Category Archives: Technology & Learning Coach

The role of the Technology & Learning Coach, day to day happenings, PD for staff

Search Engines for Kids

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Over the past few days I’ve been working with Grade 4 students who are either creating Top Ten Lists (and requiring more research information to justify their top ten) or are researching topics for their Non-Fiction Feature Articles in Writers Workshop.  In order to find (and evaluate – that’s next week’s focus) information on the web, we looked a few different Search Engines for Kids.

Before we even got started with Search Engines, I needed to make sure that the students  understood a little more about how search engines work. We watched the video below from the very good Common Craft Plain English series on Web Search – Strategies in Plain English

Next, I introduced four different Search Engines especially designed for Kids.  Each one offers something different from the other, so we talked about how there is never a search engine that’s perfect for every search we will ever do in our learning!

Boolify
Librarians, teachers and parents have told us how hard it is for students to understand web searching. Boolify helps students bridge that gap by visualizing the process and letting students interact with the abstract concept behind the search process in a tangible and hands-on way.

SquirrelNet
SquirrelNet is a kids only search engine that has Google SafeSearch activated. From the homepage itself, you can also access the Google directory of websites relevant for children.

Dib Dab Doo & Dilly Too!
The search engine is again based on Google Custom Search and it tries to keep the content as children friendly as possible.

Kids Click!
A web search site designed for kids by librarians – with kid-friendly results!

For the classroom teacher, I left these resources also for them to introduce to their students over the next few days.

Search Engines for Kids
- and what they search -

No Search Engine is entirely 100% safe. Custom search helps to keep out a lot of unsavory links, but it is definitely not foolproof. Most of the search engines for kids also display ads with some undesirable ones sneaking in. Parental control software in combination with these search engines can help to keep children shielded from the bad side of the web. It is a tough battle but at least with these sites, parents and teachers can worry a little less.

As with any use of technology, our lesson included strategies for what to do when the “undesirables” sneak in.  Although I “modelled” good and bad examples of what to do when faced with something “icky” (for the sake of time as I only had a 45 minute slot) – if I was to do it differently – I’d have the students work in pairs and come up with little demos of what not to do (scream at the top of your lungs) and what to do (lower your lid and raise your hand).  Kids seem to love it when I model the “what-not-to-do” examples!

Information also adapted from: Make Use Of: 10 Search Engines for Kids with Safe Browsing

Working Together

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Last week our Elementary School had it’s annual International Day celebration.  It’s a fabulous day where we come together and celebrate our differences and similarities.  This year’s theme was One Day One World.  Our clever Art Specialists, Paz Molina & Trish Neubrand came up with a mural idea that would ensure that ALL the ES students could contribute too.

Over a week or so, the mural slowly came together.  Using the iPad app iMotionHD (free version is good but the paid version allows you to export) we set the iPad2 up each day to capture the putting together of the mural.

Since we created this stop-motion movie over a number of days, it was very important to:

  • mark out (using masking tape) the placement of the iPad (on the table)
  • mark out the placement of the table the iPad sat on, and
  • mark out the placement of the Mural

this ensured that each time we captured an art session, the differences in capture were minimal.

Using iMovie, all the exported iMotionHD captures were imported in, some still images were added, along with some catchy Creative Commons music called Spring the Swing by Papa_Zulu (found on dig.ccmixter.org) and this is what we ended up with on International Day!

Summer PD in the Comfort of Your Own Home

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The wonderful folks over at Edublogs have put together the best summer PD you could ever imagine  - they’ve organised the  Teacher Challenge: 23 Free Web Tools.  It’s part of the “30 days to using the best of the web’s free tools for educators” series.

Each of the 23 links below take you to an Edublogs Teacher Challenge page for a tool with an overview, a task & challenge plus help & support links.

What a perfect challenge for the summer if you’ve got time to dabble with this list of free web tools.  It will only take 30 days!  Some of them you will have heard of before.  Which ones will you try out?

