A New School Year!

It's only October, and I am already so excited by the increase in the daily use of technology in my classroom, as compared to last year.  In September of 2013, I had a desk top teacher computer that was pretty fast, two student desktops that were virtually unusable, and . . .  oh yes, that's right- nothing else.  Fast-forward to September of 2014, and I have a new teacher laptop, three iPads from my technology grant, one iPad from our PTA, and an Apple TV.  We are still far from where I someday soon want to be, which is a device in the hands of every student, but we are making progress.  We started using our new technologies the first day of school, and haven't stopped. 

Here are a few ways my students and I incorporate technology into our day:

•  iPad presentations replaced posterboard visuals for our "What's Your Bag" beginning of the year introduction speeches for both students and teachers.

• As caretakers of the learning garden, we spent a day pruning and harvesting tomatoes, peppers and ground cherries.  Groups were able to use iPads to photograph their work.  We were pleased that the wifi reached outside to the learning garden, because we had to look up information on "ground cherries" (or Husk Cherry Tomatoes), because none of us had ever eaten one/harvested one before.   Back in the classroom, groups used the PicCollage application to create a collage of favorite moments from the day.

• Testing greeted us from pretty much the first week of school.  EasyCBM testing takes place in the main lab, but we relied on the iPads for students that were absent or simply needed more time to finish.

• A focus for me this fall has been to increase the use of technology in math.  Last year, getting the iPad to project through the projector was clumsy and time consuming, but the Apple TV has made this process easy and quick.   Once I have uploaded teacher overhead photos into the ShowMe application, students can work directly on the screen and discuss and share their work with the entire class.  A press of a button and the work is cleared, and the iPad is passed on to a different student to repeat the process.   They love it, and it frees me from being tied to the ELMO document camera, giving me the ability to more closely monitor student work during sharing/discussions.

• I am loving the ability to use the iPad and Apple TV as a portable document camera.  This gives me the ability to walk around the room and share a large variety of student work in a short amount of time.  It also helps when work is not easily portable, such as math patterns built with manipulatives

•  Finally, the iPads continue to be a life saver when it comes to use as a research tool in all academic areas.  This is the least "ah ha" use of the iPads, but honestly, it is the most useful and real life use for us.

Future Plans: 

• Introduce students to Google accounts, and start to share documents through Google.
• Continue to slowly introduce the use of students' personal devices at school.
• Purchase and download both literary and informational texts that align with our content standards in social studies and science onto the iPads.
• Introduce and use MobyMax as a station during reading and for use at home.

School is almost over and what have we done?

It is hard to believe that the school year is almost over, time has flown by and yet like many I am ready for a summer break to refuel. We (Crystal and I) cannot imagine our classrooms without iPads. Technology has become a daily want and need. However, we know that we have barely tapped the surface of what we could be doing. Since I am authoring this blog I will talk primarily about my experiences with the iPads lately and goals that I know Crystal shares with me. First and foremost, our school PTA has graciously purchased an iPad for every teacher in our school to use in their classroom. This is a big deal and we are very thankful and excited about having more staff members enthusiastic about technology.

 I have continued to use iPads for research as my 6th grade students were working on country fair projects and for quick references for vocabulary meanings. I have also used them with MobyMax during Daily 5 as an additional tool for comprehension. It has helped me form small groups for guiding instruction and prepping for retakes of state testing. During the last week of school the students have been creating a Tellagami (free app) of their favorite book of the year. In Tellagami they record their voice (they can also type a response) to tell me about their favorite book. The title and author must be included as well as a sentence frame that describes a main character and a characteristic they possess that helps them in the story. They can drop in a picture  from the internet or some type of background to illustrate the setting. Lastly, the student expresses why this book was their favorite read of the year. These are automatically saved to the photos of the iPad for quick reference.

 

 

My goal this summer is to better familiarize myself with apps that can be used for collecting student  work, like Dropbox. I need some place that all students can use to send me their work. Another goal   is to try to add technology into every unit of study and embrace the idea of change, knowing that         anything I attempt in technology is a step in the right direction.                                                             

                                                                                                                                   

 

 

Finding Time

I'm up to six iPads!

My classroom received three iPads as the primary portion of our grant, and I have been able to "borrow" three more iPads on a pretty regular basis . . . which is good, because if there is one thing I have learned from this experience, it's that three iPads are not nearly enough!  The iPads continue to be a hot commodity to my fifth graders.  They discover new uses and reasons to work with them every day (some more legitimate than others) - and I am thrilled!

It has taken a couple weeks to sort it all out, but I finally have all the pieces I need up and running to project the iPad image through the LCD projector and iPad sound through the Lightspeed system.  The first required a lightning adapter, which I received as part of the grant, but was missing a cord.  Thanks to my husband for finding the missing piece at an electronics store- I wouldn't have known where to start.  Getting the sound to work was embarrassingly easy . . .once I found the time to figure it out.  My students can now share their work and creations to the whole class, and they are loving it.

Speaking of time:  The initial focus of the grant for Laurie and I was the integration of the iPads and Daily 5, specifically with the Read to Self portion.  I fully admit that although we use the iPads in a  million ways, and continue to find even more uses on an almost daily basis, this is the portion that continues to challenge us. We had high hopes that we would find the elusive site/app/etc. durring one of the IntegratED sessions.  We learned so much, but did not discover an appropriate resource.    With OAKS, Interim Assessments, and report cards upon us . . . we have simply had no extra time to do any more exploring.   Honestly, I think we just need to change our blog title and remove the Daily 5 part!

