Code Follow Up

"You never know when you will be the catalyst in someone's life." 

The other day a parent and 2nd grade student showed up in my classroom before school inquiring about accessing more coding activities. The child had loved doing the coding activities with my class and wanted MORE. They had even done activities on the Code.org website at home. It became a great opportunity to share. There was a spark in that little girl's eyes! 

Hours and Hours of Code

Throughout December and into January my goal was to introduce coding to primary grades. Being that I am a full-time 5th grade teacher I was challenged to figure a way to make this work. I began with my students. An introduction to the "Hour of Code" on Code.org sparked the initial idea. Students loved trying out all the different coding activities the website provided. Students were engaged and willing to help others problem solve their way through the activities. After watching this active engagement and students helping one another I asked if they would like to teach younger kids how to code. They were up for the challenge. I invited one of our kindergarten classes in and the 5th graders took charge. It was an AMAZING experience! My students were true leaders and the kinders learned to code. Since this was such a positive experience we invited more primary classes in to expose them to the world of coding. Never have I seen 50+ students in a room completely engaged and sad when the time is up before this experience. I believe in the ripple effect so I shared my experience with the other 5th grade teachers and encouraged them to have their classes work with primary classes as well. They shared positive experiences as well. Now to follow up with the primary classes to see what next adventure we can take on.

Kindergartners can be the Best Teachers!

In December I decided I wanted to try out something new with my kinders. I had learned about Seesaw, an online portfolio for students, last year but hadn’t found an easy way to introduce it to my students so it fell into the background for me. I had the idea this year that I could use this as another way to collect data on my students and thought I would start out with using it to show reading progress having students record their reading of about four sentences packed with high frequency words and CVC words. I called upon our wonderful instructional technology support teacher to come and help me walk my students through this process. She came once and then we decided to have her come again and supervise the kids trying it on their own and helping when needed. Through this process one thing she noticed was that a few of my students mastered this very quickly and a few even were trying to help each other. This sparked the idea creating a new class job for my job chart “technician” a student who the kids would ask before me if they were having technology problems, the kids loved the idea and with that we went into winter break.

Fast forward two weeks and I am welcoming my students back on January 2nd using my morning message to introduce their new weekly reading job on Seesaw and ready to get them started. We set up procedure so the kids knew who’s turn it was and who they could ask for help instead of me since I would be busy working with students! I was super excited and sent the first child off to get started, pulled a reading group and out of the corner of my eye watched as what I thought was a perfect system ran smoothly for the next hour. At recess I excitedly pulled up my teacher account ready to see five students reading and saw nothing. Turns out after two weeks off for winter break nobody fully remembered what to do. I went home that night and after thinking a lot about it I decided tomorrow was a new day and we would start over using a new strategy inspired by our new class job. The next morning I pulled the kids to the carpet and showed them on the smartboard each of the steps they needed to follow. Then I took the first student over and walked them through the process step by step,

but when they were done this time I had them stay and told them they got to be the teacher! When the next student came over, instead of me walking them through the process I had my previous student do it, we repeated the process this way having each student who had just completed the process teach the next. We always say the best way to really learn something is to teach it to someone else. I have been more than impressed watching my tiny five and six year olds demonstrate this the past few weeks. Most of them are now better at the process than I am!

1:1 Unplugged

There are many advantages to being a 1:1 classroom: students are highly engaged, there is an endless amount of information at your fingertips, and we rarely use paper.  I love everything about being a 1:1 teacher...even those days when you aren't.

Monday, I walked into the school to discover the internet was down.  Our community has withstood a major winter storm on Sunday and many homes lost power for up to 36 hours.  Many trees were affected and one tree, in particular, came down on the fiberoptic line that connects our school to the wireless network at the district office.  Of the 8 schools in our district, we were the only one without phone or internet.

I LOVE challenges like this, especially on a Monday and not just any Monday, but a Monday after a wind/snow storm, where students lost power at their homes...and now our normal routine was going to be disrupted with the lack of internet.  Thankfully, I'm an experienced teacher and am able to roll with these punches (as a first-year teacher, I may have panicked)!

Thankfully, when I left work on Friday, I did not close out my electronic plan book, and when I opened up my Chromebook, it was there and I could look at my plans for the day.  Of course, everything I planned for the day required the internet.

• Media Time - talked with the media teacher and she decided to teach the kids how to access books in the library.
• Math Intervention - normally students spend time on IXL or XtraMath to work on math skills.  Instead, I taught them a new math game called Remainders Wanted which would give them a chance to practice long division which was introduced last week.  This gave me the opportunity to pull small groups.
• Project Based Learning - I planned to have students brainstorm ideas for our community service project.  Instead of doing this using Google Docs I had to find the paper.  It took me a minute to remember where I stored lined paper for students to write on...but I found it.  I also had to reteach the class how to create a proper heading (name, date, assignment).
• Reading - thankfully, students were unaffected by this.  I, however, couldn't access my reading conference notes, but I was able to still complete a few conferences anyway.
• Writing - I planned to have students reflect on their narrative writing assessments, however, these are stored in Google.  So, I had to come up with a Plan B.  Thankfully, I kept old editions of National Geographic magazines from when I had a subscription.  I let students choose an article from the magazine to read.  I had them write, on paper, about what they learned and then partnered them up based on the article they chose.  

