Making a Memory Book for the Year

I created this Mixbook to record our classroom events for this school year. I plan to add to it throughout the year. This is what we accomplished during the first full week of school. I can't wait to see all of the great things that take place in our classroom during the rest of the year. If you would like a hard copy, you will be able to purchase one when it is finished. Keep checking it to see what we are up to.

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Bring on the Blogging

Finally I am able to have my students blog. This has been a goal of mine for the last two years, but I had trouble finding a platform I was comfortable with and that was appropriate for my fourth graders. Luckily I learned about kidblog.org from my PLN (personal learning network).

I set up my first class the other day, which is quick and easy to do and I introduced kidblog.org to my students today. We first reviewed the writing process and I explained that I would be moderating everything posted on their blogs including comments. We decided to write about yesterday since it was the first day of the new school year. I demonstrated how to login in and use the site on my interactive white board. They recorded their passwords in a safe place (I used the same password for every student when I set up their accounts.) and were anxious to get started.

I split the class into two groups. One group got out the netbooks and worked on their blog while the other group completed their social studies lesson. After 20 minutes the groups swapped up. It was 40 minutes of engaged learning. The students who were blogging helped each other with spelling and wording. It was a struggle to get them to log off so we could go to lunch. I love when that happens.

Since this is a new experience for all of the students in the class only two were able to plan, type, edit, and publish their posts. You can read their posts here and here. The rest of the students saved their draft to edit on Monday. When asked what they thought about blogging, every single one of them was enthusiastic about doing it. I told them we would be finding some blogging buddies so that we could give and receive comments with other students that are blogging. They are so excited to share their writing with others and to get comments.

Not bad for the second day of school.

First Day of 2010-2011

Today was the first day my new 4th grade students came to school for the 2010-2011 school year. I have 25 students in my homeroom as of today and they are all eager to do well this year. Having just 25 instead of 32 is great. I feel that I was able to connect with each one on some level today.

First days are so full of organizing, going over rules and procedures, collecting supplies, and passing out stuff, that it seems very little learning occurs. I was very happy to complete my first tech lesson (remember I teach math and social studies) of the year.

I did a lot of modeling on how to get the netbooks out of the cart, start them up, and access certain websites that I will be using often this year. Then I started my lesson on how to use Wordle to create an "About Me" word cloud. The students learned how to type text into a word processor (Open Office is installed on the netbooks) and then copy and paste the text into Wordle to create word clouds. They loved creating their clouds and were very excited when I told them we would be printing the Wordles from our new color laser printer. The bulletin board outside our classroom is now decorated with their "About Me" Wordles.

I was also able to administer a diagnostic math test and complete my first social studies lesson from the map unit. I feel we had a successful first day. Tomorrow I introduce them to blogging.

AnswerGarden - A Survey Tool

I just discovered Answer Garden. This site provides a simple and interesting way to get feedback. Creating a question is easy since no registration is required. Simply type in your question and click Create. Responses (which must be 20 characters or less) are added to a word cloud. The more a response is given the larger the word appears in the word cloud. You can share your question out to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. Answer Garden provides a URL or embed code so that you can put your question wherever you'd like online. How will you use this site?

Where did you last use math?... at AnswerGarden.ch.

End of the School Year

Well school is out for the summer. It is hard to believe this school year is over. As usual I ran out of time to accomplish all of the projects I wanted to do. But our last three weeks of school were so much fun as we finished our PowerPoint slideshows, Glogsters, and PhotoStory digital math videos. I loved how the students became experts on certain aspects of using the computer programs or Web 2.0 tools, and helped others as they ran into technical difficulties.

My principal enjoyed coming into my classroom and watching my students all working in pairs on their laptops creating their various projects. My student teacher for next fall was so excited when she came to observe and saw all that was happening with technology in my classroom. She said one of her classmates has been assigned to a teacher who only as an overhead projector (how sad).

Here are a few examples of their projects.

New Survey Creator

As I was going through my Diigo groups shared bookmarks I found Urtak, a free online survey maker. I took a survey about teachers' tech skills and then decided to register to use the site. After verifying my email, I quickly created a survey for my students about their technology usage. Even though I was given an embed code, I was not able to embed it into Edmodo or this blog. I am only able to furnish the link http://urtak.com/u/2387.

I think Urtak is a useful Web 2.0 tool. What do you think?

Ms. Naugle's Student Tech Survey

JPPSS Celebrates Local Authors

On Thursday, April 22^nd, our class participated in the project JPPSS Celebrates Local Authors. Grace King HS students from Mrs. A. Costanza's STAR Teaching Academy chose four books written by Louisiana authors to read to elementary students using Skype. My class listened to P is for Pelican by Anita Prieto. Thanks to Heidi Alexander, a JPPSS technology integration specialist, for setting up this project.

Since my fourth graders have had a lot of experience with Skpe, we invited a first grade class from our school to come join us for the event. Mrs. Bonanno and her students arrived shortly before the Skype call and I explained to them what a Skype call was. When the call came in their eyes really lit up. I had one of my fourth graders handle our web cam. The first graders loved seeing themselves on the video screen.

We had a great time and enjoyed the experience. The first graders want to participate with my class using Skype, so Mrs. Bonanno and I are going to work on this.