Mission US and Think Fast App

First of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR! If you check in to my blog often, thank you for following my posts this year. I hope they have helped you add technology to your classroom in a meaningful way. I have several new projects in the pipeline for the upcoming year, but I will continue to share my techKNOW with you as much as possible. Each time I take on something new, I just consider my classroom getting bigger. As I begin facilitating online courses through WVLearns, I hope to continue to share my love for connecting teachers with technology and opportunities with even more educators!

That being said...here's a great interactive website for social studies that you can use to engage your students when you come back from your winter break! Mission US has a video game vibe that sends you on a journey through history. Students get to "choose their own adventure" as they play one of two quests. "Crown or Colony" follows the trials of an apprentice in Boston around the time of the Revolutionary War. Students will learn about American Revolution events and landmarks as they help Nate make decisions about which side to join in the war. If you teach the American Revolution, introducing this to your students is a must!

"For Crown or Colony" is the original interactive created by Mission US. More recently they have added the second one, "Flight to Freedom!" This one centers around slave Lucy King and her path to freedom. It has the same choose your own adventure aspect as "For Crown or Colony," only students learn about life on a plantation and escape on the Underground Railroad.

In both games, students earn badges as an incentive for completing tasks and collect "smartwords" (vocabulary highlighted in each mission). To keep a log of your progress and to continue your games at another time, you and your students can create accounts (neither of which require you to submit an e-mail account). There are also educator guides for each mission as well.

Mission US also has a free app (both for iPad and Android) called Think Fast. It is basically two separate true and false quizzes that test you on the historical facts from "For Crown or Colony" and "Flight to Freedom." Since it's free, you have nothing to loose, and your students may enjoy racing against the clock to test their knowledge. Other that that...EH, there's not much to it! The Mission US website, however, it a fantastic way to put your students in the role of a historical figure!

http://www.mission-us.org/
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mission-us-think-fast!-about/id566607316?mt=8

APP Time: Haiku Deck

Move over, PowerPoint! You, too, Keynote!

And Prezi...I never liked you anyway, so peace out.

This has to be the easiest way ever to make a slideshow presentation, hands down. I love it, I love it, I love it. Haiku Deck, a FREE app, lets you make simple presentations in record time. Now...can you add bullets and transitions and all that other presentation mumbo jumbo that you think you need to display information? Nope...but you know what? After you use Haiku Deck to share information with your students or have them use it to display what they have learned, you'll realize how much more you can do with less.

The concept behind Haiku Deck is that you use fewer images (one picture per slide, actually) and short phrases and sentences to tell your story. You tap on the slide to start typing your text. Then, to add a background picture...well, you have your pick of images to choose from. Haiku Deck will use the text you have entered to suggest images, or you can search for them by keyword. There are oodles of pictures, beautiful pictures, licenced by Creative Commons, to choose from. In addition to using the pictures on Haiku Deck, you can use ones you already have on your iPad camera roll to make your presentation more personal.

You can showcase your presentations with an Apple TV or VGA cable directly from your iPad, just as you would Keynote. Just swipe your finger across the screen to move on to the next slide! To share your Haiku Deck creations online, just create an account with your e-mail. By doing so, you can access your presentations online via the Haiku Deck website. Once your creations are available in your gallery, you can set the privacy level to your presentations (that way if you have students who create work you would rather not share publicly, you can set it to private).You can e-mail your presentations to yourself - and they will automatically convert to a PowerPoint presentation or Keynote. You can also embed them into a blog or share on Edmodo, although it's a little tricky to get it to show up just right. I've created a Haiku Deck on my grant writing tips, which you can view on the right side of this blog. However, that's been the only place (and size) I've been able to stick it.

Download Haiku Deck (you have nothing to loose, or pay) and play around with it. The simplicity of it will engage your students. They could easily use this app to share anything from poetry to a short report about a region of the United States. The next few weeks until Winter Break are as good a time as ever to try something new!

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/haiku-deck/id536328724?mt=8
http://www.haikudeck.com/
http://www.haikudeck.com/p/y4fJV0Zvf2/grant-writing-tips

APP Time: GarageBand

It's been a while since I have reviewed an app. With all the websites and blogs already devoted to listing education and/or free apps, I almost feel like it's irrelevant. However...this is one app, one function that you may not realize has the potential to allow your students and yourself to share what they know. It's not free, but the possibilities that your students will have to create and record their own shows, podcasts, and reports are priceless.