Challenges:

• Getting iPads and accessories organized and hooked up to LCD projector and sound system took some time, patience, and a husband willing to find and connect the missing pieces.
• Number of iPads: Three are not nearly enough; I can lose the other three at any given time.
• Applications: There are so many out there, and many are not good!
• Actually using iPads during Daily 5 continues to be a challenge.

What is Working/How We Are Using the iPads:

• MobyMax provides leveled text with comprehension questions, requires little teacher time or instruction, and students are extremely motivated to use the site. I try to keep from grinning when my very reluctant reader "Matthew" finishes his classwork at a rate I've rarely witnessed, just so he can log into MobyMax.  He professes to hate reading, yet is incredibly motivated to read and answer comprehension questions as long as it's on the iPad.  I keep waiting for the bubble to burst!
• Tellagami:  This is an application that Laurie and I were introduced to at IntegratED.  I have students use this to summarize a story: create an avatar that resembles the main character, upload a picture that matches the setting, and record an oral summary (or use a computer-generated voice).  The avatar "tells" the summary.  Laurie and I demonstrated this application at a staff meeting, and it was almost as big a hit with the staff as it is with my students.
• Xtra Math: Several students do not have computer and/or internet access at home.  They can quickly log into the site with the iPad and complete a session at school.  I have several students that choose to do this during their recesses- yay!
• EasyCBM: It's inevitable that a student or two are absent or don't finish while we are in the computer lab; in the past it was incredibly difficult to figure out a non-disruptive method of finishing the test up for these students.  With the iPads, it is a non-issue.  So easy!
• Research:  I cannot stress enough how amazing it is to be able to access information online quickly.  Students use the iPads to find information for research projects, vocabulary word definitions and pronunciations, look up pictures of unfamiliar settings in stories-  the list of uses goes on and on.

Goals and Wishes:

• Use iPads with Daily 5 at least a few times a week by the end of the year.
• Familiarize myself with and use QR codes, possibly in social studies?
• More iPads:  We are currently working with our PTA to purchase more iPads and Apple TVs for each classroom.  Fingers are crossed!
• Staff Technology Professional Development:  It's hard to believe, but Laurie and I are two of the more tech-savvy teachers on staff.  This makes me laugh!  But we are committed to getting iPads into the hands of teachers and showing them how easy they are to integrate into the classroom.  I am so excited about the prospect of so many teachers discovering and sharing new ways to use iPads at Ladd Acres.

     Since our last blog, our classes are continuing to enjoy having the iPads in the classroom readily available for quick research questions. We have implemented Xtra Math for math fact practice and some students are requesting to use their recess time to work on this program in order to have access to the technology. MobyMax is another online program that all of our students are beginning to use. EasyCBM is another tool our school is using for reading and math assessment. With the iPads in the classroom students can complete a progress monitoring assessment without having to go to the computer lab. We already find ourselves wishing for more iPads so that all students can work on these programs at the same time.  Laurie is experimenting with the iMovie app because her students have been making videos to send to another class in the Ukraine. The students have really enjoyed having the ability to use the iPads in this way. Ryan, from the district technology department, is going to teach a group of students how to use iMovie so they can teach others. 

     Our highlight last month was attending the IntegrateED conference in Portland. This was a new experience for us but we came away with many new ideas for technology in the classroom. It was great to chat with other teachers from near and far about how they are using technology in their schools. We were jealous of the classes that had one to one laptops or iPads; however, we are so happy to have what we do have! Our biggest challenge is finding a source for read aloud text, which was what our grant was initially about. In the meantime, we are going to integrate technology in to writing and in responding to literature with many of the applications we learned about and experimented with. Next blog….what worked and what didn’t.

   

Getting Started . . .

We are fifth and sixth grade teachers at Ladd Acres Elementary.  To better meet the needs of our students and also to support the Common Core State Standards,  we applied for this grant to supplement and support the Daily Five reading model that we implemented this year.

Our iPads arrived in January, and our students were thrilled.  Laurie and Crystal each received three and we gave two to the other fifth grade classroom.

Our initial proposal was to use the iPads with the Listening to Reading portion of the Daily Five model in conjunction with online resources and applications.  We were looking for a resource that provided a wide variety of texts, especially nonfiction, that would also read the text to students.   As part of our grant, we requested application licenses for Tales2Go.  We have found that while Tales2Go has the variety we were looking for, it does not meet our needs: the program reads text to students but does not provide visual text for the students to read along.  This is a component that is very important to our reading program, and Tales2Go isn't going to work.  We opted to not purchase the licenses, have "banked" those funds, and are currently looking at other options.

While we are on the hunt for the perfect application for our Listen to Reading stations, we are finding many other ways to use our iPads:

• MyOn free online texts
• Math facts practice: Xtra Math icon added to iPads; Sushi Monster
• Grammar practice: (most of these that we have tried are not very good)
• Camera and Video use
• Research:  Daily Science, social studies maps and eminent persons research paper and speech; math conversions,
• EasyCBM: students absent when we test in the lab can easily make up missed tests in the classroom
• Fun!  Our students love their iPads.  Many of our students do not have access to this type of technology at home, and the before this grant, had very limited  access here at school.

We are excited to continue to fumble our way through this process :).

Crystal and Laurie