Group items tagged

"Pic Collage is a simple and free app for both phone and tablet that can turn photos and images into real works of art. With pre-made collage templates and backgrounds, the app is unique in how easy it is for students to manipulate their photos into beautiful layouts and patterns. The app also features built-in effects and stickers that give students the ability to truly personalize their work, providing endless classroom uses, applications and fun."

"Putting kids to work on meaningful projects can transform classrooms into beehives of inquiry and discovery, but relatively few rigorous studies have examined how well this teaching method actually works. An encouraging new report describes preliminary, first-year outcomes from a study of 3,000 middle school students that shows kids can, in fact, learn more in science classrooms that adopt a well-designed, project-focused curriculum. "

"This blog post includes a 5 minute video, a lesson plan and examples of student that show integration of visual art curriculum and Computational Thinking in my grade 3 classroom. Thank you to Bea Leiderman, Carolyn Skibba, Douglas Kian and my experience at the Apple Institute in Berlin for this idea.  Using Keynote and Kandinsky is Bea's idea. It's brilliant. Bea, Carolyn and I went to the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin where we saw Kandinsky's work. We also had in depth workshops on Keynote. The combination of these experiences at the Apple Institute in Berlin lead to this idea and a project. Bea, Douglas and I are currently working on a project where we are investigating how these ideas of art, coding, and Computational Thinking might fit together. This is the early stage of this team project. This video gives an overview of the lesson and a chance to peak inside my grade 3 classroom:"

"But using technology in the classroom-and using it effectively-might require some slight adjustments on the part of the teacher to sustain the effort, creative problem-solving, and innovation required to actually improve learning through the use of technology. (And great administrators, too.) This occurs at the belief level-what teachers believe about technology, education, and their own abilities to manage technology. Looking at the characteristics of teachers that effectively use technology in the classroom, then, can be useful to create an "edtech" mindset-one that believes in purpose, adaptation, change, and meaningful planning. If you spend your time planning at the upper limits of the SAMR model, this graphic may simply work as a quick reminder of how edtech can work-and work well-at the teacher-human-belief level. For everyone else, it's a a beautiful starting point to frame your thinking about education technology in general."

Today was Dr. Davey's first Maker Day, and an amazing one at that! Here's a look at our day. All of the Grade 1-Grade 7 students participated in today's Maker Day. Students attended two of seven different sessions based on their interests: Minecraft/Coding, Collaborative Art, Beautiful Junk, Positive Graffiti, Making Music, Lego/Blocks, and Egg Drop. Staff members paired up together to facilitate the learning at each of the sessions, and the students directed most of the learning based on their interests. I (Aviva) worked with an amazing Grade 4 student that led the Minecraft/Coding session, and even worked with small groups of students on coding the Arduino. It was really quite incredible! After two sessions, students reflected on the day and on their learning, and then extended the "Maker Learning" back in the classroom. Today was all about the Learning Skills, problem solving, creativity and critical thinking. As you can hear in our video reflection, there were also links to our classroom learning including Science (Structures) and Math (shapes, figures, and non-standard measurement). There was also a lot of Arts learning today (with creating music and creating works of art including the elements of design). What an amazing day!"

""Work that matters" has significance beyond classroom walls; it's work that is created for an authentic audience who might  enjoy it or benefit from it even in a small way. It's work that isn't simply passed to the teacher for a grade, or shared with peers for review. It's work that potentially makes a difference in the world."

"This is number 6 in my blog series on major learning theories. My plan is to work through the alphabet of psychologists and provide a brief overview of their theories, and how each can be applied in education. In the last post we examined the work of Craik and Lockhart on Levels of Processing theory. In this post, we explore the work of Mihály Csíkszentmihályi on Flow Theory. This is a simplified interpretation of the theory, so if you wish to learn more, please refer to the original work of the theorist. There is an interesting news report on the BBC News website this morning. It is a piece claiming that children who use technology at home are finding that they are not able to concentrate in school. They are not able to focus, claims the report, because 'they're spending so much time on digital games or social media.' Yeah right. It's easy to blame lack of concentration on technology, but what about the quality of the lessons they are attending? The onus is on teachers to make lessons more interesting, and that is what they are trained to do. Part of the solution might be to incorporate these digital games and social media into some of the lessons. Just how can we engage students more effectively? Here's Flow Theory:"

"Our 3rd grade classrooms love to mystery Skype.  Have you tried it? In a mystery Skype, 2 classrooms connect with one another but don't say where they are from.  The two organizers of course know, but the students don't.  By asking a series of yes or no questions, students try to narrow down to a country, state, city, and even school if there is time.  Mystery Skypes work best when students are prepared in advance and every student has a job to do.  There are many example of jobs to assign in a mystery Skype such as greeter, researcher, questioner, scribe, and photographer."

