Still Wondering What Dot Day Is and Looking for Activities

Dot Day can be celebrated any day. The Educators' Handbook for Dot Day is an excellent guide for lesson ideas for any day of the year. This free guide can be downloaded from Fable Vision Learning. Click on the image below to access the online pdf of the guide, and save the file for reference.

And for more inspiration, check this blog which is a steady stream of artistic contributions in celebration of the ideas represented in the book. Click on the image of the blog's banner below to get to the blog:

See for instance, the contribution from artist Jon Klassen, winner of the 2013 Caldecott Medal for "Most Distinguished Picture Book": This is Not Hat. 

You will find close to 100 illustrations on the site, as of September 15, 2013, which marks the 10th anniversary celebration of the book's birthday. Check the blog archive to trace back contributions.

Special Education Resources for Teachers and Others

We all teach students with special needs whether we are certified special education teachers or teachers working with students in our classes who have special needs. Here are some resources I recently discovered.

• How Technology is Being Used in Special Education (from Edudemic, includes a helpful infographic)
• On Special Education, an Education Week blog
• Keep Students with Special Needs Safe from Bullying (U. S. Dept. of Ed.)
• U.S. Department of Education Video: It Only Gets Better is embedded below

• 10 Things You Need to Know About LD Evaluation
• Parent Toolkit: Bullying, What's A Parent to Do
• Student's Guide to the IEP
• Accommodations and Modifications in an IEP
• Dyslexia Insight #2: The Best Way to Start a Conversation about Dyslexia  (Also, see how the article's author used Dragon Speak Naturally to help with writing the text)
• Special Needs Digest is a blog that posts information and news daily of interest to the special needs community
• Best Rated Apps for Autism and Applied Behavior Analysis
• 13 Free Assistive Technology Resources

Thanks to Melissa Taylor for sharing many of the above resources on Google+.

What are some of your favorite resources for special education teachers? What tech tools do you find most helpful for students with special needs? Which of the above resources were most helpful to you?

Fifth Graders' Animoto: Classroom Vision

Mrs. Ripp, a 5th grade teacher from Wisconsin, is the brains behind the Global Read Aloud. She also has several blogs, and her students blog with KidBlog.

Here's an Animoto that her students recently produced and that Mrs. Ripp posed on two of her blogs:

• Blogging through the Fourth Dimension: My Students' Classroom Vision
• The Adventures in Mrs. Ripp's Room: My Students' Classroom Vision

   

Mrs. Ripp also invites others to post comments on her students' KidBlog: Mrs. Ripp's Class 

To get students ready for blogging, Mrs. Ripp introduces a paper blogging project, where students practice writing comments to one another's writing using paper and sticky notes. Here are two pictures she posted on Twitter showing her 5th graders doing paperblogs.

If you're looking for some fresh ideas to implement with students or ways to communicate with parents, scroll around Pernille's professional and parent blog. Also, search through her students' KidBlog, and leave them some comments.

To access each of the blogs, click on the images.

Professional Blog:

Parent Blog:

Mrs. Ripp's Class KidBlog

What ideas for implementation in the classroom did you get from flipping through Mrs. Ripp's blogs or her students' bog?

Ideas for Using Animoto to Enrich Student Learning

The Read/Write/Think website, which offers lots of lesson plan ideas, recently ran a post, "Bringing Animoto to Life in the Classroom." The post included many good ideas for using Animoto successfully in the classroom, as well as strategies for introducing the tool to students.

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by dennisar

The post also reminds us about opening an educator's account and then enrolling your students by using the code Animoto provides. Setting up an Animoto Educator's account following the directions provided also helps to keep a class organized as students work with the tool and want to showcase their work. One suggestion was to set up a wiki with links to the students' Animoto. I did something like one semester to keep track of students' Animotos and to make it easier for other educators to find the Animotos all in one place.

Animotos for Spring 2012 students on a wiki page.

