Monday, December 29, 2014

Thing 12

Wow! I loved this assignment. In fact this might be a two part post for me as well because there are some things that I have explored, but want to be able to use with a class and won't have the opportunity until after break. I spent several hours and days looking go through Karen Bosch's Slidshare. If you have not looked this over and you are using IPADs in your classroom, this is a must view Slideshare. I have more ideas and apps that I know what to do with.

While watching Karen's Slideshare, I previewed all the free apps that I thought would be a good fit with some of the lessons that I do with classes grades K-6. I  first started with the paint and draw apps. Kindergarten is my only scheduled class and I work with them a lot. Since most of them can't write or even recognize their letters at the beginning of the kindergarten year it is hard to get them to do much more technology wise than KidPix on the computers. When I started the year, I was trying to get them on the IPADS more than the computers since they didn't need to login and it was more intuitive. However, the app that I was relying on most was DoodleBuddy and I found that it was not very reliable. I can't always get the entire page to clear fully and lots of time it completely freezes on the students. So, I was very excited to explore some new drawing apps. The two apps that I explored were "Wow Paint" and "Hello Crayons". Both of these were simple and straight forward, but did not include a text option. However, I did explore the "A+ Signature" App that I can use to have them write their name on their work, which I think is pretty basic as far as app smashing goes. Once the students get a little more skilled I could also have them create and draw in "Hello Crayons" or "Wow Paint" and then have them add their work to "PicCollage".  I loved the idea of having them draw a picture in the drawing apps then going to Pic Collage and creating a poem with their drawing or adding information about their field trip. I could see having my Kindergartners draw a picture of an animal they researched on PebbleGo with "Hello Crayons", then going to "PicCollage" and adding a fact that they researched. They could also add a fact using "A+ Signature".

After exploring the Paint and Draw apps, I moved onto the next section of the SlideShare, which was Photo Apps. Wow, there are a lot of cool photo apps! Many are a lot alike, but I tried out some new ones that I wasn't familiar with. Again, I only viewed the free ones. I started with "Orange Camera", which allows you to draw on your pictures. I thought this would be a nice feature if you were doing a science experiment and you wanted to label parts of your experiment (observations, parts of the image of study, steps. etc). Another option on the App is to change the appearance of the image. So it can be seen as black and white, vintage, etc. One of my favorite options is that you can view an image on ruled paper and the image is sketched on the paper in black and white. I thought this could be an excellent way to create story starters. Students could take images and then exchange with a partner and they could use that image to start a story. I also explored "Face Stamp", which I thought could be really fun to use with all of our geography projects that we do throughout the grades. We could create a higher level thinking project where students had to guess where they are sending a letter to, based on clues from that location. The students creating the clues would really need to do some research to prepare the clues and then the students trying to determine where their stamped letter was going to would need to do some research to determine the significance of the clues. The last photo app that I used was "Animoto". I use "Animoto" on the computer all the time and I was excited to know that there was a free app. It was super easy to use and I built a powerful and beautiful presentation of my students having fun at our "Holidays in the Library" after-school program. I was so excited to share it on the library website, the only problem is that it doesn't provide you with html embed code, just a link. That was a little disappointing because it isn't as appealing to have a link on your webpage that takes them off your site. I was able to share it on Twitter though, which is more conducive to having a link. In case anyone is interested in my Animoto, here it is: https://animoto.com/play/eRncllLIrDrrY30dl1LWvQ. One more final note on the sharing options, you are able to download the video if you purchase a monthly or annual membership.

Finally, when it came to the recording Apps, I explored many of the Apps. I was very intrigued by the 30hands app. I could see this app as a multipurpose app. I think it would be very useful for me or any teacher to create  something almost like a screencast to explain how to use different apps on the IPAD. I could also see it as a great tool for students to create short and meaningful presentations on topics within the curriculum. I am definitely, going to challenge myself to use this app with at least one class this year. I also explored ScreenChomp which seems like a great tool for math, but I was struggling with how I might find a use for it in the library. Then I thought, since I am able to add pictures from the photo library I could take a screenshot of the Overdrive website and give troubleshooting tips when students gets stuck on certain steps. Here is my example: http://www.screenchomp.com/t/boIcRPeQy. I have also added it to my website: http://lakegeorgelmc.weebly.com/resources.html.

