want to know what they offer. Do they make a technology that I am interest in? Are they using it? If they are using it, at what level. I have found some cool things in my search that I know I can't use in 5th grade. For example, I found http://www.polleverywhere.com/
app being used. This app allows students to text answers that will automatically populate in a Power Point that has been set up for it. In the high school where they would all have their phones, this would be great. I have allowed student to bring in devices, but most of their parents are unsure about it, and the majority are ipod and ipads, not phones. My 11 year old doesn't have a phone either. So, I need to dig deeper to what can be used in elementary school. That is what I want to know.

The technology that I have in my building will be part of what I am looking at in my search. We are a Microsoft based school, it would be silly of me to put too much into Apple sources that I can not use. My students do have those iPods and iPads that we can use on a rarity, but our primary use are the school computers.

I feel challenged by all of this. There is so much to learn and understand. I am interested to see what everyone else is up to.

The Start

First a bit of a personal introduction. I am a very light hearted mom of 2 boys in 4th and 6th grade. I love to make everyone laugh. It opens up relationship to a deeper level where I can encourage both my own children and my students to set their own goals higher. I am developing my own personal creativity in new ways every year. I am a photographer, I love to make crafty things and recently have started making some clothes for me in my limited down time.

I have been teaching in the same fifth grade classroom for the past three years. Every year I stay in the same place, the more new ideas I am ready to try. The first year in a classroom, I am focused on just seeing how the book has everything laid out to teach. Then after that, it is easier to jump off of those ideas onto activities and teaching methods that I think will be of a greater benefit to the kids. 

Working on my Masters through Wilkes has opened me up to a number of ideas that I would not have found without it. Here are some examples of things I have tried because of past classes.

S'more for Math: I love math songs. I originally would just Google them, search on You Tube every time I needed them, or email myself the link and pull it up before class started, but I like having them ready for the kids to look at. They can play them at home and I can mash it up with some instruction and skills based games. It is a bonus that it looks neat too.

I started using edmodo after it was introduced in a class. This has been a great tool to connect with students.

I have ventured into making movies with my classes, and some small groups have chosen that as an option for a performance. We just watched a reader's theater the kids did in class along with this PSA I made for my 510 course.

In Social Studies I have used Tic Tac Toe boards that I created in a class for Wilkes and I have been slowly improving.

My next great Social Studies idea is a video that I found that shows natives that have never met a white man before. I find it so remarkable that not only are there tribes that have no contact with the outside world, but that their first contact was recent enough to tape. I will show the beginning part of this from YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyHYbsXt05k

Some of my other idea have just come from working with my teaching team and brain storming together. Together we have created great hands on projects. We challenge each other and point out pitfalls when we see them and support each other when none of us do. It is great to work on a supportive team. I did share the Snipping Tool on the computer, I didn't know it was there until a few weeks ago, that was a great find. 

Then there are the things I have stumbled on. I have followed endless streams of random clicks that have ended on great sites like Fakebook, where I will have the students create  a journal for an explorer.   Here is my example that is not nearly as polished as what I want the students to have when they are complete.Columbus

From the same site: http://www.superteachertools.com/ I have also made games for vocabulary. I hadn't been encouraging students to use the games and a student come up and asked me to update the set for the most recent lesson. It was a great reminder that even if I am not actively telling them to use a tool, if it is good they will ask to be able to use it. 

For everything that I have found and I have learned about, I am overwhelmed by all the new things I haven't even heard of. I will miss the support of fellow grad students at Wilkes when classes are done, but I am looking forward to being able to focus on using the tools I have learned about. http://www.symbaloo.com/ seems very cool, but I haven't had the free time to dig into it the way I need to to understand it. 

The challenges of being the first one to try something in my building is the push back from students and parents. I have heard a number of "They never had to do this before." and "Why do they have to do THIS." Projects that I have given that have a technical piece to them have been a source of frustration to parents who are unfamiliar with technology. If mom and dad don't know what a URL is, it is hard for them to help a struggling child copy it into an email so that I can see a finished product. I had this issue last year with the Fakebook project. I have found a way to model what I want and how to use the site in class for 3 days before I have the students work on it at home. I am hoping it will be a smoother run. In the end the kids LOVED the project, but tears were shed before they got to that point. My fingers are crossed for a tear free run this time around. 

I have found that while my students know how to play games, they do not know how to do some basic needs from their personal technology. They do not know how to print, or where to find their pictures on their iPod once they are plugged into a computer. They do not know how to properly save a file. They do not know how to type and without that skill, there are a number of online or with computer projects that take forever for them to P...I....C.......K      O.U......T all the letters. 

Despite the pitfalls I have found or stumbled into backwards over the past few years, I love using technology to reach my students and I am excited to learn something, or an overwhelming number of somethings in the next seven weeks. I already know what my first curiosity is- interactive textbooks-WHAT! That could be what I needed next in my life. 

-Chris Lopez