Malchow's Tech Bytes~ August

 Welcome back to a new year! New year's bring with them fresh starts and so let's start fresh with a new year of Tech Bytes!

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Malchow's Tech Bytes~ Back to School edition! 👩🏻‍💻📚

 Hello all and welcome back to a new school year!! Malchow's Tech Bytes is back for a 4th straight year with an updated, brand new look! I hope as we venture into this new and crazy school year that you will find a resource or two here and there that you will find beneficial!

Each week I will post the current newsletter her on the main page of the blog. To access the links and view the deck in a larger format, simply click on the image below. 

Since the newsletter is done in Google Slides, you can easily scroll through the slides to access previous week's information as well. You will also find the newsletter on the Malchow's Tech Bytes page of this blog along with all of the previous years newsletters too! 

EpicPals Returns for a 5th straight year!

Our Back to School, September EpicPals primary and intermediate collections are ready and waiting for you. 

Are you new to EpicPals? If so, head over to the #EpicPals page at the top of the blog for additional information to get you started!

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Bobbi and I are excited to be bringing you #EpicPals for a
5th straight year!
We'll continue to offer you a variety of fiction and non-fiction texts each month which can be read on Epic along with a coordinating Padlet board for each book!


As always, please encourage your students to read others' posts and if they like their post, have them click on the heart at the bottom of the sticky note or leave a comment if comments are turned on. Being reflective and having an authentic reason to like something is a great first step towards leaving meaningful and authentic feedback. 

We encourage you to have conversations with your students on what constitutes a good post and how to be a good digital citizen when working online. You can find several resources to help you with these conversations on this previous blog post. 

Flipgrid Integration~  Stay tuned... I'm hoping to bring Flipgrid back to EpicPals primary this year as several of the upgradesI believe will make this possible once again. Yay!!

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If you have questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to Bobbi or myself. You can find both of us on Twitter- @smalchow (primary boards) and @bhopteacher (intermediate boards)

Malchow's Tech Bytes~ Sept 2nd, 2019 🎉📱👩🏻‍💻

Welcome back to another great year of tips, tricks, resources and integration ideas! I hope that you'll find this year's Tech Bytes weekly newsletter valuable as you look for meaningful integration ideas for your classroom! Click the link below the image to access the file.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me!

~Sara (@smalchow)

Malchow's Tech Bytes!~ Sept 2nd 

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👩🏻‍💻 Malchow's Tech Bytes ~ Sept 2nd

Looking for ideas for the beginning of the year? This week's Tech Bytes newsletter brings you a variety of activities and resources that will help you incorporate the 4Cs! Click the image below to access the newsletter. 

Malchow's Tech Bytes~ Sept 2nd

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👩🏻‍💻 Welcome Back to Malchow's Tech Bytes 🚌

Malchow's Tech Bytes is back for year two!! I'm excited to continue this weekly newsletter and hope that you'll find it beneficial as you look for new tips, tricks and integration ideas.

Each week I'll post an image and link to the Tech Bytes slide deck here on the blog, as well as on my Twitter feed, @smalchow. You can also subscribe by filling out the Google form below and I'll send a link direct to your email each week. Most items will be suited to anyone, but on occasion there will be a resource specific to my district such as this week's network login posters.

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Interested in having Tech Bytes delivered right to your inbox?

Heading Back to School with Seesaw

Hard to believe that the school year is once again just around the corner! Seems like every year around mid-August, teachers everywhere are saying those exact same words and every year summer seems to go by faster and faster!!! 

I've had a crazy busy summer, crazier than any other, which is why the blog has been dormant for the past few months! I'll be blogging about those experiences in the coming weeks. In the meantime though, my brain is beginning to make the switch to thinking about the beginning of the school year and I've been working on a few resources, with many more to come! 

I know some of you are already back in school so hopefully you will find these resources helpful as you start your year off!

Our district is now in our second year of Seesaw for Schools implementation and as such most of our students have been exposured to Seesaw. I wanted to find a way for students to jump back into Seesaw at the beginning of the year while reviewing the Seesaw tools in an engaging and meaningful way. The Seesaw challenge below is what I came up with. This challenge give students the opportunity to share a little about themselves, their summer vacation, goals they have for the year and more by using each of Seesaw's built-in tools. It also gives students a chance to go through the class feed and to leave comments for their peers. 

bit.ly/SeesawStudentChallenge

Here's the link to the template, bit.ly/SeesawStudentChallenge if you are interested in using it with your students. Once you click on the link, click on Use Template and it will be saved to your Google Drive and you can modify the challenge to fit your needs.

