Identity Day - Let Your Passion Shine

I am excited to announce that we will be holding an Identity Day on Tuesday, May 17 in Classroom 222. This will be our last big project of the school year. Think about these questions: Who are you? What matters to you? What interests you the most? What are you passionate about? Watch the video below to get some more ideas.


(video from Moorseville, North Carolina)

Also I have included a couple of links to give you more information. Click here, here, and here to read more.

Now go gather your things for your display. It can be a physical display or a digital display like a PowerPoint, a video, or Glogster. Remember to let your passion shine. Please feel free to get help from your parents. You will also write a post for your blog explaining what you are sharing and why you are sharing it. Let's find the passion in each one of us.

I'd like to thank my friend, Principal George Couros, for inspiring me to try this project.

Famous Inventors Glogster

Here is the Glogster I made for my 4th graders to use to learn about famous inventors we are studying in social studies. I love that I can embed Discovery streaming clips into the glog for my students to view on their own.

Congratulations to Helen

In December one of our blogging buddies, Connor, put forth a Glogster challenge. Nine students in our class were able to complete their glogs in time to enter the contest. Today when I fired up TweetDeck this tweet greeted me.

The link in the tweet took me to this post by Mrs. Ripp, Connor's teacher. Thanks to Twitter and Comments4Kids our two classes have connected this year. It is great to see how these connections can help our students' work be seen beyond our classroom walls.

Congratulations, Helen. Your great work has been recognized by others too.

Glogster

I introduced Glogster to my students two days before the Christmas holidays. I did a very short demonstration on some aspects of how to build an online poster using Glogster and then turned them lose to explore and create. I didn't not set up an expected outcome for this exploration time. I just told them to create a glog about Christmas. I put together a Glogster to showcase some of their work and also added it to the award winning Greetings from the World wiki so that they could be viewed by a wider audience. We also entered a Glogster challenge put together by a student in Mrs. Ripp's class. Thanks, Connor for putting forward this challenge.

When we return from the winter break, they will be making Glogsters about what they are learning in our geometry unit in math.

Animating Online

I attended the "Working on the Work Web 2.0 21st Century Skills" inservice sponsored by the Jefferson Parish Public School System on June 10 and 11. I learned about animating online in one of the sessions. I learned about Blabberize, Glogster, and Voki. My students and I made several vokis last year.

Next year I will demonstrate Blabberize so that my students can choose which tool they would rather use to create an avatar. Their avatar can be used to explain how they solve a math problem, to recite a poem, or to highlight the events of the week as a very 21st century learning log.

Below are some examples of the Vokis we made this year.