Mrs. Marino & Maverick Marino’s Kidblog Avatars

Do your students blog? If not, y’all are all missing out. I first heard about Kidblog this summer while attending EdCamp in Region 6. While sitting in Jake Duncan’s class on tech tools in the classroom (follow him on Twitter) two teachers from Brenham mentioned KidBlog. I was intrigued. I instantly wanted to hear more about this blogging business. So, they pulled their KidBlog up right then and showed me what I could do with it. It was absolutely the coolest thing I’ve seen. I believe I started my KidBlog the second week of school. I first sent out a permission slip for all my students ensuring parents that it was safe. Every parent signed YES! Next, my students created their very own avatars using the WeeMee app. We will never post pictures on our KidBlog. My KidBlog is private, so you have to have a password to view it. Also, every comment that is posted has to be approved by me before it actually posts. This is what I love about KidBlog. It is a safe place for kids to be creative, to share their feelings, and to sometimes chat with their friends (when I put a “chat” post up.) My students love to blog. They can’t wait to blog. They beg to blog! They blog at home. ALL THE TIME. So, they are sitting at home willfully answering questions that I have asked them. They are writing at home. They are thinking at home. The skills that they are using to “blog” are covered in my TEKS. They work on capitalization, punctuation, spelling and grammar. They are reflective. It is amazing. I have my KidBlog set-up so that when they blog, I get an email alert. I am not trying to be cheesy, but it is one of the coolest feelings in the world when I pick up my phone and see that I have 14 new posts to be approved. That happens all the time. They blog in my class, and they blog at home. I simply love it. Below are some of our blog topics so far:

1.  What do you miss about 3rd grade?

2.  What is your favorite part in Hank the Cowdog so far?

3.  What is your favorite thing about our iPads?

4.  What are you learning right now in your classes?

Mrs. Marino’s 4th Grade Class

Do your students struggle with homophones? It is a hard concept for young minds to understand. Why do these words sound the same…but they’re not? And how are they supposed to remember which is which? This year, thanks to our classroom iPads, we took homophones to a whole new level. We made it visual. When students hover their iPads over their paper, a video of that student pops up explaining what their homophone means! Not only did we make it visual, the students created the lesson. Not only did they create the lesson, the lesson is saved and will be up for the rest of the year. If at anytime they forget what a certain homophone means, they will just simply have to scan in. I mean, seriously! I am going to try and walk you through this process as simply as possible. If you have any questions on how to do this, please email me. (daisy.marino@warrenisd.net) I would love to help you out. Before you start with the Aurasma part of this lesson, have students make videos on their camera roll explaining their homophone.

1. Download the Aurasma App

2. Create a classroom account

3.  Create a classroom channel (very important)

4. Have students log on to their iPad with the classroom account information

5.  Start creating your Aura (www.kleinspiration.com has an awesome tutorial on this)

5.  Students choose their overlay which is their video on the camera roll

6.  Students choose their trigger image which is the picture of their homophone

7.  Students save this as public

8.  Students add it to the classroom channel

DONE!  The kids can then take their iPad and scan any students’ paper in the class and get their video to pull up. Now, how can parents or other teachers get our images? They need to download the free Aurasma app. Then they need to follow our channel (just like you follow someone on Facebook). Once they follow us, they can hover over any of our images and see the same thing we see.

This is free people!  A free app to enhance your student’s learning. Use it. They will remember these concepts…..more importantly, they will love to learn.

(look closely at the left hand side of the picture above….you can see the homophone picture with  one of my student’s “auras” hovering above it)

Have you ever been in a hot air balloon? I have not physically been on one.  After this lesson, I sure felt as though I had floated into the sky on a hot air balloon with my students. Thank you to an Augmented Reality App called ColAR Mix (now named Quiver) my lesson became three-dimensional! Teaching the concept of the 3 States of Matter is not a paper and pencil lesson. It should be hands on and visual. We have been discussing the 3 States of Matter for the past week. We have a wonderful online resource called United Streaming. The students and I watched a few videos of hot air balloons lifting off, which allowed the students to see the gas enter the balloon. Before the students colored the hot air balloon sheet, they had to write 2 facts about gas. Then they colored the hot air balloon in any color they wanted. The students were working on-task and independently. Was learning happening in my room? YES!  They were intrigued about the coloring sheet! When they finished coloring, they had to open the ColAR App (now named Quiver) with the iPad and press play. Then they could hover over their hot air balloon. I wish I would have recorded their reactions when the balloons started popping up throughout the classroom. It was hands down AMAZING! Not the normal way to teach the concept of “gas”, but my students know the information! Quiver has many different coloring sheets to print, and it is a great way to engage your students in the lesson. What a great way to bring a story to life! Lots of possibilities with this one.