And here's one more...
I always did a "Find Someone Who..." activity at the beginning of the year with my first graders as a way for them to get up and get moving, practice their social skills, and get to know each other a bit better as well. If your classroom is 1:1 you may enjoy the Seesaw Activity below that I created. You can find this activity in the Seesaw Library or you can simply click the Save Activity button below to save this to your own activity library.

I hope you find one or both of these activities helpful as you begin the year!!

Back to School with Seesaw

For the past two years, one of my all time favorite apps has been Seesaw. It never ceases to amaze me the ways it can be used to engage learning and document students growth! If you've not tried it out, I HIGHLY encourage you to jump in and give it a try. You can't go wrong for free!!!

That's what I, and many other teachers in our district have said for the past two years. This year though, our district has jumped on the Seesaw boat and is purchasing Seesaw for Schools for our elementary buildings. I couldn't be more thrilled. With this, I want to see more parents connected to their child's learning. In today's day and age, there's no reason that you can't be a part of your child's learning even if you can't volunteer at school or attend evening functions. With Seesaw it's a matter of getting a notification and seeing and responding to your child in real time! It's so easy and students absolutely LOVE having an authentic audience outside of the school walls!

Our Open House is this coming Tuesday and in hopes of connecting as many parents as possible, I've created this note for parents which really sums up how I feel about Seesaw as well as a couple of step-by-step workflow posters to set out for parents.

If you think these may be something that would work for you, please feel free to download them here.

It's going to be a JOLLY great year!

Wow! Where did summer go? I can't believe that a new school year is again just around the corner. It's been an amazing summer of travel and family time and although I'm sad to give up the flexibility that summer brings, I'm super excited to head back to school! 

My schedule has changed a bit this year and we have a lot of new staff in one of my buildings so I wanted to get my schedule out there with more than an email, so I once again found myself perusing the candy aisle looking for a small little treat to share with my colleagues. After much deliberation and several different candy purchases, I finally settled on Jolly Ranchers (the other little treats will be used throughout the year if I can keep them hidden away from my boys)

I bought 500 of these great little jewelry-sized bags last year. They perfectly hold 3 Jolly Ranchers in each little bag. Then I created a tag that has my schedule on it to attach to each one. I printed mine on cardstock, cut them out and stapled them to the bags. The cards are approx 2" x 3".  I'm planning to put them in each teacher's mailbox on the first day back and then follow up with my personal chit-chats. 

Here is the link to the cards if you're interested- Welcome Back Jolly Rancher link. You'll be prompted to make a copy and then you can customize to your liking. If you need bags, you can find a variety of different sized ones on Amazon, click here.

Have a great school year!!!!

ROLLing into tech integration

The new year is just around the corner (T minus 5 days and counting!) and I'm excited to get started and meet my new colleagues. Although I'm planning to go around and introduce myself and chat with everyone individually, I also wanted to have just a little something to give the teachers in my buildings to start those conversations. After going up and down the candy aisle multiple times looking for the just right treat, I decided upon Tootsie Rolls, because let's face it, what teacher couldn't use just a tad bit of chocolate during these first few days?!

I had these great little jewelry-sized bags that I bought for a project at some point and never used. Finding them in my now "stored in the basement" classroom totes was an interesting endeavor, but I found them and they couldn't have been more perfect. I placed 3 Tootsie Rolls in each little bag and then created the iPad tag to attach to each one. I'm planning to put them in each teacher's mailbox on the first day back and then follow up with my personal chit-chats. 

If you're interested in the cards,  you can access them here or by clicking on the picture. There are two different options to choose from. I printed mine on cardstock, cut them out and stapled them to the bags. The cards are approx 2" x 3".  If you need bags, you can find a variety of them on Amazon, click here.

