December 7-13 marked the week of Hour of Code. This was not just a school event, a state event, or even a USA event. This was a world-wide event. Just on Code.org alone, almost 200,000 Hour of Code events took place. That doesn't even involve those that were not using Code.org or that didn't register their events. What is "code"?Coding in the introduction to computer sciences. All computers in the world, everything from laptops, apps, phones to washing machines, alarm clocks, and stoves have to run some sort of code. Code is written for alarm clocks to know to beep at a certain time, code is used to tell a washer how warm to make the water on a given setting, it is used to tell the Flappy Bird what to do when it hits one of those annoying pipes. Why do kids need to code?Computer science is a growing career field. The demand for people who can code has grown larger than the number of people out there that can actually do it. We need more students to learn these skills to meet the demand for careers. 65% of students entering elementary will hold jobs after high school that don't even exist yet, according to Cathy N. Davidson, co-director of the annual MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competitions. Coding also fosters critical-thinking, problem-solving skills, logic, and creativity. Students are asked to solve problems and think about the outcomes of a code they put together. Many students love the idea of learning something that can create a video game they love to play or an app they use on their device. It is engaging and exciting for them to do something outside the box. How did our kids do?A few students in first grade coded in PRIDE and loved it. Two third grade classes participated and the outcome was very positive. There were some students that struggled in the general classroom, that thrived when they were able to do this. Other students praised them and they got to feel on top of the world for an hour of their day. A large portion of the 7th and 8th grade also coded. It was amazing to watch and listen to them. Some students spoke with me about being interested in pursuing degrees and careers in computer science. Other students had never done this before and after the hour was up, they asked if they could participate when they went home. A freshmen English class took part, and although at first they weren't sure about it, by the end many of them were excited to print their certificates and actually ended up enjoying it. In January, look for a presentation that includes feedback from students, teachers, and parents. I can't wait to share their words with you! And yes, I have had parents stop and comment about how excited their kids were when they came home. Just a little food for thought! Coding ResourcesSneak Peek at Hallsville's Hour of Code
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During a conversation last year with fifth grade, Mrs. Thompson decided she wanted students to take their explorer projects one step further, away from the paper books they had created in the past and closer to a more technology-rich portfolio of work. Enter Google Sites. With our Google Apps for Education (GAFE) access, students can create their own websites (under our school domain, of course) and they can share them with teachers, parents, each other, and the world. I took the directions of the project and modified them, making them fit on the website. In working with the 5th grade teachers, we created what specifications we wanted and made the jobs and projects. Students were able to find a job that interested them. It could be researching and typing a biography, creating a Google Drawing, making a map on Google My Maps, or actually creating the website and putting the bare-bones of it together. Students were proud of the results, and so were the teachers. Now that we are in year two of the project, we have been able to make some modifications from what it was last year. Using feedback from students and teachers, changes were made and items were added.
Many of them shared it with me for feedback and help with things they could not figure out on their own. Many of them were quite capable of troubleshooting and creating the site after a five-minute tutorial on how it worked. Please take some time and explore their websites below! Our Mystery Skype this time around happened to be with a school in our own state. Now, those of you that Mystery Skype know that there is a lot of excitement placed on the fact that you choose a school OUTSIDE of your state.
Choosing a city in the state we lived was part of our 4th grade curriculum because it caused students to have to look at our own state, find important cities, key highways, and other landmarks to guess the other location. We kept the state a secret from both classes, so they were surprised to learn they were in the same state. Then we used highways, counties, and regions to locate each others' cities. Students did a great job synergizing to find the locations. What a great job! In Hallsville High School, one of the teachers, Mr. Proffitt, has taken something we all see during campaign season, and made it a part of his curriculum this year. Each student group (about 3/group) has chosen a Presidential candidate and one of their scandals or key issues. For example, one group chose Chris Christie and how it was rumored that he spent taxpayer money on food. Another group chose Trump and used his immigration comments. The students had to create a 30 second rough-sketch of a commercial. Many of them are using clips from speeches or other commentary. They are using Tweets, images, text, or other media, to portray their message. After their commercial has been approved, most used Adobe Premiere, a video editing program. Students quickly have learned how to navigate the software, asking for help when needed. Some Photoshop was used for creating some, shall we say, interesting images of candidates. What I really enjoyed about watching this project, was the fact that sophomores in high school were learning who the candidates were, delving into their issues, and finding out how these commercials are so easily manipulated. My next goal is to try to find an audience of high school social studies students to watch and give feedback on the commercials. I have reached out via Twitter and am hoping for some bites on that. Genius Hour is over for second grade. I have some mixed feelings about how it went and things I would do in the future. What our time looked like: We had 30(ish) minutes 3-4 days a week for about 5 weeks, meeting only about 14 times. Looking back, this is not ideal. We were slightly displaced because we had about 3 different rooms we worked in depending on the day because the 2nd grade classes do not have student devices. They would come in from recess and we would make it to a room. By then, we would have 20-25 minutes of work time. Mini-lessons were rushed and didn't feel very good. I would prefer one really solid hour of time per week to work, then allow students time when they are done with other work, to continue inquiring on their own. What the structure looked like: Students were usually 2:1 with computers, researching. Students unable to research online were to use books or confer with the teacher. So, this is the part I feel needed help. Students had had such inexperience researching, that they didn't know how to do this piece on