Some of the ideas that teacher Kathy Wickline suggested on Read/Write/Think website for using Animoto include:

• Students introducing themselves. One of the Education 584 teachers in the West Hartford Cohort did this with his 6th graders. Take a look at his blog post where he includes three samples from his students, "Pulling It All Together."
• Use of Animoto for students to recap a research project. This option can be offered as an alterative to the classic PowerPoint.
• Set up an Scavenger Hunt in which students go off and take photos to document their findings. My niece did this with campers she supervised when she was a counselor this summer. The campers loved it, and then we assembled their photos in an Animoto. It was nice to share this with parents. In a school setting, the Animoto could be posted on a class website and shared with parents.
• Create scrapbooks to review the school year. The Read/Write/Think does not include creating a Scrapbook specifically of a field trip, but one of the former Education spring 2012 students did just that. She created a scrapbook using photos of biweekly field trips her students made to a local farm, "Farm Trip Animoto."  Another teacher from the Spring 2012 also used Animoto for a field trip summary, "Field Trip Animoto." 

Given the valuable ideas the Read/Write/Think site offers, including organizing setting up a class Animoto site, I suggest going right to the post as well as following some of the links in the post. "Bringing Lessons to Life with Animoto."

Once you go the post on Read/Write/Think, notice the teacher, Kathy Wickline, who created the post, also has other contributions.

Screen Capture done with Awesome Screen Capture

If you click on her Profile link, you will find other lesson ideas she contributed to the Read/Write/Think site. She has lots of good ideas for using other Web 2.0 and other tools such as:

• Voki as a way to create commercials
• Prezi in relation to historical fiction
• Glogs for book reports
• Book Trailers created with PhotoStory 3 including a template for students to organize the trailer

Let us know what ideas you gather about using Animoto? If you are not yet following the Read/Write/Think site, you might consider doing so.  Take a look at the site's homepage to get an idea of the wealth of resources offered. Read/Write/Think.

So What Can Kindergarteners Do with Digital Tools

Matt Gomez, a kindergarten teacher in Texas, does amazing things with his students. Check his blog, and check this recent post about how he uses blogging with students. The post includes links to a variety of projects his students are doing.

Click on the image below to access the specific post:

If kindergarten kids can do all of these things with digital tools, think about what kids in general can do when teachers expose them to digital tools for learning and creating.

Here are  some screen captures from the post to give you an idea of what students are doing.

So what's your reaction to how the kindergarteners are learning with digital tools? After exploring Matt's blog and some of his posts, what have you been motivated to do with your students using digital tools?

International Dot Day Coming Your Way

International Dot Day falls on September 15, but students read the book, The Dot, any time of the year.  In September, teachers make a concerted effort to share with the others their students' responses. Some share through a Twitter tweet with a link to a blog post, video, or image. I'm including examples below.

First, here's an Animoto.  Click on the image below to access it.

Here's another Animoto, created by students at the Brewster and Korn Elementary School in Durham, CT. Click on the image to view the Animoto.

Here's an example of a bulletin board students created.

Below are other images I screen captured from teachers' tweets. 

The students above are coloring pictures and will use the colAR App to make their pictures come to life in 3-D.  Here's an example of 2nd graders using the app before coloring the pictures. It's hard to imagine how the app works in this 2-D environment, but you can learn more about it from the colARApp site. The site includes in its collections coloring pages for Dot Day.

The one below is of Connecticut school media-librarian Anne Doyle, from RSD#13, in the Middlebury-Durham area. Anne Doyle is the school librarian, grade 5-6, at  Memorial School Library.  Great to see an educator and student dressing up to celebrate the book's theme of "make your mark on the world." 

Jenny Lussier, a teacher librarian at the Brewster and Korn Elementary Schools in Durham, RSD#13, is also getting ready for dot day. Here is a shot from her web page.

The Korn Elementary School, one of the schools, even has on its homepage, information about the school celebrating Dot Day.

http://korn.rsd13ct.org/

And another Connecticut teacher, Nada Nanoun, in Avon, is also celebrating Dot Day with her 2nd graders, and posted this picture:

She shared this follow-up comment on Twitter:

And one of the best ways to follow along with what students are doing for Dot Day is by checking the author's own Dot Day sign up page and his Twitter feed, which does not require a Twitter account to view.  Click on the image below to find Peter Reynold's Twitter 

Look for pic.twitter.com ULR's in tweets to for links to click on to access pictures. Here's a screen capture to show you what such a pic.twitter.com link looks like.  

