Aoi’s Bookroom

Last year I had some students resetting the desktop wallpaper on some of the library computers. I don’t really mind that, as long as they are getting their work done before they start messing around with the wallpaper. However, there are a couple issues here. The first is copyright. Did they get permission from the artist or photographer? Of course not! The second issue is a little different. They had taken a picture of a student from our own school website and turned it into a desktop wallpaper. To be honest, it was a little creepy. We discussed that in class but that was last year and this year I decided to tackle the issue in a different way.

Our tech support often sends out links to things she thinks we can use in the classroom and one day she sent out a link to a blog post with the perfect solution. iLearn Technology is a fantastic blog. In it Kelly Tenkely provides information about ways to integrate various web 2.0 tools into the classroom. The post that caught my eye was the one about Bomomo. In this post she specifically mentions that here we can “allow students to create their own desktop images for classroom computers.” I didn’t read any further and went right to the site.

My modern art

I am one of the least artistic people in the world. However, even I can make a cool looking picture on Bomomo. I was instantly hooked and knew my students, whether they were accomplished artists or not, would enjoy this site. I showed them how to make their artwork the desktop image and many asked if they could do this at home. You can see their work in the art gallery on the Harambee Library Wiki.

Now I need to address the issue of copyright. We’ll work on that next quarter.

My first grade students spent a significant amount of time studying genres. They enjoyed making their own Gruffalo, reading Garfield mysteries, and trying to understand the difference between realistic fiction and nonfiction. Now it’s the end of the year and I wondered how to pull this unit together. I was very excited when I found that ABCya.com had a word cloud site for elementary students. I’ve looked at Wordle but I was nervous about using it for elementary students because sometimes older students submit wordles with inappropriate words. WordClouds for Kids doesn’t give students the opportunity to see the works of other and sometimes, that’s a good thing.

I gave my first grade students a list of the genres we had looked at and sent them to the computers. They didn’t have to type all the genres if they didn’t want to and each student typed their first name in the cloud. I have a student teacher who helped by saving the word clouds to a flash drive while I helped students check out. This activity would have been difficult without the help of another adult. I just posted the results on the Harambee Library Wiki. Look for them at the top of the navigation bar on the left.

We made a few mistakes because initially we thought that we needed a hyphen between words that should be together. The instructions did not say that typing the same word more than once would make it bigger but they learned right along with me. It was a good way to end the unit and they did a wonderful job!

Welcome to any and all visitors from the 2011 Teaching and Technology Institute. I am glad to see that so many are taking advantage of this opportunity to learn more about technology integration into the classroom and hope you come away from today’s seminars with a host of new ideas floating around in your minds. Even if you take only one of those ideas back into your classroom, the time spent here will be well worth it.

I started this blog several years ago as the result of an assignment in the E2T2 class I was taking. If you go back and look at some of the earlier posts you’ll see that while I used technology myself, I didn’t use it so much in my instruction, and there was so much I didn’t know how to do. I fumbled through figuring out how to put a picture on my blog and how to size them or arrange them in the post. You can see how I tried things with my classes that were sometimes wonderful successes, other times failures, and more often than not, a mix of the two. However, no matter what I’ve done to integrate technology both into the classroom and into my own teacher prep toolbox, it has all been a success for my students.

The E2T2 classes I took changed not only the way I taught but even my view on what I should actually be teaching. I feel very strongly that my students are leaving elementary school better prepared to face middle school and life beyond because I was willing to take advantage of an opportunity to stretch beyond my own technology fears. Don’t pass up any opportunity to do some of this scary stuff. You will not regret it.

Behold the computer lab I have in my library. There are 25 computers. The screens can be easily seen by standing back and looking around the room. It is a very inviting, friendly space to work.

Other teachers have started signing up for the lab. On the one hand I’m delighted because this is what I was hoping would happen. On the other hand, I now have to negotiate for time and space.

I was making plans for next week when I found that the lab had been signed out for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings for the rest of the school year. I freaked out because that’s when I have 4th graders. I checked the schedule again and found that the same thing happened on Fridays with a different teacher. So now my fourth grade students are left with one day a month per class of computer time during library classes. Fortunately some arrangements have been made, at least for next week. Who knows what the rest of the year will be like?

When I tested students at the end of the first quarter, I was less than satisfied with the results. For some students it was a fun and easy way to learn about genres. These were the students who probably would have learned it anyway because they generally pay attention in class. For the others it was too much play and not enough learning. I wouldn’t abandon the games. They’re a great way to reinforce what is being taught. In the future I might make the test “open book” by making a scavenger hunt that would use the games to find the answers. I think it would direct the learning better than the way I did it this time.

The 4th and 5th graders have been studying genres. I’ve noticed that no matter how much time I spend on this subject they don’t seem to be able to apply what they learn. Often they can give me a list of genres or define them, but if you ask what genre they are currently reading right now they don’t have a clue.

I started this unit with a power point presentation that I modified for my classes. I found it on this wonderful site called Pete’s Power Point Station. Be prepared to spend some time in this vast array of links to a huge variety of power points. It was easy to import the ones I liked into my Promethean IWB. Some of my students actually gasped when they saw the first page. There was so much on the one that I used that we didn’t even get through everything and will probably come back to it again from time to time.

Next I put students on computers to play games. My objectives were two-fold; they need practice logging into the system and they need to learn more about genres. There are some wonderful genre games that I linked on the 4/5 Links page of my website. I let them choose which ones they want to play, making sure they understood that the objective was to learn more about literary genres and if that objective was not met there was no point in using the computers. According to my observations, the top 3 games were Genre Battleship, Genre Hangman, and Genre Word Search (which unfortunately does not always load correctly).