All in all, it was a productive day and amazingly, the students were well engaged.  They seemed excited by the change in routine and the novelty of using paper and pencil instead of computers.

On my commute Tuesday, I thought about my Plan B in case the internet was still down and by the time I got to school, I had a clear idea of what I would do, however, as I pulled into the parking lot, the power went out in our school and we closed it for the day...so I went to Plan C, spend a quiet day at home baking and reading a book!

Using technology in the Elementary Schools seems rife with worries and wonderings. Not only from teachers, but from parents, as well.  What if they accidentally access inappropriate content? Am I damaging their young minds by exposing them to more screen time? Is technology really improving student learning? How can I teach my students to use technology when I don't know how to use it? My students are too little, they can't do that.

No matter where I go, I hear questions similar to this everyday.  Although many teachers are trying bits and pieces, many are still grappling with questions that keep them from truly taking the leap into integrating technology.

Technology and young learners can be terrifying. However, it can also be amazingly gratifying! My job as the Instructional Tech Support Teacher is to help ALL teachers feel comfortable enough to start integrating technology into their teaching. How do I do this? Good question! At this point, my goal is to be available to teachers. To show them the possibilities and acknowledge there will be failures! After all, we don't learn without failing! I am to be part of their support system, to answer questions, model, brainstorm or do whatever they need to be successful with instructional technology.

I believe from the bottom of my heart that technology offers opportunities for voice, self expression, individualization, collaboration for students of all ages that previously wasn't available to students. Using technology students can create, collaborate and communicate on a much grander scale (even if its only with the classroom down the hall or a class room across the country.)

I'm excited for this New Year. I'm excited to make connections with more teachers and to fan the flames that other teachers have already started! If we work together we can and will create learning environments for students where technology is seamlessly integrated. We just have to get beyond our own fears of technology so our students can spread their wings and soar!

ESD Reads and Southwood Literacy Videos

Southwood Elementary is in the process of making videos featuring teachers and students as a part of our literacy community education and ESD Reads contribution.  We are excited to share our videos! In an attempt to centralize our video library, I set up a Southwood YouTube channel, which can be found here. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrLTBmle22NNjqwhN-1Bfaw?view_as=subscriber

However, if you follow the link.....well, you won't find any videos! At least not yet anyway. It turns out that YouTube will not upload mp4 files. I didn't know this! After a little research, I have learned that I need to go back to Movie Maker and resave our videos as MPEG files. Sometimes we just jump in and learn as we go!

I've never actually set up a YouTube channel before. I'm excited to take on the new challenge. I had to ask my 12 year old son about a few specifics, but he was happy to help. So glad to have an expert in the house! I think we are now on the road to Southwood Elementary YouTube fame!

Please follow our journey and don't forget to subscribe!!  ;-)

My "Make it Work" Moment

This week I was assigned the task of preparing videos for our school's board presentation.  Staff members sent me their videos so that I could edit them and add them to the presentation. This is something I've done before and thought the work wouldn't be too difficult.  Boy, was I wrong!

My plan was to use YouTube to edit the videos.  I've used it before and found it pretty easy...especially since the editing I needed to do was simple (I only needed to trim some videos, merge others and add a title page to each).  YouTube is not something I use on a regular basis so each time I open it, I have to refamiliarize myself with the tool.

I successfully uploaded the videos, but when I went to find the Creator Studio, I realized things were different since my last visit to YouTube.  After several minutes of trying to navigate the changes, I decided to ease my frustration and elicit the help of an expert...I asked Google (a frequent line of defense I use when there are technology questions)! 

My Google search led to a short video instructing me on how to merge videos.  The instructor was an elementary aged kid!  He clearly walked me through the steps, but when I got to the step for merging I realized the button I needed was missing.  Upon further research, I learned that YouTube recently changed it's editing tools and are launching a new Creator Studio January 2019...great, but that won't help me with the presentation due Monday, December 3!!

So...I downloaded the videos to my laptop and launched Windows Movie Maker...a reliable tool I've used MANY times before.  After several hours of work the videos were successfully edited, re-uploaded to YouTube and linked to our Google Slides presentation!

The moral of the story...when things don't go as planned make it work and take the steps to figure it out.  Ask for help, search Google and if all else fails, go back to the basics.  Now, let's cross our fingers and hope for a successful board presentation!