Tech Week & Leaves!

This week I introduced a few cool tech learning tools to my students. Third, fourth, and fifth graders worked on Pirate Pad. If you have ever used EtherPad or Titan Pad, Pirate Pad is pretty much the same. Here is the link to one of the 4th grade pads. It is an online collaborative writing platform. We were fortunate enough to have 3 laptops available for student use this week. The students thought it was so cool that we could write to each other and see what others were writing instantly. They thought we were "chatting" which made it even more fun. I am not sure how reliable Pirate Pad will be. We did have a few connection issues. I know Google Docs has a collaborative element, so I may try using that next time. With this one tech tool students were spelling, forming sentences, asking questions, rereading their own writing, reading others' writing, using capitalization/punctuation, practicing their typing skills, AND working together as a group. All that in one thirty minute session! That makes this teacher happy! :D

First and second graders experienced Sound Cloud this week. On this site, you can record any sound and have it available immediately for playback. The possibilities are endless with this kind of application. Since it was their first time using this program, students simply introduced themselves. They got such a kick out of hearing their own voices! There was a lot of  giggling! I will be using this tool to record student oral reading, discussions, even sound effects for books and stories. 

My intensive groups that I meet with several times a week created books this week. Each group had a different poem about Autumn. We worked on visualizing the words in the poem, and then illustrated the different lines of the poem. We will turn these into our first homemade books of the year! I love making books with my students! It is so personal and meaningful to them AND it gives me an opportunity to use my creative juices! We then used Sound Cloud to record our voices saying each line from the poem. I put their pictures together with their narration to make a movie. I have the Kindergarten movie done and am still working on First and Third Grades. I am so happy with how it turned out! I can't wait to show the kids on Monday! :D  ( YouTube link: Leaves by Kindergarten )

Note: I used iMovie to create the videos. Apparently when putting a title slide at the end or beginning of a movie, you cannot change the background color. I wanted a white title slide at the beginning of the movie, but it would not let me change it from black. Hmmm....I like my customization iMovie! I could also create slideshows with SlideRocket or find another program that lets me do what I want! Anyway, it is all good! :D