Discovery Education Videos at a Book Fair?

I just conducted a book fair at our local Barnes and Noble store. Our students are always excited about this fair because we are off campus and it is always so much fun. I planned three nights of activities to keep the students active in the store while the parents shopped (of course!). The first night we had our choir sing but we focused on our social studies curriculum. The activity for our students was one specifically geared to Geography. We had stations throughout the store where they had to find the teacher and complete a task. We had the students match types of food to a country, listen to cultural music and compare to today’s music, and discuss traveling overseas. The most exciting station had students look at natural disasters.  The students had to name the types of disasters and dialog with the teacher the current disasters they had seen in the news. The picture included in this post is from that station. Instead of using pictures of disasters we used the Rover app (http://www.theroverapp.com/) to stream the natural disasters Discovery Education videos in the store.  They loved the activity and could not wait until day two of the book fair which I will share with you in another post. I asked one of our students who is very shy which was his favorite station and he replied ….the one with the really cool videos. Sending a DEN finger to Rover and Discover Education for bringing some digital FUN to my Barnes and Noble Book Fair!

Have You Ever Been In Love?

Digital Learning Day might be a kick-off to the month of February but when I think of this month I always picture big red hearts. I consider this month the time of love, chocolate, lacy doilies, valentines and online tools. You might be wondering if online tools are online dating sites but NOT in this case because I am actually referring to online teaching resources. You are now thinking that I am bitter from a broken heart and looking for love in all the wrong places (yeah…it is a song but it is a really good one). I am here to tell you that I define love as a sense or feeling of never being let down, always being accessible and most importantly someone that makes me look good. I have found that and more in the Intel Thinking Tools http://www.intel.com/about/corporateresponsibility/education/k12/tools.htm.

I like all the tools but I am in love with the Visual Ranking Tool. I think if it were on an online dating site then its profile would look something like this…
Screen Name: VisualRanking4U
Tag line: The right educational tool looking for the right teacher
About me and who I am looking for: I am looking for someone who thinks for themselves, but not for everyone around them. Someone who is willing to drag and drop and comment when necessary or appropriate. My mate must love innovative ways to integrate technology into the curriculum or at least willing to give it a try.
Favorite Things: Ranking (of course), Commenting, Ordering, Prioritizing
Favorite Hot Spots: Classrooms across the World, Intel Teach website (http://www.intel.com/about/corporateresponsibility/education/k12/tools.htm), Engage site (http://engage.intel.com)

I have used Visual Ranking the most with students since it is the easiest to implement. I love the ability to create an activity on the fly. My last lesson with using the tool….hmmm…my students had 3 locations to research in a studies skills class. They had to find the best place for a summer vacation without using Google and then rank the locations from the best location to the worst with the Intel tool. They created comments on the first and last decision to compare with other groups after their research was complete. The tool provided a great venue for the students to voice their findings online in an organized fashion.

The Challenge:
Try a demo of the Visual Ranking Tool http://educate.intel.com/workspace/tryit/VRTryIt.aspx?LID=en Need any help then visit http://educate.intel.com/en/ThinkingTools/VisualRanking/VR_StudentHelp.htm How could you use this tool in your classroom? Do you see this tool as a supplement to verbal student decisions?

Growing a PLN with Twitter - Professional Learning Network

Twitter is a great tool to learn from other educators. Groups have been established with certain searchable hashtags in twitter. This article list some of these groups. Try one out by posting or just lurk and get some good tips. 20 Twitter Hashtags Every Teacher Should Know About

A Board Can Say It All!

I love this teacher's bulletin board. Her board is a web representing Digital Citizenship and throughout her lessons the students take the topics/skills sheets (ex cyberbullying, blogs, collaboration, visual literacy, problem solving etc.) out of the yellow pocket (on the side) and place them in the web. This is a great way for the students to reflect on their activities and she will always know what she has covered.

Screenchomp!

I am currently working on stories of cells with a science teacher. We decided to use screenchomp http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/screenchomp/id442415881?mt=8 because of its simplicity and we have a cart of ipads. The students are going to use an image and then write on the pic and narrate their stories. I will share an example of the final product when we are done. Any other ideas of how you could use screenchomp or the similar jing http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html?gclid=CPzmmOfT5K0CFWnatgodExIzYQ as a storyteller?

Sssh! I am reading

It can be very difficult to motivate students to read. I am so excited about an event this week at my school. We use the Louisiana Young Readers Choice books http://www.state.lib.la.us/literacy-and-reading/louisiana-young-readers-choice for our summer reading. Every year students vote for their favorite book and the yearly winners are selected from student votes. This year we scheduled the election voting booths to come to our school for our voting purposes. We will have 4 booths for 2 hours for voting. We will be able to get our school data which the the math department will be using to create predictions and graphs. The fine arts classes are creating campaign posters so it has because more than just booths to vote. All month we have been encouraging our students to read some of the books before the booths show up. I checked out 5 of the books Friday so it has been so successful. I will share the results after this week.

What are you doing in your school to encourage reading?