#1 – Wallwisher
A Web 2.0 free online tool where anyone can build a “wall”.  Discussing a new idea? Taking notes? Giving feedback? Voicing opinion? Wishing a happy birthday?  Your students can then go onto the internet and stick post-it notes electronically onto your wall.  The notes can include linked pictures, You Tube videos, PowerPoints, PDF documents, Excel Spreadsheets, or web page links.

#2 – Self-grading Quizzes
Learn how to create a self grading, multiple choice quiz using Google Docs

#3 – Bitstrips for Schools
A web-based resource that enables any student to write their own great-looking, original comic strips without having to draw.

#4 – Classtools.net
Free flash tool website that allows you to create quizzes, diagrams, and educational games. You can then host them on your own site free of charge.

#5 – Edmodo
Web 2.0 tool that allows teachers to safely share ideas, files, assignments, videos, projects, etc.with students and with other teachers in real time. It is a safe and secure social learning site for classrooms.

#6 – DoInk
A simple & friendly vector editor that can create flash-style animations.  You can download your art, post to YouTube or Facebook and use the community art or just your art.

#7 – Kerpoof
Kerpoof is all about having fun, discovering things, and being creative. Here are just a few ways that you can use Kerpoof: Make artwork (even if you aren’t good at drawing!); Make an animated movie (really! it’s easy!); Earn Koins which you can trade for fun things in the Kerpoof Store; Make a printed card, t-shirt, or mug; Tell a story; Make a drawing; Vote on the movies, stories, and drawings that other people have made.

#8 – Glogster
GlogsterEDU (the Basic, Free version) is a Web 2.0 tool that allows students, or yourself, to create an online interactive poster/presentation/research on any topic that combines graphics, backgrounds, videos, images, sound, text and hyperlinks.  (This is one of my most favourite free web2.0 tools for the classroom)

#9 – ToonDoo
Free, fast, and facile comic strip creator.

#10 – Wordle
A word cloud, helps to interpret the meaning of the words by assigning font size according to how frequently the word appears in the targeted text. (Another favourite of mine)

#11 – Skype
Free voice and video calls using Skype is great for talking with authors, experts, peer classrooms, language classes, and more.  (Highly recommend this one!)

#12 – Animoto
Web 2.0 tool that allows teachers and students to create impressive and unique digital stories and presentations (incorporating images, video clips, music and text) quickly and easily. Animoto is a wonderful tool for students because it allows them to focus on content creation rather than trying to learn an editing or manipulation tool. In the school context, Animoto For Education is ideal tool for students to create their own booktrailers, digital stories or music videos.

#13 – VoiceThreads
An application that can be used right from your browser, which allows you to use different types of media to create an interactive slideshow.  You can use pictures, videos, documents, or even presentations.  Then, you or your students can record video/audio that allows you to describe each slide in more detail.  You can even draw right on the slide to circle or highlight different areas of interest.  (Love this tool!)

#14 – PhotoFiltre
We, and our students, all need to edit and manipulate images at some point. There are many image editors we can use to do this. However most of these are quite complex to learn and are also often only available at a relatively high cost. PhotoFiltre is both simple to use and free to download.

#15 – Livebinders
A digital 3 ring binder that you can put virtually anything into; webpage, PDF, document, image, or video. Everything is organized by tab and you can even have subtabs within those tabs.

#16 – WeeBehave
WeeBehave provides online chore and behavior charts to help teachers and parents track and record behavior patterns. The WeeBehave philosophy is that children can be better self-managed when using behavior and chore charts. Research shows that children will accomplish more if they can visibly see their results and participate in the goal setting process. This website helps accomplish that!

#17 – DropBox
A free service that lets you bring your photos, docs, and videos anywhere and share them easily. Never email yourself a file again! (Personally, I adore this application & wouldn’t leave home without it!)