Click image to access the printable pdf

I'll turn the arrow on this board
to show where I am

One other project that I've been working on is finding a way to let the staff in my buildings know where I am if I'm not in my office (Ok, that just seems so weird to say- I've never had a job with an office before, and quite honestly, I don't plan on spending much time in it either) That being said, the 1st grade teacher side of me will never be gone and I plan to embrace it in my new position as well (watch out everyone!) so I repurposed the "Where Am I?" boards that I used in my classroom last year (hence the dog theme). I'm going to hang these outside of my office space so that if a teacher comes to see me and I'm not there, they know if I'm in there building or not and if so, where I may be. There's nothing more frustrating than having a bit of time to catch someone only to find out that they're not around and you nave no clue if they'll be back in 5 minutes or the next day. With being in 2 buildings on alternating days, I want to be sure that I am as transparent as possible so teacher's can utilize me to the fullest extent. 

On this board I'll move the circles
to the top spot by the arrow

The boards are simply made from cookie sheets from The Dollar Store that I modge-podged some fabric on to. I created the various pieces, printed and laminated them and the hot-glued magnet strips to the back. The arrow has a fatter magnetic circle so that it pops up over the other pieces. I then used E-6000 to attach some extra fabric to the back for the hangers.  The rectangle cookie sheet has neon green Duck tape around the edges.

It may not be New Years, but...

It may not be January 1st but it's a new SCHOOL year and with that comes time to reflect and do some goal setting. It's always about this time of year when I've had just enough rejuvenation that I begin to get super excited about the adventures that the new school year will bring: meeting a new class, seeing former students, chatting with colleagues that you haven't seen in a couple of months, the excitement of new school supplies- you know- cool new pens, maybe a new piece of decor for the classroom... it all makes me happy!!

Along with those things, I always begin to ponder what goals I want to make for myself. How will I stretch myself to become a better educator? I love the Sketchnote below by Sylvia Duckworth that lists 15 things every teacher should try. I've shared this on Twitter a couple of times over the last year but have never shared it here on the blog so here it is!

For some, these ideas may seem overwhelming and for others these may feel very basic, but so many of these ideas can be personalized to where you are at as a learner and your technology comfort level. Without even realizing it, many of these ideas probably already have some overlap into what you are doing in your classroom. For example, my classes have participated in many of Jen Wagner's, Projects by Jen activities which fully encompasses #5 above. If you're a novice tech user, you may want to check out her site for some super projects that will not stress you out but will enable you to bring great collaborative learning to your classroom. The great thing about many of her projects is you can put as much or as little as you want into them depending on your class, the time you may have and your comfort level. On the flip side though, you can really let your creativity run wild with some of the projects as well and they tie very nicely into the curriculum.

Along with many of these projects you will have the opportunity to connect with another class via Skype or Google HangOut 

There's #6!

Connecting in this way allows your students to see that students around the world are no really no different than they are. My community is not very diverse at all and so this opened doors to us that many of my students may never get to experience. In addition we were able to authentically increase our geography skills as well. Doing a GHO or Skype session is really quite painless and the benefits are phenomenal to say the least.

How many of you are using Kahoot? This is a great way to gamify your classroom. Not everything all day every day has to be gamified... just spice things up a bit with a Kahoot game here or there. We use them in my class to review math concepts, practice math facts, comprehension questions after a good read aloud, and even for our iPad License quiz at the beginning of the year. They are super easy to create and kids LOVE them... It's a no-brainer 

You've just covered #10!!

By no means am I trying to check off as many of these items as I can, put find one that puts you a little bit out of your comfort level, stretches your learning just a bit and make it your goal. Your students will thank you for it and you'll have accomplished adding another tool to your toolkit or even better- you'll have  found another way to embed meaningful technology into your curriculum.

As for my goal... last year my kiddos used Seesaw (absolutely phenomenal, game changing, can't say enough about it) as I worked to create digital portfolios. Overall I would say it was a very successful year and something I want to continue to refine. This year though I want my students to branch out just a bit more and share their learning through blogging. So my goal this year is going to revolve around #4. The best part is, Seesaw offers the ability to blog right in the app! This should make the workflow easy and allow me to help my students hone their blogging skills. I'm excited to see what we'll be able to do with this and the connections that may come of it!!

What's your goal going to be this year? 

Ready, Set, Go!

Wow! It's hard to believe that it August already! Seems like forever since I've blogged, but with good reason- It's been an extremely busy summer here! I won't go into ALL the craziness, but one of the biggest was that I moved my 1st grade classroom to a new building in our district.  Talk about being amazed at how long it takes to pack and move everything, but even more eye opening was how much stuff I truly have and how many boxes I needed! Oh. My. Gosh! What was I thinking moving to a new building??