their own. The mini-lesson on this happened, but again, due to time, it felt rushed and not strong. This showed in their own time for researching because they depended heavily on the teachers, and rightly so. This left little time for conferring with students. By the end of this project, I had to shift gears a little, and be okay with the students who were not delving in and going totally inquiry-based. I mean, really, many of them had never been able to just research something they liked. This was an important piece for many of them. The students took the projects and made them their own. Researching a meaningful topic kept them engaged and excited when they came into the room. Genius Hour was their time to show who they were as a person, and they took a lot from that. One of my biggest disappointments was how quickly it ended. Students did not get enough time to finish their projects. That's the trouble with the position I am in sometimes, I am not on my own schedule, I am on someone else's. The opportunity to take the projects up a notch didn't happen for all of them, even though some had some great ideas. Even the slideshows created did not all get to be completed because, well, time. That was rough for me to accept because I wanted them to have a finished product. I am proud of what they accomplished though, and hope to do something like this in the future with another group. Click here to see them working on their projects.Click here to see some of the finished products.Donna Bader, this post is a shoutout to you! Way to go on thinking about a great way to show Kinders how email works! Jodie Langston, thank you for sharing your experience so I can share it, too! If you have been trying to figure out when to introduce kids to email, Kindergarten may be the perfect time. Now, before you start saying that your Kinders can't type that well or that you don't want them to have email addresses, hear me out. Kids don't have to have email addresses to LEARN about email. My wonderful friend and peer in education, Jodie, told me about what she and a couple of Kindergarten classes at her school have done. One of the Kindergarten teachers hopped on board with the expectation to have her kids introduced to email before the end of K. Jodie (in 2nd grade) received an email from Mrs. Bader's class, using the friendly letter format. Jodie's class then email back. The kids in Mrs. Bader's class learned about how quickly email can travel. They now contact each other regularly. Before Jodie's class went to the zoo, Mrs. Bader's class emailed her class telling them what the weather was going to be that day and what their recommendation for clothing was, as well as asking them to tell about their trip. Well, in order to show that email can travel quickly from one location to another, Jodie sent a picture from their field trip to the Kinders back at school. They were so excited! Jodie said it opened up a lot of dialogue about how emails are replied to, how they travel, and the correct etiquette to use. I can't wait to tell my teachers here about this great idea! What a great way to MODEL digital citizenship for students! If someone had told me about this while I was still in the classroom, you can bet that I would have been using it! Flubaroo is a tool created to grade work that is submitted through a Google Form. Yep, I said it, created to grade work. Eeeeeeeee, so exciting!
Such a time-saver and makes collecting data easy!
A third grade teacher recently came to me wanting something her students could delve into for the month of October. We came up with the idea of skeletons. The next piece was figuring out WHAT to do.
At the #gafesummit in KC this summer, Kasey Bell (Shake Up Learning) had these awesome Tic-Tac-Toe boards she used for training sessions with teachers. Now, don't get me wrong, I totally know how to make a tic-tac-toe board for student use, but she really talked about how to make it beneficial to the teacher. There are two L's on a tic-tac-toe board.
Boxes 1, 2, 3, and 4 are all exploratory boxes. This is where students get their information. They can research, look at links, or anything else.
Box 5 can either be a required activity all students need or it can be a free choice of whatever the students want it to be that pertains to the activity. Boxes 6-9 are all "creation" boxes. This is where they can choose the activity that best fits what they want to produce. Many students will start with this box and work backward, which is fine. This is a way for students to have choice in what they create, but they are going to end up with a similar experience. We talked about how each of the activities will have a set of guidelines that are basically the same, but the presentation will be different. I like how the teacher worked to create presentations that accessed all her learners. She is going to place this into her Google Classroom and get started on it this week. We are looking at this being about a 1.5-2 week activity. This page was created in Google Docs. I then did File > Publish to the Web. For this, I am embedding it on my blog. You can also use the web address and link it. However you want! Feel free to modify and make it how you would like to use it! A teacher wanted to have her students retell the stories they were reading by doing videos. As I set off to find something brilliant for them to use, I found Toontastic from our high school Spanish teacher, Mrs. Vollrath. She talked about how she had her high schoolers use them for storytelling when practicing their Spanish. After downloading the app, I was pleasantly surprised by how awesome it was! The app lets students pick from an array of different settings and characters. It also emphasizes the story arc. I knew this was going to be a great app for what we were going to do. The students had such an excellent time recording these! It was so easy to use and the kids liked getting to personalize their videos. They were so PROUD of their videos! Check them out here! Reasons I love ToontasticAs I mentioned in a previous post a student teacher and I have started doing a modified "Genius Hour" with a second grade group. I say modified because they are getting more than the hour a week to work. It is more like 2.5 hours on an average week. We have lovingly started calling it their "Passion Projects". Yesterday was the first day of them really exploring their passions. They got to sit down and web out their thoughts and put down what they were passionate about, no matter what it was. The students were so excited by this simple activity! Moans and groans came from the crowd when it was time to stop for the day. It was music to my ears because that signaled PASSION for their thoughts! Here's the plan, Stan! For today we have a lot to get done. Students are going to come in and share their passions with a couple of friends and then will get a chance to revisit their sheets. After that, we are turning to Wonderopolis to show students how topics can be narrowed down. I am hoping for some "AHA" moments today! Before we leave, students are going to generate some "I wonders" about their passions.
All of this leads into students making their Wonder Walls tomorrow (yes, pics to follow!) and getting their decisions made to start their project proposal! EEEK! So excited! Follow our progress on Twitter @nschwartztech! |
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