#18 – Jing
Jing is a screen sharing tool. It allows you to capture anything on your computer screen either as a still image or as a video up to 5 minutes long. It is a good free  tool for narrating and sharing what is on your screen.  (ISB staff – you already have jing installed on your laptops – just type jing in the spotlight to find it)

#19 – Audacity
Free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. (Similar to GarageBand)

#20 – LearnBoost
LearnBoost empowers with a free all-in-one online classroom management solution so they can track student grades and progress, create standards-aligned lesson plans, generate beautiful analytics and reports, and organize their schedules from a central dashboard, all while integrating with Google Apps. Teachers can share academic progress and attendance with parents and students using the safe and secure student and parent platform.

#21 – Wetoku
A simple platform for interviewing someone via the Internet. Collaborating globally is a must for our students and as result interviewing can be a challenge. Wetoku makes doing an interview as easy as filling out some basic information, creating an interview session and then sending the creative interview session’s URL to the interviewee.

#22 – Little Bird Tales
Little Bird Tales is an incredibly easy to create a high-quality digital story. The site allows users to create narrated slideshows, using their own photos or illustrations and their own voices.

#23 – Wikispaces
Wiki comes from the Hawaiian word for “quick” and a wiki is a website that can be modified quickly and easily.

And here’s one of my own personal favourites that is well worth “dabbling” with over the summer …
# – Prezi
An easy to use, online editor that makes zooming presentations.  CheatSheets & Video Tutorials to help you learn Prezi are provided!

Book Spine Poetry

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LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this idea of creating poetry from the spines of books.  It’s from the two gorgeous ladies over at Pro Divas (who got it from a tweet from Travis Jonker aka:@100scopenotes).

It appeals to the photographer in me and my own love of poetry.  What a great way to inspire kids who struggle to come up with ideas to get them started!

Here’s my first attempt (from my library of books at home)

Book Spine Poetry

365 Grateful Project

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This little video came up in my RSS feed today – and immediately struck a chord with me!

One tweet to my PLN about it & one response is all it takes to get a project rolling ……..

TweetDeck
Uploaded with Skitch!

Here’s a few ideas swirling around in my head after a quick skype conversation with the very talented Rob (in Singapore!):
  • Global project for 2011/12 – classrooms around the world
  • Different projects to suit different needs / time available
  • Rather than a photo a day from everyone – a photo a week?
  • Photos made into a book – available for purchase?
  • Donate proceeds of book to a charity that we’re grateful exists?
  • iMovie project – “A class full of gratefulness”
  • How can we incorporate writing? (since that’s a BIG focus for our ES next school year)
  • Create a website
  • Google doc spreadsheet for people to sign up their classes

I haven’t been this excited about a project in a while …..

So how about you?  Would you like to join in?  Do you have some ideas to add?  I’d love to hear from you!!

Share and Share-Alike

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The power of your personal network really shines through when you share. Share

Today I shared 10 minutes of my time by skyping into @jasongraham99′s staff meeting in Jakarta, and sharing “3 apps and a tip” for the iPad. I have to say it was pretty hard to narrow the choice down to only 3 apps (so during the “tip” I managed to sneak in another app!).

By using the document camera, the iPad and the share screen function of the Skype (for Mac), I was able to demo the apps and the tips really clearly.

So what did I share?
App 1: Idea Sketch FREE
- fantastic for brainstorming, can email ideas, save to photos.  It lets you easily draw a diagram – mind map, concept map, or flow chart – and convert it to a text outline, and vice versa.

App 2: Chicktionary FREE
-excellent vocabulary/spelling “game” – remember when the teacher put up a word on the board & you had to see how many words you could make from the letters – well this is it iPad style and it’s one of my FAVOURITES!

App 3: Talking Tom FREE
-demo-ed how you can video “Talking Tom” - great for students who are learning English or any other language for that matter, great for reluctant speakers (remember using “puppets”?) who don’t like to talk to “others” but for some reason they love to talk to Tom! The video could easily be a record of oral progress! (Once you get over the initial giggles of course!)

Tip: Install iBooks and get the iPad User Guide as a free download because it’s got a tonne of tips in there!  (see how I sneakily got that extra app in there!!)
Here’s an extra link – just for you dear reader(s) – download this awesome FREE PDF from makeuseof.com with a wealth of tips & tricks for the iPad.