GarageBand ($4.99) is an audio and music recording app for your iPad. It simplifies the entire podcasting process to the point where anyone, teacher or student, can record themselves speaking, create and add background music, and publish to iTunes. There are features about GarageBand - such as automatically saving your work and nice, big buttons and graphics to guide you along - that making creating a recorded show nearly fail safe (I will mention a few things to keep in mind at the end of this post). Once you and your students have had some practice, it takes very little time to create a fantastic sounding podcast.

Let me back up a minute - podcasting, simply put, is creating a recorded show and then publishing it through an RSS feed (a site with hosting capabilities). The platform I use to host my podcasts in my classroom is Podbean (setting up an account is free, and for the volume that classroom podcasting takes up, you shouldn't need to upgrade to anything more). Prior to GarageBand, making podcasts was a pain - make sure they are speaking directly into the voice recorder, not deleting or recording over their work, uploading it onto the computer, configuring...I'll stop there. With the built-in microphone in the iPad, you don't even need an external mic to amplify your voice. Students can create music using virtual drums, keyboards, guitars, and "Smart Instruments" that have basic beats already programmed (I like to direct my students to these for time's sake). It's fairly easy to delete, add, and adjust the volume throughout your project - in fact, your students will probably be teaching you a few things about how to use it once you get started. This article on Appstorm helped me tremendously on how to create a podcast set-by-step using this app.

Why do you need this, when there are already so many other things that take presedence over having your students record themselves speaking? Podcasting has many functions and appeals in education. As the teacher, you can record yourself speaking about a concept you are learning in class, then publish it so students can access it though the site hosting your podcasts, or they can subscribe to them through iTunes so they receive them on a personal mobile device. I have the RSS feed for our classroom podcasts set to automatically appear on our class Edmodo group, so they can access the links directly through there instead of typing in the web address. Unlike video recording, students can have a script (that they have written), so the focus is on speaking and fluency. Anything can become a podcast - a classroom newscast, book reviews, a how-to for math problems...the list goes on and on. Podcasting is a great "carrot" to get your students writing, speaking, and being creative.

A few things to keep in mind with GarageBand - from personal trial and error:
1. TURN OFF the metronome FIRST THING - otherwise, you will hear it all through your podcast. Yeah, Mrs. Sponaugle didn't think about that the first time her kids used GarageBand. Oops.
2. Set the meter - plus (+) sign in the right hand corner - to ON for automatic, so it will make the section longer as you continue to speak. Otherwise, your students (and you) are going to get frustrated when it keeps cutting off at 8 bars.
3. Turn the volume up for the audio recorder for students with soft voices.
4. Like I said above, encourage your students to use the "Smart" instruments with the preset beats.
5. Create a sample "song" (what GarageBand calls your creations) yourself so you get a feel for how it works.
6. Make sure you or your students give each song they create in GarageBand a new title, otherwise you will have New Song, New Song2, etc.

There are also multiple articles in the Apple help section of their website to guide you along. If you are looking for a new way to utilize your iPad in your classroom aside from using educational apps, look no further.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/garageband/id408709785?mt=8
http://ipad.appstorm.net/how-to/lifestyle/making-a-podcast-with-garageband-for-ipad/
http://www.podbean.com/

Flocabulary

Since (teaching) life has come to a screeching, soggy halt due to Hurricane Sandy, I thought I would take some time today to get back on the blog-wagon. I hope this finds you warm, dry, and safe - and Godspeed to those of you who are in (or have survived) harm's way with this storm!

One of my students' favorite things to do this year is to listen and learn from songs and music videos from Flocabulary. Flocabulary is basically rap music for the classroom. It's clean, fun, and totally catchy. I love it. Here's the other catch - it's not free. I know, "Boooooo" - but understandable. They've got a product to sell, and fortunately, they do post free videos and songs to use in your classroom. Whenever I use a Flocabulary song to back up what I'm teaching, my students remember it and what it's about. They still can tell you the order of classification for living things from listening to "Kids Prefer Cheese Over Fried Green Spinach." Two of the freebies right now are "I'll Be The President" on the presidential election process and "Check and Balances" for the three branches of government. Sometimes the resources are just the song, and other times they include a music video. Lyrics are on the same page, so the students can sing along (and they will...loudly and over and over again). There are also review questions and lesson plans for each song as well.

