Malchow's Tech Bytes~ October 12th

 

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👩🏻‍💻 Malchow's Tech Bytes~ October 21st!~ 🍁Fall / Halloween🎃 Edition

The weather is changing here in Wisconsin and the days are getting cooler! Yahoo!!! I love this time of year and the color changes that take place, especially the Sugar Maple trees! Absolutely stunning!

This week's Tech Bytes has several resources that you may find helpful as we venture into this new season. 

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SNOWpinions

I had a blast over the past couple of weeks helping the first graders with their special SNOWpinion writing pieces. After talking with the first grade teachers, it was decided that we would have students type their pieces on a collaborative Google Slides document in order to get some authentic keyboarding practice while also exposing them to working on a collaborative document. This was the first time these kiddos have experienced working on a collaborative document and with a little careful planning, and a pinch of patience, everything went off without a hitch. Having an index slide definitely made this endeavor super easy.

 Headache Saver:  Make sure that all of your students are on their slide and that the cursor is blinking on the frame they're going to write on. We had a few deleted slides and kiddos working on others' slides in one class as they didn't click on their frame before starting.

After everyone finished their writing, we saved the file as a PDF and then printed off the file so each student could display their writing in the hallway along with a snowman art project they had created.


During our planning time, the teachers also shared that one of their objectives was to have students present their pieces as they wanted to focus on presentation skills such as voice volume, clarity, and speed. After some discussion, we decided that we would have students use DoInk's Green Screen app to share their piece to add an element of authenticity and fun. Students choose the background they wanted and then bundled themselves up to create their SNOWpinion presentations. The end results were adorable and the students did a fantastic job practicing and preparing for their speeches. As students finished, they uploaded their SNOWpinion to Seesaw where they were able to share it with their peers as well as their parents. 

 Green Screen Tip:  Have all of your background images saved to one iPad so you're ready to go. We did all of our videos "live" right in DoInk with the background image already inserted. As you finish each recording save it to the camera roll for ease of uploading it to Seesaw, YouTube, etc later on. 

 Add-on Alert:  After all of the students' were finished, I imported their DoInk movies into iMovie. (This was super easy to do because all of the videos were on one iPad!) I added a title frame from our shared Google slide deck and some background music and then shared the finished movie with the teachers for them to share with their students as well as parents via Seesaw. We also talked about how this video could be used at conference time by having it playing on an iPad on a continuous loop outside of their classrooms for parents to enjoy while they are waiting for their child's conference. Here's what the finished video looked like:

In my opinion, everyone should....

This week during writer's workshop we have continued to work on opinion writing. This is our 2nd time working on opinion writing this year and I have been very pleased with the growth my students have made.

One of our objectives this time around was to branch out and learn several new ways to start our opinions. In the past we used the, "In my opinion..." starter. To the right is the anchor chart that each child added to their writing binders with our new options. Everyone had their own opinion on which was their favorite and they enjoyed experimenting with them all. 

Seeing as it was Friday, I didn't want to start a big piece so instead I created a quick template based on an idea I found on Pinterest. Students had to chose one of the images at the bottom of the page and write an opinion piece based on their choice. 

As students finished they published their pieces using Doodlecast Pro. Students went online to find an image that would portray the choice they made which they then used as their background image. They then recorded themselves reading their opinion pieces. Once they finished their Doodlecast they emailed it to both their parents and myself.

 The first example below has about a 6 second delay before the student begins talking and is from one of my higher writers. The second example is from one of my average kiddos.






 

Ugly Holiday Sweaters

Right before the holiday, our staff had an Ugly Christmas Sweater contest. The kids thought it was quite a hoot. After the staff day, I decided it would be fun to do our own Tech'd-out Ugly Sweater Day after stumbling across the Ugly Sweater writing prompt on Technology Tailgate. This couldn't have been more timely as we are currently working on opinion writing. 

 I started by downloading the free, Ugly Holiday Sweaters app. This is an iPhone app so if you are downloading on iPads you will need to toggle over to the iPhone app area. Be careful to get the right app as there is another free ugly sweater iPad app which has some inappropriate content for your classroom. This app has 10 different sweaters for kiddos to choose from- just enough to give them choice but not take too long to decide. 

Once kiddos decided on their sweater, we used the app to take a pic. Here is one of my kiddos in his sweater.  At this point, students needed to tell 3 reasons why their holiday sweater was the ugliest. They had some really clever ideas including one of my little guys stating that his sweater was "just too Christmas-y!"

We chose to print our pics off from the app and attach them to our writing so we could display them in the hall for all to enjoy. We've had lots of comments and giggles on our writing. This will be a definite re-do next year!