I did show how you can tap a word in iBooks and you can instantly look up the meaning of that word, and I did show how to do a screenshot of anything on the iPad by holding down the home button and the power button at the same time (& the images automatically ends up in photos) so I guess that I snuck in 2 extra tips as well!!  My mother always told me I was not a very good counter!

What would you share if @jasongraham99 asked you to skype into his next staff meeting?

Easy Peasy Attribution AND Creative Commons!

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So I’ve been thinking a lot over the past few days about blogging – or my LACK of it – and wondering why there’s a LACK of it, ways that I can change this slack LACK-of-blogging habit, I have so easily fallen into, and involving myself in lots and lots of looking at how my favourite bloggers appear to be so prolific!

And I know what it is …….. when I’m excited about something ……. I want to share it!  So here’s something that I’m very excited about!  I’ve been working with Grades 2 and 3 recently, using Compfight to find creative commons images for their poetry – and teaching them about attribution at the same time.  Yes, these gorgeous little 8/9 year olds know the word attribution and they know it means giving credit to someone whose work you’ve used.  Bless their hearts, they’ve followed cheat sheets, ask questions and really tried hard to search on compfight, download images to the desktop, rename files, copy URLs, copy Usernames or Real Names and paste them on the last slide of their powerpoints!

In Grade 5, there’s image searching going on for presentations for the Sustainability unit and of course there’s a tonne of blogging going in this grade, as well as Grade 4 & two classes in Grade 3, so I’m always reminding everyone about Creative Commons & Attribution – making tutorials, creating cheat sheets and writing blog posts on embedding and attributing correctly.  All while, mainly using compfight – I do love this site very much – I really do. (And it’s still a great site if you need to download the image files for use in offline presentation such as powerpoint/keynote etc)

But now, tonight, through twitter (thanks to the fabulous Ms Tara aka @bookchica retweeting @colingally) I’ve gone to Technology Coach heaven – and compfight has been toppled!  (well for embedding creative commons images & attribution in a blog post!)

Introducing Wylio.com

For bloggers, it’s SO simple, so easy and only 4 steps from finding a creative commons image to embedding it in a post for your blog!!

Step 1

Free Pictures - Wylio.com

Step 2

Step 2

Step 3

step3

Step 4

step 4
All images uploaded with Skitch!

Unbelievably easy and PERFECT for little bloggers!  Wylio – you rock!!

***Update****

Wylio.com - free pictures

Of course, in this ever changing world of technology – Wylio has changed slightly since I first posted about it!
Due to it’s growing popularity ….. Wylio now requires you to create a free account & login to use. You can use your google account if you have one!

My advice, for classroom teachers would be to create a class google account for Wylio – one email address, one password – for the whole class to remember.
(A class google account can come in handy for all kinds of other things in the classroom – another blog post for later).

New Learning!

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Ever had those resource DVDs that you wish you didn’t have to locate, carry around with you and insert into your drive when you want to use the resources??  Or do you have to share a resource DVD with teachers/colleagues in your team or division?

Today I learnt, from my support staff in EdTech, how to copy a resource DVD so I no longer needed to have the actual disc with me!

Here’s how to do it in 3 easy steps: (Mac instructions – if you’re a PC user & know how to do this on a PC, please leave a comment!)

Step 1:
Fullscreen-12-1

Step 2:
Fullscreen-13

Step 3:
Fullscreen

Now you have a .dmg file on your computer that will “mount” just like an app when you click on it! Awesome ay!!

Do you know about YAPPY?

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Professor Garfield Foundation: Internet Safety and You

I was looking for some suitable Online Safety material for Grade 3 students.  My good friend Keamac reminded me about Hector’s World.  I would love to have used that but I was afraid that they just wouldn’t understand the kiwi slang and accent!  So I continued to search (loving Google chrome!).

It wasn’t long before I stumbled upon this little gem – sure to be a hit with 3rd Graders!  Internet Safety with Professor Garfield! from the folks at infinitelearninglab.org.