My classroom went 

from this....

to this! 

On a positive note, it provided me with opportunity to do a lot of purging! I can't even tell you how many trips I made out to the dumpster! Despite the mess of it all, it will be great to connect with new families in the small country school that I am switching to. I'm excited for the new adventures that the new year will bring.

Speaking of dumpsters, this was my backyard just a few weeks ago. Another of the crazy, unexpected things that took place this summer. Our roof sustained hail damage and needed to be completely replaced.

What. a. mess! 

So, here we are... just a few short weeks away from a new school year! There are still a few crazy things on my plate and I can't get into my new building until August 11th, so I've been busy with some Personalized Summer PD! I attended EdCamp Global (#ECG2016) and participated in several fantastic sessions! I've also been participating in various webinars- everything from great uses of Seesaw to using BookCreator in multiple content areas to Google tips and tricks. My mind is swimming with all sorts of new information and I'm continuing to mull over how I can best take this information and apply it into my curriculum. I am a firm believer that tech should not be used for the sake of using tech, but rather to enhance and transform learning!

I also played around with and learned how to use a couple of new sites this summer. Buncee was the first site I played with. On Buncee you can create, present, and share multimedia presentations. I used it to recreate my ABC's of first grade for my new school. I'm thrilled with the way it turned out and am excited for parents to be able to easily access this through my classroom blog, The Dog Blog

I also started playing with Adobe Spark. What a fantastic site to use to create beautiful social graphics! I can see this being a wonderful way to create visually appealing slides for some of my presentations. I really love the way this one in particular turned out!!

So with 3-1/2 weeks left of summer break and knowing that part of that time will be spent setting up my classroom, I can honestly say that with the exception of #10 below (I'm not a coffee drinker) I have enjoyed each and every one of these 12 things this summer! #7 is always near and dear to my heart and I so appreciate having the extra time to dig further into things that during the school year get put on the back burner. 

I hope you enjoyed your summer break as well! Did you get to enjoy most of these as well?

 Here's looking forward to a great new year!

Quick side note: 

#EpicPals will be starting again in the coming weeks. I am currently working on getting the September boards ready to go.

Calendar time with a tech twist

 This month I am trying something new during our calendar time in order  for all students to participate and more importantly, for all students to be able to analyze and share their information about our weather graph at the end of the month. We normally do our calendar routine on the Smartboard, which allows student participation, but only allows one student at a time.

To start our new venture, I took used the snipping tool to capture a picture of our October calendar, minus the dates and extra icons that we drag each day, and also snipped a copy of the weather graph that we use. I then sent these two pictures to my students' iPad via the Chirp app (more on that later this week). Once I sent these, students saved them to their camera roll and then imported the pictures into the Doodlecast Pro app.  Each morning as we complete our calendar on the smartboard, students will now also add the date to their own calendar on their iPad and also color in the corresponding area on our weather graph. 

At the end of the month, we'll use the recording feature of Doodlecast Pro to analyze our weather graph and tell what we observe. For example, there are 5 more sunny days than rainy. When we are done, the Doodlecast app, will also allow us to share our finished projects with parents, our global classrooms and myself. 

iPad licenses and PicCollage

Well it's day 5 of the school year and we are digging further into iPad use than we ever have by this time of year. I truly think a big part of it is the amount of technology that kiddos have available to them at home as well as the digital native aspect of our young learners and their willingness to take risks.  

We are already well into taking pictures with our iPads and using the app PicCollage. We've also been working hard to earn our iPad licenses by knowing how to carry our iPad, how to adjust the volume, where to put them when they need charging, how to enter and exit apps, and more. Half of our class has earned their licenses and the privilege of creating on their iPads in some of the fun areas in our classroom such as the stools, crate chairs, etc. 

This week we discussed how to take pictures. We learned how to zoom in and out, how to change our vantage point by turning the iPad horizontal versus vertical and what makes a good picture. The kiddos did a fantastic job and it was neat to see the pictures they took as their eye for a great picture is often different than what we might expect. I made sure to go around and conference with each of the kiddos regarding their pictures to find out what they thought (were they blurry, too far away, or maybe didn't show what they wanted?) If they had some that didn't meet the criteria or their expectations, we discussed how to delete those pics and redo them.
After finishing our pictures of the items in our Me Bags, we learned how to import our pictures into the app, PicCollage. This is a free app that allows you to collage your pictures, add text and stickers, and change fonts and backgrounds. It's a powerful, but very easy app to use.  

