Module 4.2 Digital Literacy

This video demonstrated how an entire school community can be united through technology. Students create the daily morning announcements with the guidance and a sponsor teacher. Every grade level is involved in some way. Kindergartners report weather, primary students give book reviews, and the intermediate students operate the technology and create other projects. The sponsor teacher supports the students by giving them opportunities to problem solve on their own during a crisis. He does not intervene unless absolutely necessary. Students also created family history reports using computers in a fourth grade classroom. First graders monitored a sea turtle on the computer that they adopted. A group of students conducted water and organism examples and posted their findings on the school website.

The blog I read is entitled "How the Internet Can Help Students Build Their Vocabulary" by Jim Moulton. He lists eight different websites that provide opportunities and activities for students to work with words. One of the links listed was spellingcity.com which I use every week with my students and really like. I explored a few of the other links and hope to give them a try during literacy centers in addition to Spelling City. Visuwords offers great visual webs for students by it is too advanced for primary students. Most of the other links were too difficult for primary but one of the vocabulary links (Vocabulary.co.il) had some great games. http://www.edutopia.org/vocabulary-development-online

Emerging Technology 2: Wordle

I was not familiar with this program prior to taking this class but have seen so much of it in the past month or so that I now feel like I've known about it for awhile!  This program is a great way for students to demonstrate understanding at the end of a unit or brainstorm thoughts an ideas at the start of a project or lesson.  We are studying currently studying landforms so I plan to have students create a list of as many landforms that they can think of in Wordle.  Important things for students to be aware of before they create their own Wordle is that the main word or words that appear larger than others need to be typed repeatedly in order to increase the font size.  I typed "landforms" three times and the other words one time each.  In order to keep words or phrases grouped together in the Wordle it is necessary to type a "~" in between the two words.  For example on my landforms Wordle I typed "sand~dune."  Students will enjoy seeing how they turn out after they are created.  They will also enjoy editing the colors of the font and background.  I will have to be sure that students do not view the gallery because there are a variety of Wordles that are not school appropriate.  I plan to take my students to the computer lab this week and have them create their own landform Wordles!  Once they are familiar with this program, it will be fun to include this activity as an OYO (on your own) activity during literacy centers.

21st Century Skills: Changes

In this video entitled Big Thinkers: Katie Salen on Learning with Games she discusses the importantance of the use of games in the classroom.  After watching this video, a goal I made for myself is to find a variety of learning games to introduce to my students.  I have found several games that I like to use during reading and math centers but I feel that I could increase the number of games in my pool in order to expose students to a variety of different types of games.  Katie Salen talks about how students are more willing to take risks in a game instead of another classroom activity because they feel safe to fail in a game environment.  They know that they will get another chance to try again if they make a mistake.  She also talks about how games are often viewed as a lesiure activity or a waste of time but they can be valuable learning opportunities if they are the right type of games.  Games can increase student confidence and provide students with a sense of empowerment because they know that the games are designed for kids and that they are likely to succeed. 

Emerging Technology 1: Animoto

I decided to create my own animoto.  I like how innovative it seems compared to power point slides.  I created an introductory video to coin identification for primary students.

http://animoto.com/play/aZuCAhXk7B00o1QDwN7yhg?autostart=true

I really enjoyed working with this program.  The steps were very clear and easy to follow.  There is a gallery of images and music to select or there is an option to upload your own images and mp3 files. 

I am a looping teacher so in first grade I would probably create videos such as one to show students as an introduction to lesson or unit.  In second grade, I would like students to begin to learn how to create their own.  Students could create videos about parts of speech, shapes, landforms, or any number of topics throughout the school year.  This program is so simple to use that once students learn how to create their first video, they would be able to make many more after that on their own.  The potential problems I could see are searching for images.  I would probably select a topic that enabled students to utilize the gallery photos rather than doing an image search at the beginning.  I would also have them select music from the galley to keep things simple.  I will post some of my students videos as soon as we complete this new adventure!