Professor Garfield Foundation: Internet Safety and You
Professor Garfield Foundation: Internet Safety and You
One of the fabulous things about this gem of a site (aside from it’s instant appeal to students) is the 3 levels of interaction with students.  First you watch the video, then you try out what you’ve just seen, then you have a chance to apply it.  (Appeals to the Blooms thinking in me!) Another winning aspect of this site is the ability to download teaching materials (.pdfs) to help teach the message of Professor Garfield in his videos.  The pdf’s contain extra material such as wordsearches, questionaires if appropriate.
There’s even a section of internet safety tips to direct parents too! (.pdf download)
Well, the Grade 3′s loved it! YAPPY was a hit!  YAPPY is the stuff you shouldn’t give out.
And it’s so easy for them to remember:

Y – your name

A – address

P – password

P – phone numbers

Y – your plans

Thanks Professor Garfield!!

I also came across this great poster for the classroom too.  It’s from  ACMA cyber(smart:)

CyberRules_Poster_A2_Generic.pdf (1 page)

Cybersmart provides activities, resources and practical advice to help young kids, kids, teensand parents safely enjoy the online world.
The poster comes as a pdf download – easy to print out, laminate and hang up on the classroom wall.

G3 Students Begin to Blog

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The students in this G3 class are awesome!

For the past three weeks, their fabulous teacher, Mr Jessee has been teaching them how to access the class blog, leave a comment and show their parents how to access the class blog too. They know their usernames and passwords for the computer as we have a familiar system for all grades. The blogging guidelines & contract went home last Friday afternoon and all were back on Monday morning signed by both student and parent! Room 210 is so motivated and ready to learn how to maintain their very own blog each!

It was my pleasure to step into their classroom today and introduce them to the front-end and back-end of their blogs which I had set up the day before on our wordpress multi-user platform hosted on our very own server here at ISB.  The lesson is cross-posted over at the blog I’m using as a model blog for blogging at ISB.
We talked about how the “front-end” was what everyone looking at your blog saw, and the “back-end” was where you did all the work on your blog. Nobody but you sees the “back-end” of your blog and you have to log into the “back-end” of your blog to work on it.

Here’s the step by step instructions we followed as a class to get started with the technical side of blogging on our own individual blog.

  1. Go to the Class Blog
  2. Click on tab Student Blogs
  3. Click on your name to go to the “front-end” of your own blog
  4. Take a screenshot (command+shift+4) of your blog (so we can do a then and now comparison post later)
    5. Preview
  5. Look for the “meta” widget and “log-in” (our default blog theme has this meta widget)
  6. Type in username and default-set-up-blog-password
  7. Dashboard discovery – we stop at this point and take a closer look at the dashboard – what do we recognise, what words do we notice, what’s our thinking about different sections
  8. Edit our profile account, change our nickname to the name we want to author our posts as, change our password to our own password. (Classroom teacher keeps a record of usernames and passwords for emergencies on google docs & shares with the Technology & Learning Coach)
  9. Follow instructions from TLC for allowing comments on our blog (Settings, Discussion)
  10. Practise logging in and out of the back-end of our blog (repeat this step several times)

Once we were satisfied that everyone could log into the back-end of their own blog successfully from opening Firefox, we gave the students 10 minutes to explore the themes. G3 learned how to

  1. Access themes
  2. Preview a theme
  3. Activate a chosen theme
  4. Install a meta widget (if the final theme choice did not have one)

I mentioned to the class that each theme came with its own default widgets installed and some themes might not have a meta widget (for logging in). In those cases we quickly showed those students how to add the meta widget to their new theme, once the theme was chosen.

Believe it or not, this class listened so well, with those that got it helping those at their tables that were a little slower (this class really looks after one-another) and all of the above was complete in 35 minutes. Yes, that’s right – 35 minutes!

We spent the last 10 minutes of our session watching Professor Garfield as he taught us some things about Online Safety. He was a hit with his YAPPY advice – but that’s for another post!