Do 5, 6 and 7 year olds like technology? Yes, they love it! One assignment we had to complete in ECI 546 - New Literacies & Media, was to conduct a Digital Learner Poll. I used Plickers to "poll" my Kindergarten and First grade students and find out what they thought about technology in the classroom. I created a Piktochart to share what I learned, click the picture below to go to my Digital Learner Poll.
Students come into the classroom so eager to use technology. As teachers we need to find out what our students know about technology, take that information and help them to learn all of the different things that they can do with it. “Although many children come to school already familiar with digital media, they do not know how to fully access and engage with them.” (Johnson, p.5) We want them to use technology in all areas of their education. We want them be creative, innovative & collaborative thinkers and digital literacy is a key component of that. As teachers we must find a way to stay on top of the ever changing world of technology for our classrooms. Throughout my 2 years at NC State University I have learned so much about technology and tools to use in the classroom both for the teacher and the student. I have used a wide variety of technology tools to create products for different classes and I have also used those tools in my classroom. I am excited about finding new ways to use technology in the classroom and also sharing it with my colleagues. Below are a few "cool tools" that I have used!
Click a thumbnail below to see the app "in action"!
Vocaroo Vocaroo was the first "cool tool" that I was introduced to in Dr. Spires class. It is a voice recorder service that allows the user to easily record and share their message. Recordings can be shared through many different social media apps, downloaded to your computer or to a QR code. I have used this in my classroom by recording words, downloading them as QR codes and then hanging the QR codes around the room. Students use this as a "Write the Room" activity and all words follow their spelling pattern for the week.
Padlet Padlet is like an online bulletin board where you can display and share information easily. Many of my professors used Padlet to share content and also to have students respond to questions. In my classroom I have created Padlets for my grade level, beginning teachers and my students. During our Arctic Animal unit I created a Padlet to share websites and videos with my students and fellow teachers. By creating a Padlet for my students, I knew exactly what information they would be exposed to and what the video content would be.
Prezi Prezi is a presentation app that I have used for a few different classes. I like that it is not a typical slide show and that information can move anyway the presenter would like. It is a way to bring your presentation to life.
Flipgrid Flipgrid allows students to create video responses. Teachers can post a question and then have students record their responses to the question or even have them create book reviews to share with their classmates. A few professors used this app during my classes and all I could think about was using it with my students! I completed a Collaborative Action Research project with a partner using Flipgrid and repeated reading. Begeny et al. (2009) suggest that repeated reading “has been shown to be associated with improvements across a range of reading skills, including comprehension and reading accuracy” (p.226). We wanted the students to use this app to practice their oral reading fluency. I had one student as the checker to correct any errors and then other students would join her and read their passage or book. At the end of the week students were able to go back and listen to their first recording and their final recording so that they could hear the difference in their fluency. Flipgrid is a big deal in Room 36! The students make sure that I do not forget and my Kindergarten students wanted to try it as well. I added sight word reading for my Kindergarten students and they love their Flipgrid time.
Voicethread Voicethread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show. Slides can contain pictures, videos or documents and people are able to respond to the slides by text, video or audio. We had to use Voicethread for a Cosmopolitanism assignment and I found it very user friendly. I have not used it in my class yet but I would to use it as a way for my students to create a type of writing portfolio where they upload pictures of their writing and record themselves reading it. Voicethread is easily edited so students can add items throughout the year to show their progression.
ChatterPix Kids by Duck Duck Moose ChatterPix is another voice recording app (30 seconds) but it allows you to make anything talk for you. I used this during my Arctic Animal unit and the students loved it! They chose an animal to research and write about in class. Students then found a picture of their animal, uploaded it to Chatterpix and shared all they had learned about their animal. ChatterPix provided an fun and hands on way for my students to share what they had learned.
Big Universe I learned about Big Universe in Dr. Harrington's ECI 540 - Reading in Elementary School class. Kerri Brown Parker, director of the Media and Education Technology Resource Center or METRC, presented during one class and she shared all of the digital resources we had access to as NCSU students. My students enjoyed read alouds, on our Brightlinks, using eBooks from Big Universe's vast online library. Their library is filled with high interest and high quality books for every student. I liked that the books were leveled in a variety of ways. Since my school does not have a subscription I could not assign books to certain students, but it does have that feature. Some books also have quizzes that the students can complete and many of the books are Accelerated Reader (AR) books that students can use to help them meet their reading goal.
Epic! I learned about Epic! or GetEpic! from a colleague at work. She recently transferred to my school and she had used Epic! at her previous school. Epic! is free for teachers to use in the classroom which I thought was amazing! We asked our librarian to download the free app onto all of the iPads in our iPad cart. I was then able to add all of my students to my account and they have unlimited access at school. My students absolutely LOVE this site! I am able to create collections of books and then assign them to students. I had a student who wanted to learn more about recycling so I was able to make her a collection of books, which included Read-to-me, audiobooks and videos, that she could explore during her free time. She then used the information she learned and shared it with our class. Epic! has had a positive impact on my students and has helped to increase their love of reading. They ask to log onto Epic! everyday and when we have the iPad cart it is the first app they open. Epic! provides my students with the opportunity to engage in reading digitally. “Traditional printed texts such as books are written for readers to proceed from front to back, reading left to right. However, readers of electronic texts have the option of clicking on any one of a number of hyperlinks that can take them on a path that digresses completely from the path other readers might take.” ( VVM page 29) Even though Epic! does not take them to external sites it does let students click on words. The word is then read to them along with a definition. Epic! is an appropriate tool for my K/1 students and it is getting them ready for other electronic texts they will encounter as they get older.
Begeny, J. C., Krouse, H. E., Ross, S. G., & Mitchell, C. R. (2009). Increasing elementary-aged students’ reading fluency with small-group interventions: A comparison of repeated reading. Listening passage preview, and listening only strategies. Journal of Behavioral Education, 18(3), 211–228. Johnson, D. (2014). Reading, writing, and literacy 2.0: Teaching with online texts, tools, and resources, K-8. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Vacca, R. T., Vacca, J. A., & Mraz, M. (2017). Content area reading: Literacy and learning across the curriculum. Boston: Pearson.