Well, by now, hoping your creativity is flowing, and you're inspired to join in. Let us know your plans or thoughts about Dot Day or the book The Dot and its many messages to go out and "make your mark" in the world.

What is Storybird and Why Use It

I made this short voice-over recording using the ShowMe app on the iPad, and used the app as an opportunity to tell you something about the Storybird website that students in previous courses have used with students.




While I was also playing around with the ShowMe app, I also made another quick video to tell you about a free professional development opportunity coming up the first Saturday October 5. So here it goes.

How Can Blogging Help Reluctant Readers

Thinking about why you should integrate blogging into your classroom. I am cross-posting a blog post from Edudemic, and including a link to the very source by inserting the link in the post's title.

Let me know what you think after you read through the post. Do you agree? Are you motivated to start blogging in your classroom?

How Blogging Can Help Reluctant Writers

By Dr. Patricia Fioriello on August 25, 2013

Via jeffzelaya.com

Blogging is an excellent way of motivating students to develop a lifelong love of learning. Writing is a process, and when they learn this they will be able to apply the skills to other aspects of their schooling. It also teaches children critical thinking skills which will help them as they progress through school. Along with the development of critical thinking skills, students will learn how to conduct research. This is particularly important both in school and in the workplace they will one day take part in.

Blogging Helps Students Connect Different Subjects

This is particularly important when it comes to reluctant learners. Some children shy away from certain subjects, and it can be difficult to get them involved. Blogging for kids will make it easier for them to make connections between what might at first seem to be dissimilar subjects.

Blogging Encourages Students To Sort Out Their Feelings

In fact, writing is so important in this regard that it is considered a form of creative therapy. Children who blog regularly can reduce anxiety and increase self-esteem. With blogging, there isn’t the same pressure that some children feel with social media. Instead of it being a popularity content, blogging becomes a personal and positive way to express individuality.

Blogging Improves Writing Skills

With constructive feedback, it increases grammar skills and helps children with the development of sentence structure. Learning these skills in an interactive way tends to be more effective than sitting through dry lesson plans. Increased grammar and writing skills will also help improve a student’s reading level. This increased comprehension will make reading more exciting and is likely to create a lifelong love of the written word.

Blogging Helps Students Find Their Own Voice

Most teachers can attest to the fact that students who only complete writing assignments as homework tend to turn in assignments that all sound the same. Blogging on a regular basis teaches children the value and importance of their own creativity.

Blogging will excite students about writing, and exciting them about this valuable skill will help encourage them to participate in it on a regular basis. They will learn that polished expression does not just magically appear, but instead is a step by step process that gets easier the more they practice.

What Can Teachers Do?

One of the most important steps is to share your own enjoyment of writing and blogging. Kids love to emulate. If they see your enjoyment, even the most reluctant writers are more apt to make an honest attempt. Seeing you write and knowing it’s something important to you will have a greater impact than if you simply talk about it with them.

Providing feedback is another crucial step you can take to make blogging both fun and inspirational. Remember that feedback needs to be genuine, because most children will be able to spot it if it’s not.

The best way to provide genuine feedback is to make it specific. Telling a student that you like his or her work and that they are a good writer will not be as effective as informing a student that their sentence structure or research skills have improved.

Encouraging your class to write each day is another effective way to motivate a love of writing. Writing on a regular basis will help your students develop ideas and also to understand the evolution of idea development. Do not forget to leave enough time in the classroom to answer any questions that might arise.

Students can find blogging to be exciting, and they will use the valuable skills they learn throughout their lives.

Memorble Quotes to Spark Discussion, Writing, and Other Activites

Quotes often get the juices flowing. These memorable quotes from Oscar-winning filmmaker Hayo Miyazaki might be ones you can use with your students. The graphics alone accompanying the quotes are also worth showing students to stimulate classroom activities.

Although I have embedded the slides here, you can also open the presentation on SlideShare, where I found them, and show them that way, or embed them in your own class blog or website.