The last recording App that I played around with was "AudioBoo" and I already have a project lined up with the 6th grade classes using it. The sixth graders are working on literary essays. Once they write their essays they are going to record themselves reading the essay with Audioboo and then they are going to create QR codes that link to their recording. We are then going to post their QR codes in the library so that when students are considering books to read they can listen to the literary essays on specific titles that the students in the 6th grade read and wrote about.

Overall, this was my favorite "thing" that I have completed so far and I will be continually revisiting Karen's slideshare for ideas. I look forward to reading others ideas and being inspired by all of you as well.


Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Thing 11 continued

Last night we hosted our parent "Hour of Code" night. As mentioned in a previous post our enrichment teacher has been teaching code with each of the grade levels in our elementary school. We wanted the parents to experience what their children were doing at school and share with them the exciting opportunity that coding could provide for their children.

In deciding how this was going to be set up, our enrichment and technology coordinator, along with our principal decided that it would be best to do it on a night that there was a PTSO meeting going on so that we would already have an audience. The parents from the PTSO meeting then attended the "Hour of Code" afterwards. Everyone came to the library after the meeting (students included) and we used the site that we use at school with the children called code.org. There are some wonderful videos on the site and we shared one of those videos in the beginning. Parents learned about the current and future job market that is available for people that can code. Several parents commented on how valuable they saw this being and wanted to know how this was being carried out once the students went to high school. It was really nice that they were able to see the benefits and showed interest in it.

Once they were finished watching the video the parents began one of the courses that the students take at school and they were able to receive a certificate at the end of the hour. I walked around and helped parents and teachers, along with members of the technology department and the enrichment teacher. It was really fun, challenging and rewarding for both parents, and students that attended. I think it was worthwhile and I hope that we are able to offer it again in the Spring when it isn't so close to the holidays and more families can attend.

If anyone wants to learn more about how we hosted our parent night or code.org, I would be happy to share more information with you. It is really exciting and I feel lucky that we are able to provide coding at our school.

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Thing 11: Coding

Coding

This was a very scary "thing" for me. I remember taking web design classes in college and I would be good up to a certain point and then "the wheels would fall off".  At our school the enrichment teacher does code with all the students in the elementary grades and I have to admit, I hadn't done much to learn it myself. So, this project although terrifying was good for me. 

I started out by doing something small. I went to "codecademy" and tried making my name different colors and bounce up and down. I was happy that I was able to do it and understood most of what I was doing while creating it. The part I struggled with was trying share it. Unfortunately, I learned that I couldn't "simply" share it, so I just have the html code (<!DOCTYPE html>

<html>  <head>    <script type="text/javascript" src="//code.jquery.com/jquery-1.10.2.min.js"></script>    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/codecademy-content/courses/hour-of-code/js/alphabet.js"></script>  </head>  <body>    <canvas id="myCanvas"></canvas>    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/codecademy-content/courses/hour-of-code/js/bubbles.js"></script>    <script type="text/javascript" src="main.js"></script>  </body></html>)

After feeling a little braver, but still fairly uncomfortable, I decided to email the enrichment teacher at our school and use the coding site that our students use, called Code.org. It is a one hour code program that uses blocks to code. You learn terms such as programming and looping. It was fairly easy to use and "Elsa and Ona" making snowflakes made it much easier to understand visually. However, the trouble that I had with it was that if you got stuck you weren't able to move on and there were not any suggestions or help buttons to give you hints or indicate where you had trouble. However, the kids at our school seem to love it and I tried it with my own kids and they loved it!

My challenge was where to go from there. I run on a flex schedule in my library and scheduling becomes an issue, so I was hesitant to ask teachers for additional time to push into their classrooms when they are already coding with our enrichment teacher. Then I had a bright idea! I had been toying with the idea of maker spaces and wondering what that might look like in our library. I truly feel that the library is an extension of the classroom and when I utilized maker spaces I wanted it to follow that philosophy of an extension of learning.  So I thought it would be great if I could have a maker space section of the library for coding. Students have already learned how to code and this would be a place where kids could tinker around with their new found skills through various coding sites and programs that were shared on the "Cool Tools" Wiki. However, when I pitched the idea to my principal there was some reservation, for valid reasons. My principal suggested having after-school, which I am going to make available at the start of the new year. I hope see a long trail of students coming into the library after-school. 

So, what's next? Next week my enrichment teacher and technology coordinator for our school are putting on a night of code at our school. I am going to attend and help in anyway that I can. I am very grateful for this opportunity and am excited to see what I learn from it and most importantly what the students are able to learn! Hopefully, this will give me ideas for coding after-school in the library.