Springville Elementary Computer Lab

Wow! I can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve written. In February we created Valentine messages to parents using my new Flip Ultra video camera and Hallmark’s Smilebox. They were really sweet messages. (You can find them on my wiki.) In March we participated in another global project in honor of Dr. Seuss’ birthday. (http://andtothink.wikispaces.com/AL_2-4_BSmith)  

Now, we are hard at work in all three grades getting ready to do final projects.

Second and third graders are practice formatting skills to create some poetry we’ll be posting. They will microphones to record themselves reading their poetry. If we get time, we will also be creating pictures to illustrate the poems.

Fourth graders are working on an autobiographical PowerPoint presentation. I have scanned a baby picture they brought in, and they will be inserting it into their slideshow. I also found a really neat site to create a fake newspaper clipping that we used to make a birth announcement to insert also. (http://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp)

Between testing and field trips and general end of the year activities, the final 9 weeks should prove to be hectic. Keep checking the http://bsmithses.wikispaces.com page for updated activities.

My students have had the best time with TuxPaint this December. TuxPaint is a free download from www.tuxpaint.org. It is similar to Microsoft Paintbrush, but has way more options! They especially like the stamps, which allows them to fill a picture with stamped images. You must also download the stamps file when you download the program to access them. I added some pictures to the file so they would have a lot of holiday stamps from which to choose.

Second and third graders created a picture that was posted to www.winterwonderland.wikispaces.com. This is not MY wiki, but one started by 3 teachers who live in AL, CA and NY. There are participants from all over the world. We will have a project posted in January and another in February.

Fourth graders weren’t a part of this project, but I let them create a picture that we turned into a slide show posted to MY wiki – www.bsmithses.wikispaces.com. They did a fantastic job!

Third graders also helped in creating a gift for the kindergarten classes. Each student was responsible for creating a page in a Christmas Counting Book (Numbers 1 – 20) that was laminated and assembled to create a book for each of the 10 kindergarten classes.

I gave each of my students a card with some websites for the holidays. You can check them out too:

www.northpole.com, www.northpole.net, www.noradsanta.org

Have a wonderful Christmas break. Check back in January to see what we’re doing next!!!

I’m excited about a new project we’re going to do in the lab. For grades 2 & 3, we’re participating in a global project called WinterWonderland. Each month, December – February, we will complete an activity and post it on the Winter Wonderland wiki. In December, we’re going to draw a picture and sing a winter song. We will put it on our page in the wiki. Please check in and see it around the middle of December.

My 3rd graders are going to create a book to give to the Kindergartens. We will be using TuxPaint to make it. TuxPaint is an awesome FREE paint program. You can get it at www.tuxpaint.org. The students LOVE it!!

I am constantly amazed by the amount of new information to be learned. I joined a Ning this year. What is a Ning? It’s a social network online. People join myspace, facebook, etc., but this Ning is for elementary tech teachers. Within it are links to other tech teachers’ websites, blogs, wikis and ideas. I thought I had a great wikispace page until I looked at what some of the others have done. OMG! The ideas are endless! Some of the great ideas I had for teaching this year have already been done and enhanced beyond what I knew existed!!!

Needless to say, I’m humbled, impressed and anxious to redo my plans! A simple poem we have been writing in third grade to publish as an mp3 will now be a slideshow presentation with narration. A drawing activity will now become a writing challenge between classes.

One of the tech teachers has created a wikispace just for links and lesson plans and others’ ideas so that we can all benefit! I love the sharing that’s going on. It can only make for better lessons for the students. Someone else can take an idea, enhance it, share it, and I can read it and use it without having met the person.

I absolutely LOVE doing this with the 4th graders! They seem to be having a good time, and I know I am. Because we are so pressed for time, I am having to write the scripts so far, but I’m hoping to eventually get them to do the writing. I’m using a different team each week, so it doesn’t allow for much collaboration between them and me. At any rate, it’s a fun, learning experience for us all!

I made it to iTunes (twice ), but now I can subscribe to our SES Tiger Bytes podcast. So far, I am the only voice heard–and it’s not too good–but in the next few weeks, we’ll start hearing from the students at SES. I am SO excited about this. I am sending home media releases this week, so I’m hoping to start using students as reporters and broadcasters in two weeks!!!

Podomatic was SO easy to use. Thank you!!!! Look for the sestigerbytes’s podcast on iTunes. This week I only have the menu, but soon we’ll have other things too.

Sometimes it seems I go all around the world to do something instead of doing it right the first time. I am trying to create a podcast that I can submit to iTunes. I finally got the file off my iPod into a file on my desktop, which I had to import into Audacity to change to a mp3. Now, I know everyone doesn’t have to go through this just to create a daily or weekly podcast. So I will keep trying.