Let me know if you would use any or all of these slides with students.

To advance through the slide show, click the arrows, and also feel free to open the show on Slide Show if it's easier for you to view them there.

13 Memorable Quotes from Hayao Miyazaki Films

13 Memorable Quotes from Hayao Miyazaki Films by @charitytemple from Charity Temple

Great Apps for Classroom Use

I found this excellent post at the TUAW website and had to share it verbatim. Full credit goes to the site as indicated by this direct link there.  If you click on the image below, you will go directly to the source. Of the Apps noted in this review, some of my favorites are Explain Everything, Weebly, the Camera (so obvious but not used enough and will have a separate blog post about it coming up shortly), iMovie, Dropbox (though am using Google Drive often for cloud storage as well), Puppet Pals (especially for younger students, but fun for all), and Popplet (a graphic organizer, web generating tool). These apps are ordinarily used on iPads, but some are available for any device or other devices (such as iMovie on a Mac) and Dropbox for any device. Weebly is a web-based tool that can be used on any device. It is an excellent tool for easily creating a website. Let us know which of the teacher recommended apps interest you or you use.

Apps teachers use to tame the classroom and teach their students

by Kelly HodgkinsSep 6th 2013 at 4:00PM

It's the start of a new school year, which means you've probably got a stack of new books on your desk, a drawer full of new pencils and an iPad that desperately needs some new apps. TUAW is here to help you build a new app list, and we did so with the help of some friends.

We consulted with students, teachers and some of the top tech and educational bloggers to generate this list. In this article, we highlight the teachers who lead the classroom. Here are the apps that they use:

Kelly Tenkely of Anastasis Academy in Centennial, CO.

What makes Anastasis unique is our approach to learning. We are an inquiry based school that believes students must be involved in their own learning. We have a 1:1 iPad program that is a BYOD (bring your own device), and the iPad is the only supply on our supply list.

I chose the iPad as our common learning device because it is so incredibly intuitive. Preschool through ninth grade can pick it up and immediately put it to use for a wide variety of learning activities without being taught how to use it first. We are paperless in that all student work gets digitized. Even building projects get captured digitally. We purchase the educational apps that the students need as a school. Below is a list of our favorite titles.

Meraki This is Cisco's free device management platform. We use it to manage devices (including restrictions) while students are on campus. Meraki lets us purchase apps through the Volume Purchase Program and push them to student devices as needed. There is also a virtual backpack that lets us share files and documents with teachers and students. Fantastic tool and free cannot be beat!

Evernote We use Evernote as a complete ePortfolio solution. All student work is documented in Evernote. Evernote is a great ePortfolio because parents can access it easily, it is easily searched, and students can record learning that is both natively digital as well as not. If students create a physical model or project in our prototype lab, they can easily take a picture directly in Evernote. We also love the sheer number of apps that integrate seamlessly in Evernote. If students complete a project in iMovie, Keynote, Pages, etc. that does not seamlessly integrate, students create a note with the title of the project and list where the project can be found on their device. This makes it easy to keep track of all learning. Teachers and students have shared notebooks to share work.

Camera This is an obvious app but one not to be overlooked! This is probably our most used app. Students are constantly documenting their learning with the camera. Whether it is field work on a field trip, a project that they are documenting steps of, or a presentation they are giving, our students have a HUGE collection of evidence collected with the camera.

iMotion HD This has become one of our students absolute FAVORITE ways to document learning or progress. Students use iMotion HD to reflect on learning, tell a story, document scientific process, and as a creative outlet. Kids of all ages really love this app! http://ilearntechnology.com/?p=4257

Koostik Because we use the camera so often, our students discovered that they need a way to prop their iPad up for recording. While many cases have this ability built in, they leave a lot to be desired. One of the great field trips we took was to the Koostik headquarters where our students saw how iPad and iPhone sound could be amplified without power. While we were there, our students commented on how cool it would be to have a Koostik that they could use for recording. Koostik created special stands for our students that are perfect for keeping the iPad propped and stable during recording (we used to use stacks of books!) (Technically, this isn't an app, but it's used with an app, so it's cool!)