"We, here at TWA, are restructuring our site to have a more user friendly experience and an easier way to find what you are looking for. Case in point, we have gotten too large and just today we received an email from a fan who wanted to know the best way to search our site for the "best apps for early literacy instruction (Pk-Grade 2)". Well, we're working on it and with a bit of diligence we should have it up and running soon. In the meantime, we will be posting lists of some of the best apps in different categories to help you out in the classroom or at home."

"Everybody is talking about 21st Century skills and preparing students for a whole different world. The truth is that our students have become digital and there are a whole lot of educators around the world who are still "analog". That is why I would like to share my work with my two secondary school groups with as many teachers as possible. Internet and Technology in the Classroom have made a huge change in my daily teaching experience."

"Teachers are always looking out for new ways to motivate young children to write; ways to give their writing purpose and meaning. If you have access to mobile devices, why not try building in opportunities for children to create an ebook. There is a breadth of activities and experiences involved - from the planning stage, to the writing and then sharing their creation with the wider community. It is also a great way for sharing work with parents…many apps allow you to save ebooks created onto a secure site which can be accessed via a link or by sharing a QR code. Here are some of the best apps I've found to create eBooks with your iPads in the classroom:"

"Below is a wonderful classroom poster I came across in Edutopia's Pinterest board.The poster outlines 5 things students should pay heed to when engaged in writing tasks. You can print and use this poster in your class with your students. It can be used as a self assessment checklist that students draw on when working on their writings. It can also be a good way to initiate discussions around areas that pose real difficulties to students writings."

"You're probably already familiar with Skype; the free service for calls and chat has become ubiquitous in recent years. It's revolutionized how people around the world communicate with each other. Friends and families living far away now have an easy, affordable way to communicate. Businesses have used it to increase the possibilities of remote work and collaboration between offices. And teachers have started to explore the opportunities it brings to education as well. If you haven't taken advantage of using Skype in your classroom yet, we've got a few suggestions and tools that can help you get started."

"he process of creating and publishing videos can be a great way to get students excited about researching, storytelling, and sharing their work with an audience. For teachers who have never facilitated video creation projects in their classrooms, choosing the right style of video and the right tools can be a bit confusing at first. To help bring clarity to the styles and tools, I have a rather simple outline that I use in my video creation workshops. "

"I recently discovered a new app: Periscope that has been drawing a lot of attention lately.  I have been exploring the app both on a personal level and trying to find uses in my classroom.  Thanks to my #peel21st pln, I'm finally getting these thoughts down.  So I thought I'd begin with a quick overview of what Periscope is all about, explain how I have used it so far, move into future uses, and then some concerns and questions I am still working through."

"This is part 1 in our #iteachthought campaign. This is our equivalent to "back to school," and is intended to help you focus in the 2015-2016 school year on taking a thoughtful approach to your craft as a teacher. Among these shifts we'll talk about is turning our focus from content and teaching to thinkers and thinking. This is a student-centered approach to pedagogy (and heautagogy), and will consist of four parts: Part 1: Classroom Setups That Promote Thinking Part 2: Learning Profiles: What Great Teachers Know About Their Students Part 3: 50 Questions To Ask Your Students On The First Day Of School Part 4: Getting The Best Work From Your Students"

"Camilla Gagliolo got the first inkling there could be some real use for iPads in the classroom when she tried them out initially with students who had learning disabilities. Today, the instructional technology coordinator with Arlington (VA) Public Schools said she thinks the iPad is emerging as a tool that can greatly enhance educational technology after what she believes has been a lull in the field's progress."

"In today's classroom, educators are constantly required to mold their teaching methods to give students the best opportunity to succeed. It is not only imperative for students to learn the required material, but also critical that students gain a sense of confidence toward their work, and find motivation to expand their learning. However, this can be difficult for some students, who may struggle in traditional, lecture-based class styles. For some students, finding the motivation to complete homework or prepare for class can be a constant struggle, especially when every effort is met with a poor grade or frustration from teachers and parents. Therefore, teachers must become more and more creative when motivating students to learn."

"Genius Hour in the classroom is an approach to learning built around student curiosity, self-directed learning, and passion-based work. In traditional learning, teachers map out academic standards, and plan units and lessons based around those standards. In Genius Hour, students are in control, choosing what they study, how they study it, and what they do, produce, or create as a result. As a learning model, it promotes inquiry, research, creativity, and self-directed learning."

"There are some useful web tools that you can use with your students to create a classroom magazine or books and the titles below are the ones I would recommend the most. The purpose behind using these tools with your students is twofold: First they provide them with a virtual space where they can create, share and document their learning and showcase their work. Second they offer them an opportunity to exercise their functional literacy and employ their digital literacy skills to make meaning using a system of multimodal signs that comprise, text, graphics, pictures, charts, and videos."