Many of the songs on the Flocabulary website are also available on iTunes for $0.99 each. You can also purchase full albums of their music such as "Math Rap" and "Beats, Rhymes, and Science." I'm pretty sure that, with the exception of the language arts songs, most of it is available on iTunes. There are also student guides (with the lyrics and vocabulary activities) and accompanying CDs of music available for purchase on the Flocabulary site if you are interested. I downloaded the songs on iTunes I thought would help my students the most and made playlists on my iPads and iPod for them to listen to as a station and in their spare time.

I've taken a while to post about Flocabulary, not just because life happens but I have been completely bummed about the fact that you now have to pay for the Week in Rap. It use to be that you could subscribe to the Week in Rap and each Friday they would e-mail you the video for the current events of the week - set to song. However, that is no longer the case and I'm not going to pay $5 a month for it. There are pricing plans for teachers on the Flocabulary website and you can test drive it with a free trial, but you'll have to check it out a decide for yourself.

http://flocabulary.com/

Mickelson ExxonMobil Teachers Academy

One of the things I wanted to do when I started this blog was share some of the opportunities I have had to meet and work with teachers across the United States. Somehow, I haven't got around to it, but there's no better time to start than now.

So, while everyone else is gun-ho on football tonight (no, thank you, teaching is my only sport), I want to share with you my experience at the Mickelson ExxonMobil Teachers Academy. This is a summer math and science academy for teachers in grades 3-5, sponsored by professional golfer Phil Mickelson and ExxonMobil. It is held in Jersey City, New Jersey, just a hop, skip, and subway ride from New York City (as in, you will see the Statue of Liberty every day from your hotel room, as well as the skyline). The training provided to you is courtesy of the National Science Teachers Association and the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics. About 200 teachers from across the United States are selected to attend each year. A parent or teacher can nominate you, or you can apply to attend yourself here.

I attended the first national academy back in July 2009. I had been browsing on Grant Wrangler for grants, and a link for "MEMTA" (as we alumni like to refer to it) popped up. Oh, if you would have only known me back then. I was a "good teacher," I guess, but my world...wasn't very big. And I knew it. I've always had an idea of the kind of teacher I wanted to be, but at the time I had no idea how to get there. Maybe, I thought, where I was at was all there was. This, however, sounded like what I was looking for - to learn more about the best ways to reach students, with the best teachers. Did I have a voluminous resume with lots of presentation experience or prestigious awards? Oh, heavens, no. To put it in runner's terms, I was "good for my age group," but not a top finisher. But, if you never try, the answer will always be "no."

 So, at 9 PM on October 30th (the deadline being the 31st), I went for it. I typed my application right on the online form and hit send - and little did I know, it was the beginning of a new chapter in my life as an educator.

MEMTA was an experience like no other. The exposure to the National Science and Math standards was priceless, as I was about to begin National Board Certification. Not only was the professional development top-notch (what you would expect from a national academy), but the way the teachers were treated that week was exemplary as well. In short, the staff and teachers at MEMTA treated us like super stars. As a relatively new(er) teacher at the time, that was almost overwhelming for me. New(er) teachers have to "fight" for everything, whether it's for respect or a bookcase. To be treated so first class (I don't want to give too much away because if you go I want you to be as WOWED as I was), well, I almost didn't know how to act - and then I got a handle on myself.



MEMTA was featured on the CBS Early Show during
our academy. Why, yes, that is Harry Smith!

What I didn't expect from attending MEMTA is probably what has changed how I teach the most. Not only did I attend this academy with other teachers from across the United States (that were all amazing and to this day I still consider out of my league), but I learned from them. I learned things about technology and teaching that week, just from listening to other teachers, that I never would have known otherwise. I learned what issues affect teachers in different states - some different, some the same as those in West Virginia. My view of my role as a teacher and the possibilities available in education changed overnight. I am still am in contact with several of the teachers who attended  MEMTA that year, and probably will be forever. I came away from MEMTA convinced that networking is the most powerful professional development you can provide an educator.

I realize it's October 6th on a Saturday night, but if I can crank out "something" in a handful of hours before the deadline, you surely can give some consideration to applying to the Mickelson ExxonMobil Academy this year. Don't tell yourself it isn't possible. Sometimes, the only way to get going in the direction you want is to put yourself on the right road. Nobody else is going to do it for you - just take the keys (computer keys, in this instance)...and drive.

http://www.sendmyteacher.com/index.html

Music to My Ears: Tour the States!