Have you Skyped? Me either….until today! I have read about educators all over doing this thing called a Mystery Skype for months now, but I have not stopped long enough to even research it. I’m glad I finally did. Today was my first Skype ever. I am absolutely hooked. Seriously. It was incredible. I was lucky enough to Skype for the first time with Heather Cooper from Flower Mound, Texas. Find her on Twitter. (She also plays a huge role in The World Book Talk…look it up!) Yesterday, when I was scared to death that I was going to mess something up on my first Skype, my friend Angie agreed to practice with me. We sat in her classroom and Skyped each other.  It was hilarious, but we learned how to maneuver our way through a Skype and eased my mind in the process. The first thing I did today when I got to school was hang a huge Texas map up in the hall. That way we can keep track of all the Skypes we do this year. And I plan on doing A LOT!  Then I set up the room. I scooted my pods of desks back to make space for kids to spread around on the floor.  We set up different stations. Three groups had Texas road maps and one iPad. Several people were on desktops.  Two children recorded all the questions and answers and two children asked the questions. When researching how to do Mystery Skypes, I read about the importance of student jobs, and I am so thankful that I did. It kept everything organized. We all knew our roles. Then we waited patiently. We literally stared at my computer waiting for the call. When Mrs. Cooper’s class popped up on our screen, we all started applauding. Mrs. Cooper’s class then lead us through our very first Skype. They were pros. It was so cool to watch them with their dry erase boards and maps and iPads. They asked great questions. They were organized. They were engaged, and so were we. They guessed where we were, then we did the same. My favorite part of this project happened toward the end. We just chatted with one another. They told us about their HUGE city, and we told them about our little town. We have dirt roads and “flood days” at our school. They have highways and “snow days”. We live close to the beach, and they are very close to Six Flags. What did we have in common…Video Games of course. This was a wonderful experience, and I am glad that I get to provide my students with the chance to connect with other towns and cities in Texas. My question for you is….when do you want to Skype with my class??

Are you the only person in your classroom with a device? No problem. You can still do amazing things. Last March when we received our iPads I really had no idea what I was going to do with this tool that they had just placed in my hands. Rafranz Davis, follow her on Twitter, suggested that I download Haiku Deck on my iPad. What a great suggestion!  Haiku Deck is a wonderful tool for any grade, any subject and any project.  It is the modern day Power Point….but way better. My very first iPad project that my students and I created last year was a Haiku Deck about colors. Every year we write color poems, and I absolutely love them. Every year my students come up with ideas that seriously blow me away. This is how the project went down. Like always, I read the students Hailstones and Halibut bones which is my favorite book about color poems. We then took out our dry erase boards and brainstormed how certain colors made us feel. Next, utilizing my iPad, reflector and the SMART board I projected Google images for everyone to see.  We collaboratively picked out our favorite images.  We opened up Haiku Deck and inserted the images in. Our next step was to write a caption on the picture. Haiku Deck is an amazing tool.  It’s easy.  It’s simple.  But, boy, does it look amazing when you are finished with it!  Maggie, my 4 year old, has even made a Deck about the letter A. Don’t let the simplicity fool you. With Haiku Deck your high school student can make a presentation that is sure to wow! Try it out. You won’t be disappointed. If you would like to see my students’ Haiku Deck on Color Poems Click the link below.

http://shar.es/ILH56

Have you utilized QR codes into your classroom yet? They are seriously so simple, but the kids think they are amazing. Not only are they simple to create on your own, you can also go to http://www.teacherspayteachers and use other teacher created lessons. All you have to do is have a device to scan with! I digress.  The picture above shows the first day I brought the iPad cart into my classroom this year. I can’t begin to tell you how excited I was. I looked forward to this day since last April when we found out that we would be getting the carts. For my first lesson using the iPads, I knew I needed to start off simple. For my sake and the kids’. You don’t get any easier than scanning QR codes. We were working on common and proper nouns. I made the students a worksheet that was numbered from 1-20. I placed a QR code at the top of the worksheet that the students had to scan for their directions. Then we separated into stations. I had twenty QR codes taped around my room. When the students scanned the QR code a noun popped up. They then had to decide if the noun was common or proper. They would write their answer in the blank on the worksheet. After 45 seconds I gave the command to rotate. They then would scan the next code.  Sure, I could have just given the kids a list of twenty nouns and let them split them into categories, but this was hands-on, engaging and interactive.  The kids loved being in control of their device. They loved scanning, and because they loved scanning….they worked incredibly hard on deciding where the noun should go. I highly suggest integrating QR codes into your classroom. Also, my favorite QR scanner is I-nigma.  It absolutely works the best….and no they didn’t pay me to say that!

Mrs. Moses’ 2nd Grade Classroom

Have your ever thought of using Legos during your math lesson? You will literally have learning “connections” by bringing the use of Legos to a math classroom. I could almost use them in every lesson.  The students connect with this concept because they bring them from home, it’s visual, and it’s fun.  My next question to myself, as I often talk to myself, was how to integrate with technology???  A wonderful tech tool called I-nigma is used for QR barcode scanning.  The students were given addition and subtraction problems.  Each sheet had a problem and a QR code for the solution. They had to create/model the same problem with the Legos. The students scanned the QR code with I-nigma and checked to see if they were correct.  Modeled with Legos, solved, scanned, and instantly the students knew if they could move on or if they had to go back and check a step.  We moved through stations and answered 20 math problems.  The students were engaged and excited during the lesson.  QR codes and Legos can be used for multiple subjects.  Legos will bring many smiles to your classroom and learning connections will happen!