At the end of the quarter they will take a pencil and paper test. Why pencil and paper? Because sadly, I still have students who are having trouble logging in. This happens for various reasons: they haven’t turned in a signed AUP, they’re relatively new to the school and haven’t been on the computers much yet, they are ESL or SPED students who have other issues. I don’t think it’s fair to give these students less time to take the test because they have trouble accessing it.

However, that doesn’t mean I can’t use the computer to make the test. I think there are a number of sites to help with this but I only looked at a couple. Quizstar is one I think I’ve used before but since I couldn’t remember the account information I started another one. Unfortunately I’ve only seen “Your mailbox is over its size limit” messages in my inbox and no message with the activation link for this new account. Next I tried EasyTestMaker. They didn’t send an activation email so I was able to get started right away and it was kind of fun. I’m not done yet but I won’t mind going back to it. Who knew MAKING a test could be fun?

Having access to the work others have done is an incalculable advantage. As so many others have said, why reinvent the wheel? Making learning fun is something many of us strive for on a daily basis and we have a ready-made fun source right here. If games are going to help students learn, then I’m all for them. Online tools make our jobs much easier and take the drudgery out of some things. Who knew GIVING a test could be so much fun? [Insert evil grin and wicked Halloween laugh here!!]

As the result of a grant, East Metro Integration District now has someone to help integrate technology into the classroom. We are fortunate to have Carl Anderson join the team. Some of you may know him by his blog, Techno Constuctivist. Carl is interested in pushing the boundaries so his posts are interesting but his blog is also a great resource for sites that can be used by teachers and students alike.

In addition, the district is stepping out into the online world. You can now follow us on twitter or join us on facebook. Our superintendent, Brenda Cassellius has a blog as does Kristine Black, the principal of my school, Harambee Elementary. Officially my district is beginning to realize the importance of the online picture the world sees.

Personally I’m delighted to see that my district and my school are trying new things. Our students need to see us taking these risks.

For the record, the contents of this blog are mine alone and are not meant to represent school or district policies.

I’ve probably ranted about this before. We test every single quarter. Last quarter students were taking the MCA high stakes tests. They were mostly done on paper but next year they’ll be on computers. The other 3 quarters students take MAP tests. Unlike the MCAs, which are summative, the MAP tests are formative and provide good, quick feedback so teachers can see when a student is having trouble before it gets to be a crisis.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying there shouldn’t be any tests. In fact, I use the MAP scores as one way of determining seating arrangements. But do we really have to have a test every single quarter? Since the tests are administered in the library computer lab, I lose almost an entire quarter of instructional time each year. My colleague and close friend schedules the tests but usually I don’t know early enough to plan my way around it. I make do the best I can. I go to the classrooms with a cart of books. I try to deliver a lesson in the classroom and then check out books from the cart. It’s a tiring hauling everything around and I’m not able to teach all the things I need to teach, especially when I don’t have access to computers.

I really want 4th and 5th grade students to evaluate websites. The 3rd graders were having such a hard time logging in that I developed a lesson plan so they can practice that and get some practice on Word in the process. The kindergartners need to learn how to log in and be able to do a simple catalog search by the end of the quarter. I don’t remember now what the 1st and 2nd graders were going to do but it was going to be on computer. I feel like I have to cram all my teaching this quarter into the month of July

Certainly I’ve had students on the computers during the other 3 quarters but I haven’t had an entire quarter to concentrate on it because at some point my classes lose that computer access to testing. What would a classroom teacher do if they were told that they could not teach in their classroom or use the resources there for 2 or 3 weeks every quarter?

Now that I’m connected through a blog, twitter, delicious, RSS feed, etc. I find that my life is digitally messy. I have 485 blog posts to read. Some of the blogs listed on the right are no longer active and I should take them out of my list. There are new ones that I follow that are fantastic that I should add. How do I have time to even look at all the fantastic sites mentioned by my twitter colleagues? I haven’t really even explored the social networking possible in delicious and I still need to go through the links I’ve saved. My own website really needs some quality updating.

Don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t give up any of these tools, not for a minute. But I’m not sure how to organize all this information. Remember that I’m a librarian at heart and that’s what we do. We organize information and figure out how to access it. I now have a flood of information that is basically organized but I don’t know how to keep up with it. I suppose it means I need to figure out what’s really important to me. Maybe I need to set aside a certain time each day. Like anything, if it really matters to me I’ll find time for it. How do others keep up? Sounds like a tweet to me!

A couple posts ago I was listing some of the technology I use for personal uses and I left Evernote off the list. I actually used it when making the post but still forgot to list it. That just shows how much I take it for granted.

I have a class that loves to talk. It’s frustrating teaching this group and students who are trying to learn are annoyed. I rearranged the seating chart according to student MAP reading scores so that students in similar reading levels are in the same row. Now I can send one row with written instructions off to work on an assignment while I give instructions to the other two rows.

I used Evernote to print just the part of the screen I needed to make step by step instructions. I love this feature. I seldom need to print an entire screen but often need a portion of the screen. Since I can sync Evernote online, the pictures are also available to me on another computer. I’m still using the instructions I made and will surely make some more.

Now I’m sure that Evernote has many other uses. I sometimes use it to save tweets from Twitter. You could jot down notes or a to-do list. You could do some serious online shopping comparisons because Evernote provides the URL for the sites you note. I’m sure I’m forgetting something. Evernote is one of those very useful little tools now available free online.