Voice2Note Lets students turn their Evernote voice notes into text. This is a fantastic app for students who struggle to get their ideas out in writing (often a problem with Dysgraphia). Also wonderful for emerging writers who have a great vocabulary but struggle with spelling and limit their writing as a result.

Postach.io This is an app that works with Evernote to turn notes into blog posts. This is the way that students "publish" their finished work to share with others publicly. We use the #comments4kids hashtag on Twitter to help our students get feedback from other educators and students. Our kids love getting comments on their hard work from around the world.

Dragon Box This is the most amazing math app I've ever seen. It is the perfect complement to our program because it lets students (as young as 5) play with and discover algebra without knowing that they are actually doing it! It is a little bit of a virtual card game that helps students recognize patterns and rules found in Algebra. Brilliant! Number Pieces- This is another math app that helps students develop a deeper understanding of place value. We love the hands on discover approach that it offers!

SketchNation Lets students create their own app. They can use Sketch Nation to prototype ideas or creatively reflect on learning by creating a game.

Weebly Lets students easily create their own website. Our students created http://LSGWfoundation.weebly.com to raise awareness about social justice issues during one of our inquiry blocks.

Paper A beautiful way to sketch out/share ideas. Students use this app for ideation when they are working on design thinking.

Skitch Skitch is another ideation app we love...integrates seamlessly with Evernote!

Composer Pro students can create their own interactive ebooks without knowing a lot of coding.

Tapose Students can do research and take notes side by side in this app. Very useful for new learning!

FactorSamurai a fun way to practice math facts :)

Explain Everything a recordable whiteboard where students can record their thought process. This helps them break down learning and allows teachers to go back through their thinking one step at a time.

Rover Let's students access flash content from their iPads. We only wish it was a little more reliable!

Other common Apps that we use regularly: Pages, Keynote, iMovie,iBooks, Kindle, MobiCip (filtered web browser), Dropbox.

Glen & Monique Storey, husband and wife teachers from New Zealand

Glen & Monique Storey are teachers in New Zealand. They're lucky enough that each child in their classroom has a MacBook and access to iPads. They're passionate about using apps that engage and motivate learners in the classroom. As developers they bring their experience as teachers and their love of technology to create great apps such as Silent Light and BookBot.

OS X Apps

Skitch (OS X) A free, easy way to annotate and modify pictures, pdfs and websites.

Wunderlist (OS X) A really easy and simple way to be organised. Great design and support.

Mindnode (OS X) A really simple and elegant way to create and manage thinking.

Pixelmator A great way to edit and create more complex pieces of art.

And, of course, the obvious OS X apps that everyone probably knows about: iMovie, iPhoto, GarageBand.

iOS Apps

Explain Everything If I was only allowed to have one app on my classroom iPads, it would be Explain Everything. An absolutely fantastic way to create and share evidence of learning. We use this every day, with every student in our math program and it shows real evidence in developing student learning. (We have examples of kids' work if you need them).

Puppet Pals 2 A really fun and creative way to create narratives or share writing. Kids love Puppet Pals and can quickly and easily create great content.

Silent Light We have a large, open-plan classroom, and Silent Light is one of our essential tools at helping kids manage their own learning and noise level.

100s Board, Rubber Chicken Apps Although a simple app, 100s board is a fantastic tool to use with kids when teaching them about numbers, addition or place value.

Type Drawing A fantastic way to merge writing and art in a creative and unique way. (We have examples of kids' work if you need them).

Poplet The best brainstorming tool that we've ever come across. Simple and adaptable to whatever you might need. Brainstorms can be emailed, saved to camera roll etc.

Math Slide (a series of apps) Great motivational and multiplayer apps to help kids learn their basic facts.

Action Movie Action Movie is great at providing a bit of incentive when writing as a class, especially for boys.

Thank you again to this specific web page for this information which is acknowledged accordingly, and as noted the information has been copied and credited. For those who want the URL as well, here it is, long as it is:
http://www.tuaw.com/2013/09/06/apps-teachers-use-to-tame-the-classrom-and-teach-their-students/