Have you heard about Augmented Reality? You seriously need to check it out! I was introduced to this concept one night last year when I couldn’t sleep. I was bored and had already surfed through Facebook and Pinterest, so I decided to check out that Twitter account that I was forced to make…Brad. I digress. When scrolling through my Twitter feed I saw an article that Erin Klein had tweeted out about Augmented Reality. I had no idea what it was. I decided that since I was wide awake, I would go ahead and read the article. I am glad I did. This is the night I fell in love with Twitter. I could not believe what Erin Klein was doing in her classroom with this thing called Augmented Reality. I wanted to be a student in her class! More importantly, I wanted to do this with my students. So I read. I studied. I learned. In one night I taught myself how to build Auras using Aurasma. The next morning I was in my superintendent’s office bright and early to show him what I learned on Twitter. Thank you Brad, my superintendent, for forcing me to get that Twitter account in the first place! After learning the awesomeness of Augmented Reality via Aurasma, I decided to design some lessons. The lesson shown in the picture is all about changing singular nouns to plural nouns.  This is a tricky concept for 4th graders when you start throwing in all the different rules. I wanted to make it real for my students. I wanted them to visually be able to see the changes, and not just on notebook paper.  I took words like daisy, baby, toy, cherry and boy and I created an Aura. When my students hovered their iPad over the singular form of the word, an image of the plural form automatically popped up. The students loved it, and so did I.  By the end of the unit we had several Auras posted around the room using the different rules. The good thing about Aurasma is that now that I have created these Auras, I can share them with other teachers in my school, or anywhere. Because students are holding the iPads in their hand, they are instantly engaged. They feel empowered as learners. It is an amazing thing to watch. Tomorrow they will be creating their very own Auras using homophones. Stay tuned for that one! Please keep in mind that this looks crazy hard to do, but I promise it is not. If you go to http://www.kleinspiration.com you will find Erin’s tutorial on how to make Auras using Aurasma. Take a look at it. Your students will think you are a  Rockstar!

Daisy Marino and Brett Kopf

Have you heard of Remind? Do you use it at your school or in your classroom? If not, you should!! Remind is an innovative and tech-savvy way to contact parents in a safe, 21st century way. I learned about Remind a little over a year ago, and I immediately knew that I wanted to implement it in to my classroom. I even introduced it to some of our teachers at our Warren ISD Tech Camp this summer. It was instantly a huge hit. Remind is the easiest way that I have seen to send out a message to multiple people. I mean let’s be honest, notes get lost between school and home, but with Remind the message goes straight to the parents’ cell phone. This weekend I had the honor to meet and hang-out with Brett Kopf. He is the co-founder and CEO of Remind. If I didn’t already love Remind enough, after sitting down with Brett and listening to his story on why the company was created made me love this company even more. I’m not going to tell that story here because it is not mine to tell….just know it’s amazing, and it will pull at the heart-strings of any educator. Here are a few ways that my school utilizes Remind:

• Principal and assistant principal have a Remind account set-up to send our faculty reminders and any important updates
• Instructional Technologist has a Remind for entire district to send reminders of tech workshops and free apps
• Classroom teachers have Remind accounts for their homeroom classes
• PE teacher has a Remind account to send notifications for her after school Family Fitness Nights
• Club sponsors have Remind accounts to notify parents
• Coaches send out motivational quotes as well as practice times
• Superintendent has a Remind for his administrative team

A few weeks ago, my students and I were deep into subject and predicates.  In the past I have always written sentences on the board and diagrammed them there.  We would then do worksheets.  Sometimes we would make up our own sentences and diagram them, too.  This year I wanted to change things up.  Make it a little more exciting.  This is what I did.  I had already printed the Planet AR Flashcards and was just waiting for a way to tie them into a lesson.  This was my perfect chance.  I had my students log on to Educreations on their iPads, and we took it from there.  With my iPad, the Apple TV, my SMART board, and the Planet AR FLashcards, we were on our way to a lesson that was sure to engage all my students.  I hovered my iPad over different planets.  When I did, the use of Augmented Reality made the objects 3D.  Simultaneously, the Apple TV was projecting these images on the SMART board for all my students to see.  The students then made up a sentence about the images that they saw. For example, the moon is made of cheese or Saturn has ginormous rings around it.  After they had a sentence written down, they then diagrammed the sentence into subject and predicate.  Essentially, I taught subjects and predicates the same way I had in years past; however, implementing technology made a huge difference.  The difference, every student was engaged and genuinely excited about what we were doing.  They wanted to make an “awesome” sentence so that I would airplay their iPad onto the SMART board for all the class to see.  I will definitely tweak this lesson in the future and use it again.  Give Educreations a try.  You can do so many things with it!