It's Friday, it's late, and I'm tired. I have lots to say but not much energy to get it out. However, I thought before I sack out for the evening, I would share an awesome music video - "Tour the States" by Renald Francoeur. I came across this while I was "pinning" last night and found this infectious tune to be too good not to share with my students and my blog followers (Do I have any of those? For the sake of my tired teacher psyche, let's just say I do:-).

Makes you want to take a little trip somewhere, doesn't it?

 

My students love, love, love this song and its awesome artwork. By now, the "Fifty Nifty United States" song is getting a little old for my fifth graders, and the beat and lyrics to this piece have them well on their way to reciting all of the states and capitals (whether they realize it or not!). It's from an album titled Brain Beats, a collection of educational songs for this generation of students. You can purchase the Brain Beats CD from Marbles the Brain Store. The album is also available on Amazon and iTunes, and you can download "Tour the States" individually from either source for $0.99.

I haven't been able to find the music video anywhere but YouTube, so I used the YouTube Downloader to get the video to my Dropbox file to share it with my class at school. Regardless of what grade you teach, things like this that get your class excited and saying "How did they do that?" make it all worth it, even when you are out-of-your-mind tired. Good night!  



Classroom Collaboration Series: 5 Reasons to LOVE Edmodo!

I kind of let the Classroom Collaboration Series go by the wayside over the summer, so it's time to start it up again! I have known about Edmodo for a while, but have always had so many other "techKNOW toys" to play with that I never truly implemented it. Now that I'm using it to have my students collaborate and to keep connected to other teachers, I don't know why I've waited so long! If you haven't jumped on the Edmodo wagon, here are five reasons why you need to set up an account and get your students connected!
1. First and foremost, it teaches your students proper social networking! When you set up your Edmodo account, the first word that will come to mind is "Facebook." It surely resembles it, right down to the color sceme. However, Edmodo is a means for students to communicate and collaborate online within the parameters of the classroom. As the teacher, you can monitor what students post on your group wall (the only way students can communicate with one another, no "chatting") as they discuss posted topics and complete assignments. Only the teacher, students, and parents have access to your Edmodo space (via password) unless you choose to set it to public. You set rules and guidelines for what students can put online, and can set their status to "read only" until they can post properly. Students have to create their own username and password in order to access the classroom space you have created, so they learn the additional responsibility of keeping track of their personal information.
2. It streamlines your online resources to one place.  Links and Google Docs can be posted to your Edmodo library. Your students, when logged into Edmodo, can access these resources for the assignments you post. You can also post links and videos to your group page for the student to view as well. For example, I love, love love, the awesomeness that it Animoto. I or the students can post their Animoto slideshows for us to view securely.
3. Assignments, Quizzes...AND Polls!!! No, really! You can post directions for an assinment to your group page and include the necessary files and links to complete it.  When students complete it, they just post their assignment and attach their completed files...completely paperless! There's also a way to create quizzes for students to complete right on Edmodo. The quizzes can take a variety of forms, from multiple choice to short answer. You can even set it so students automatically see how they scored for instant feedback. I also like how you can create a quick opinion poll to gauge how your class feels about a topic - and the students like it, too!
4. You can connect to other teachers. As a teacher you can make connections to other educators through using your Edmodo profile. Although your students and classes can't "see" each other, you can keep in touch professionally with your colleagues within your school or around the country (or world, for that matter). You can also join communities, such as ones on technology, to learn from and assist other teachers. Another feature is that you can "follow" publishers such as Sheppard Software or Spelling City to keep up with the resources they provide.
5. It's FREE, and so is the APP!!! All of this fantastic online collaboration costs you nothing. That being the case, it is pretty impressive all that you can do with this "free version," when so many online resources limit your capabilities (or at least cause you to find creative ways to work around buying them). You and your students can also download the free app for iPhone/iPad/iPod or Android so Edmodo can be accessed anywhere!
Edmodo is pretty much an ideal virtual classroom. While nothing can replace being together in the classroom to work and learn from each other, Edmodo can keep you connected to your students when weather, illness, or distance are in the way. I can't wait to see where using this resource leads me this school year!
http://www.edmodo.com