Each of the kiddos then moved and re-sized their pictures to create their own unique version of their Me Bags. They also learned how to add text, change the font, color and background of the fonts!  We will be sharing these with parents as soon as we have our email accounts set up.

Getting to Know your students

Are you ready for your new crew of students? 

The end of August is always such a crazy, busy time for teachers with the new school year just around the corner.  I'm sure all of you have been busy getting everything organized, printed, laminated just like I have. 

One of the things that I have done for many years is to send home a "Get to Know You" questionnaire to parents prior to the school year starting along with my welcome letter. I've found this to be such a great source of information for me. It has often times sparked conversations with parents that otherwise wouldn't have taken place or has given parents a place to share information such as a recent divorce that otherwise is difficult to bring up in person.
I've also had parents comment on how they appreciated receiving this prior to all of the beginning of the school paperwork which gave them more time to complete it.

Here's looking forward to a fantastic year of fun and learning with our students and their families! If you'd like to get a copy for yourself, you can find it here in my Teachers Pay Teachers Store or just click on either of the images.

One your mark... get set...

Go!!

The beginning of the new school year begins tomorrow for me (without kids) and our Open House is Wednesday evening. Today has brought a mad dash to finish up some Pinterest-inspired projects for Open House and the beginning of the year.

My room decor is dog-themed and I've incorporated quite a bit of bright, almost neon colors, around the room. (I forgot to take pics when I was at school yesterday. I'll have to try and remember tomorrow)  That being said, these great little "flower sticks" will add the perfect touch for Open House. I found the idea on Ginger Snaps. She has quite a few other fantastic neon printables as well. Needless to say, I was in heaven going through her blog! I'm going to place one of these at each of my students' spots along with the "Me Bag" below and a raffle ticket.

Here is the "Me Bag"  I found on Mrs. Heeren's Happenings. I have these printed and stapled to lunch bags. I'm going to tell students that this is their homework for the 1st day of school. I'm excited to see what they will bring to share with the rest of the class. I think  this will be a fantastic way for all of us to get to know each other a bit better and break the ice on the 1st day. You can find the printable here.

Last, I put together a little raffle gift. I've never done this before but thought it would be a fun incentive for the families that come. I found the Chinese-style box at The Dollar Store and then filled it with Dollar Store items. I filled it with glitter glue, silly string, grape scented erasers, playdough, and a pack of telling time flashcards. Each kiddo will have a raffle ticket at their table spot along with the other items above. The raffle tickets are also from Mrs. Heeren's blog. They are part of her Open House Activities pack which you can find here.

This is by far one of my favorites though. I simply put my kiddos names into Wordle and then played with the font, color, and layout until I found one that I liked that matched my classroom colors for the year. I'm going to frame this and display it somewhere in my classroom or outside of our door. 

Whew! Needless to say even though it was the last day of summer vacation, when I wasn't taking the dog to the vet or getting ice cream with my kiddos, I was working on school stuff or scouring the dollar store for those last minute odds n' ends for my classroom. Ahhhhh... I now need to stay off of Pinterest until school starts for fear of finding another idea that I'll want to implement prior to the kids coming. 

Beginning of the Year Scavenger Hunt

The beginning of the school year is just around the corner and as my room is beginning take shape, (notice I didn't say it was done ~ is a room ever done?),  I am starting to shift my thinking over to curriculum and first day activities.

One of the things that I have done with my kiddos the past several years is a classroom scavenger hunt. The kids really seem to enjoy this and I have found it to be much more beneficial for helping kids remember where things are located than if I just say, "Here is our recycle bin..." This has also been a great quick assessment tool for me as well. After I've set the expectations and gone over the list with the kiddos, I send them on their way. I am then able to roam the room and observe their interactions with peers, their time on task, and their basic problem solving skills.

This summer with Vistaprint's great 4th of July sale, I put my scavenger hunt on oversized postcards for the kids. They turned out fantastic! To help kiddos tell their parents about their day, I added "homework" to the backside to give students/parents a springboard for conversation. I'm really excited to use the new cards with the kids on Thursday!