I have finally been able to submit to iTunes. I did it twice since I didn’t name the podcast correctly the first time. I ended up using podomatic instead of feedburner to submit. I have accounts in several places now, but I think I’ll delete feedburner and archive.org. It was much easier to use podomatic. The podcast is listed on the right side of this screen in two different formats. I’ll eventually eliminate one. I’m excited that I finally got this far! I’m looking forward to creating more. Once one has been accepted, I think it’ll be easier to do the next ones. Itunes hasn’t reviewed it yet, but I’m hoping it’ll be published there soon so parents can subscribe.

I think both blogs and wikis can play a part in the connected classroom. Blogs can be used as journal activities whereby I could ask a question and have students respond. Each student would have his or her own comment posted as a response.

A wiki, on the other hand, will be useful for collaboration. Students can add to or change things written by each other. In one sense, I don’t like that, because I can see where some students might “take over” and delete writings by another, but I can always go to the history to see the changes. Some ground rules would have to be established first, I’m sure. But I like the idea of using it as a continuing story. I had thought about doing this in my classroom with a Word document saved on the server so each child would have access to it, but this would be much simpler. If the students just add on to a sentence or paragraph, they will not be taking away from anyone else. I think as they start using a wiki, they need to allow others to put down their thoughts, no matter what. I will be using this with 2nd thru 4th grade, and I know how some of them have little or no tolerance for some of their classmates. Again, ground rules. I’ll have to work on that!

One note: in a class on wikis at the AETC this summer, the instructor told us that when we embed files in our pages, if we have a lot to put on there (as I did), link to the file instead of embedding it. It will make the page easier to upload, especially if your reader has dial-up. I spent a couple days this summer redoing my pages for that. Lesson learned. It does go much faster now.

Also, another beauty of the wiki, is that you can have multiple pages for collaboration. I will create one for each class. And each of them can be added to. It seems that on the blogs, only the home page is for commenting and the other pages are static. You can create static pages on a wiki just by locking it, but you don’t have to.

Wikispaces has a free wiki without ads for teachers. http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers You can actually create as many wikis as you need. On the advice of my instructor this summer, I created one for each grade I’ll be working with (because of the number of files I’ll be uploading to it), and each one is free. I will eventually link to all of them from my main wiki. I believe I’ve seen other teachers using their wikis the same way. In fact, I’ve seen blogs from other teachers who have a personal blog and a professional blog. I’ve seen some things on the personal blogs that I wouldn’t want my parents reading, so I sort of question that. I’m always afraid something will come back to bite me in the rear!

Finally!!! After much trial & error, I finally have some of the Google Reader feeds in my sidebar. I am using Google Reader because I can access Google at my school (except for gmail). I am not sure what other things are blocked. I may not be able to read all my feeds while at school because some of the blogging sites are blocked.

I have enjoyed looking through a lot of blogs, but I subscribed mainly to some tried and true ones I already knew about. I like Kathy Schrock’s things on Discovery. I’ve enjoyed watching her tweets (and Leslie Fisher’s) about their new iPhones. They keep me in stitches–talk about kids in a candy store!

There was one for 1st & 2nd Grade that I’m going to watch carefully in the upcoming year. I didn’t find too many elementary blogs, but this one looked like it would have some info I could use.

Cool Cat Teacher’s site has piqued my interest since joining wikispaces. She does a Flat Classroom Project that was highlighted. Well, many years ago, when I first graduated college, I was a kindergarten aide in Westwood Schools, Camilla, GA. I was only there a year before I joined the faculty at the public school there. So I’ve been interested in following things at that school.

Due to AETC, NECC and this online class, I have subscribed to so much lately, I am not sure what is what. I will say that del.icio.us is probably my very favorite thing. I had Ikeepbookmarks.com, and have just added it to delicous. Del.icio.us is SO much easier. I love the tagging. Then, I read about diigo, and wonder if I should try it. I’ve decided to let it go for a while. It’s kind of like buying a computer…the minute you do, there’s something better out there. Oh well!

The beauty to me of all this, is the fact that after our class is over, we will be able to go back and tweak all that we’ve gleaned to suit our needs. Yes, it’s overwhelming at the moment, but as we settle into the school year and working with the kids once again, we will find which things work best for us. Thank goodness we don’t have to be proficient in 6 weeks!!! I’ve always thought I was pretty tech savvy, but mastering edublogs & rss, etc. has shown me that I don’t need to be too smug! (I am still one of the tech queens at my school, but that could change any day too!) We will always have learning opportunities. I try to tell that to my students–that we never stop learning just because we graduate!

That’s it from the lab for now!