Malchow's Tech Bytes 👩🏻‍💻~ Nov 2nd

 

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Prezi

Have you heard of Prezi?

Prezi is a free, online presentation tool that I've heard referred to as powerpoint on steroids! It's a wonderful tool that I am just beginning to scratch the surface of. A 7th grade teacher from my district did a guest post on Free Technology for Teachers which explains Prezi much better than I can. Check it out here. He has linked several of his examples for you to see as well. I'm sure much better than my beginning attempts but as I said, I'm just starting to scratch the surface... let's just say, I'm adding another item to my summer to do list... I think I may need an extended summer to complete everything on my list already and I have another month to think of more. Uuuggh! 

I'm currently using Prezi as a more interactive and engaging way of introducing my weekly vocabulary words. The kids really seem to be enjoying it, especially the embeded video clips which bring concepts to life. Here's an example- keep in mind it's only my 2nd one- I still have a lot to learn, but that's life, one big learning curve!

Has anyone else used Prezi? If so, how have you brought it into your teaching/curriculum? Always looking for more ideas!!!

iPod touches rock!

I can only wish at this point that I had a class set or even 4 or 5 iPod Touches for my classroom but in the meantime, I am loving using my own touch and am finding so many great uses. I've downloaded the Robert Munsch collection of books from Tumblebooks that my kids are using during Listen to Reading time. They absolutely love them... although I'm sure part of it is just that they are using Mrs. Malchow's touch... oohhhh.... ahhhhhh...as we have many books on tape and books on CD available in our room.

Today as I was listening to one of my students read I on a whim decided to record her so she could hear herself and have some accountability into how she sounded as she was reading so I pulled out my touch and used the Voice Record app to quickly record her and then played it back to her so she could hear for herself how choppy she sounded. We then practiced reading fluently and I rerecorded her again. She was proud as a peach when she was able to actually hear the difference. :-) What an eye opening moment for this child. So often the kids are so tuned in to their decoding and the story itself that they totally lose sight of what they sound like. This was a a great way for this particular student to self evaluate herself.

I've also found several great apps for my 1st grade son, which I have also implemented into my classroom for individuals with various struggles.The biggest thing is remembering which app was good for which skill and being able to get it into kids' hands quickly without wasting precious learning time. Again, it goes back to my philosophy of having an intended purpose rather than using it for the sake of using it or just for the coolness of it. This summer, I'd like to take screen shots of the various apps and then list what skill(s) each is good for so I can easily access the app and the target skill. Off hand I can't remember the name of the app, but there is one that has been helpful for my kids that struggle with counting by 5s and 2s.
One of my all time faves is Teach Me 1st grade (there is also a Teach Me Kindergarten). I like it because: it covers several skills, I can adjust the settings for what I want my kids to work on, I can set it up for 4 different children, and it will track their progress.

Digital Storytelling Tools

Wow! What a great find by accident tonight. This site http://only2clicks.com/pages/joycevalenza/331334 which stems off of Springfield Township's Virtual Library is great. This page is filled with quite a variety of digital storytelling tools. I'm looking forward to digging into these when I get some free time. I've heard of several including Blabberize, Comic Creator, and Mixbook and have even used a few such as Animoto. If you have an interest in digital storytelling, check this site out. It sure appears to have something for everybody. While you're at it, check out the main site as well. It is phenomenal and has a wealth of information

fridge magnets

Remember those colorful fridge magnets that scratch up your fridge, fall off and get lost but are sooo much fun? Well now you can play with fridge magnets on the computer....no more lost pieces, no more scratched refridgerator doors but still all the fun! The best part is, as children move the letters around, it will also say the letter name to them.  I love this site!!  For those of us who have SMARTboards,  a version of fridge magnets is in the gallery, but I like this one sooo much better as the letter names are said as the letters are touched or moved.
We will be using this on the SMARTboard during our spelling practice time in the mornings and on the netbooks during our Daily 5 word work time. I will also be introducing it to one of my children who has trouble with letter identification. Using it on the SMARTboard this child will be able to work independently but I will also be able to easily keep an eye on his work. 
I also like the fact that students can print their creations when they are done or save them.
The link is: http://abcya.com/alphabet_number_magnets.htm

Need a primary level Wordle-type site?? Here it is...

I was jumping for joy when I found this site earlier this year. I've used Wordle in the past with 2nd graders and although they did a great job there were a lot of choices for them in regards to color, style, etc that seemed to take some of them far too long to decide on their final product. There was also the possibility of coming across inappropriate Wordle's in the gallery which was something I was a bit uncomfortable with. Well... fear not- there is a solution and it's ABCya! Word Clouds.

Just to give you an example of what an ABCya! word cloud looks like, I pasted the paragraph above into the word cloud generator and here's what my creation ended up looking like. It doesn't take out as many of the insignificant words as Wordle does, but to me, that far outweighs the other issues.

Once students have typed or cut and pasted their text into the generator they are able to change the font, the color scheme (only 8 to choose from), and change the format (only 3 layouts available). ABCya's Word Clouds also give you the option to print your creation or save it, something that Wordle made difficult for 1st/2nd graders to do.

This would be great for students to use with a short story or a poem. I personally have used it for students' poems for our May baskets as well as for cloze-sentence projects. It just gives it a little different flair and really appeals to our digital native learners.

ABCya!

I came upon this site, http://www.abcya.com/ ,last year when I was teaching 2nd grade. The site is laid out with educational computer games and activities, but the best part is... it's organized by grade level. 

 All of the educational computer activities were created or approved by certified school teachers and all educational games are free and are modeled from primary grade lessons and enhanced to provide an interactive way for children to learn. The grade level lessons incorporate areas such as math and language arts while introducing basic computer skills. Many of the kindergarten and first grade activities are equipped with sound to enhance understanding.




My 2nd graders last year loved this site and my first graders this year are no different. The boys, my son included, love the Create a Car (make a toy car) game. This is also an app that can be downloaded for the iPod Touch. It seems so very simple and almost too game like but a great tool for teaching clicking and dragging while having fun.

I have heard some say that they go up a grade level as well for a bit more challenging content for their kids.

Give it a try and let me know what you think!