Math Tutorials Using Educreations

Scrapblog for Teaching and Learning

I have used Scrapblog on several occasions now. I used the site to create my own Scrapblog as a portfolio for my learning in one of my masters courses. After completing a course on children's literature, I compiled all of the activities and lessons into one portfolio. I was then able to share my learning with colleagues and my class.

Scrapblog Literacy Portfolio

We also used Scrapblog for literature genre projects in class. After finishing a fairytale of their choosing, each student created a Scrapblog as a platform for text analysis. Students combined clipart from Scrapblog, with pictures they found on the internet, with text evidence from their books, with their own gleanings, to analyze the characters, action, plot, and other story elements.

Student-Made Tutorials to Teach Math Concepts

Our fractions unit is a traditionally difficult one in fourth grade. This year, I wanted to come up with an engaging, authentic way for students to work with fractions. I found several digital manipulatives and online resources. I shared them with my students, and I let them explore. I then put student into groups and gave them different math problems involving fractions for them to teach using the various web tools and manipulatives. They worked together to write scripts of exactly what they wanted to say, and they rehearsed how they wanted to teach the concept. When they were ready, I helped them produce their lessons as tutorials. We posted them on our class Moodle site so other classes in the school could use them.

 

Spotlight Student Work Using Prezi

During Open House, each student reads a piece of his or her writing aloud for all of the parents. One student suggested that everyone illustrate their stories as a visual to go with the writing. What a great idea! After students illustrated their stories, I put all of the illustrations together in a Prezi. As students stood in front of the audience to read, they used the Activepen to navigate through the Prezi. The presentation turned out great, and students loved seeing their illustrations up on a public platform.

Our Class Prezi

The Texas Revolution Through Google Earth

After studying about the Texas Revolution, students worked in groups to create placemarks in Google Earth that represented the important people, places, and events in the revolution. We combined the placemarks together to create a Google Earth Tour of the Texas Revolution.

Geometry Projects using Storyjumper

As a culmination of our geometry unit, students created digital books. They each chose a theme to follow, found photographs online to depict their geometric terms, and created descriptions of each term. Below is a book created by one student.

Digital Portfolios via Student Blogs

I have been researching digital student portfolios for several months now. After attending the TCEA conference a few weeks ago, I decided that individual student blogs would make the best platform for what I am wanting. I chose to set up a kidblog account for each student in my class. I browsed several sites before I chose kidblog, but I really felt like kidblog offered the most user-friendly interface. My students have only begun their work, and already, they love posting to their blogs!

Here is our class kidblog address if you are interested. You can't see student posts unless you are logged in to the site and have permission to view our blog, so that makes the site safe for kids:.

Find us at http://kidblog.org/MrsCarrsClass8/.

As you can see, the site is organized so that from the teacher homescreen, I can easily navigate posts by student, by clicking on their names down the righthand side, or by date, by clicking on the posts in the center of the screen.

After I created my account and inputted all of my students' names, I collaborated with our campus technology teacher to create lessons to introduce the new blogs to my class. She showed my students how to access the site, how to log in, and the basics regarding navigating the site. They picked everything up very quickly, and they eagerly got to work writing their first posts. I asked them to answer this question in their first post: How do you think we could use our blogs in our classroom?

Here are some sample screen-shots of their responses.

This week, they wrote their second posts. I asked students to choose their two favorite pieces of "Show, Not Tell" writing, and post them with a reflection about why they chose the samples.

Here is one student's post.