Tool # 8: Taking a Look at the Tools

I really appreciated the advice about naming each of the devices with a different name and also WRITING it onto the device. 

Since I have had itouches in my room for three years now, I was most interested in learning about the I Pad.  I am interested in how I am to keep my kids “safe” on the internet—I know that many teachers use them as a center while they work with small groups, so how does one monitor the activities they are doing?  I found a couple of tips that can help.  Under the settings button, the search engine can be changed from google to Yahoo or bing, and you can also change the general settings to restrictions.  You can also set a password for things like YouTube and your Itunes account so the students have a bit more barriers to getting to places they shouldn’t be. 

Another helpful trick I have found is that you can add websites as links onto the home page.  Go to the site that you want to have easy access to, choose the + sign and pick “add to home screen”.  Now it shows up as an icon like your other apps.  Instead of loading your home pages full of links though, open a Diigo account, and then just link the Diigo site to your home page.  (Or, my other thought is to add t a new site as a home page icon, and after the students have used it a time or two, add it to Diigo and take the icon off your home screen). 

Here is a website with lots of suggestions for apps that I am slowly making my way through, checking to see what apps I might want to use in the classroom.  

As far as managing the devices, I have always had a student helper be the “tech guy/gal” and one of their responsibilities is to make sure all of the devices are accounted for at the end of the day.  Last year I had one for the netbooks and another for the itouches.  Guess I’ll have to have 3 helpers this coming year!  These were very computer saavy kiddos that could also help troubleshoot problems if I were busy with a group.  If they couldn’t solve the problem, then they would drop a “trouble ticket” on the table where I was working, then I could help out when I had a free moment.

Tool #7: Reaching Outside the Classroom

I was excited about this project!  I have a friend in Flower Mound, Texas that I called to see if she would be game to participate in this project.  She teaches 2nd grade in a lower socio-economic area, and is the lead teacher with all of the gifted and talented students for the grade level in her classroom.  We talked about the different TEKS that we cover in a year, and which ones did we want to do something different with in the upcoming year.  We settled on Language Arts 2.6:
Reading/Comprehension of Literary Text/Theme and Genre. Students analyze, make inferences and draw conclusions about theme and genre in different cultural, historical, and contemporary contexts and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding. Students are expected to:

(A)  identify moral lessons as themes in well-known fables, legends, myths, or stories; and

(B)  compare different versions of the same story in traditional and contemporary folktales with respect to their characters, settings, and plot.

The start of this project would be mid- October, after we had time to establish classroom routines and had expectations under control.  We would first model for the students how to interact online, how to use etiquette and discuss appropriate positive language.  The two teachers would read aloud a pre-selected book and respond to each other on the wiki.  By the end of November, the expectation is to have students split into three groups, but time and number of groups is flexible depending on what we observe with our students. 

The plan is to use a Wiki, so that several pages can be set up, and more can be added as needed.  Each classroom will likely have their own Blog to post videos and pictures (as allowed by parent permission).  At various times during the year, we'll conduct different Skype sessions, some as a large group, and some for small groups that are reading the same or similiar books. 

Our plan is for groups of children to read the same book in a particular genre, and then Skype to discuss.  Students may have some prepared questions to help a conversation roll along in case there are "dead" spaces in the conversation.  There will also be opportunities to read and compare different versions of the same story (Cajun 3 pigs, Alaskan 3 pigs, traditional 3 pigs .. one where wolf gets cooked, one where wolf gets away).  From there students can choose other books from genres for their free reading time and discuss them on the wiki.  There will be an available place to add books that they find and want to recommend on the wiki.

Covers from Titlewave.com