Blog Post 19

I have never heard of TED-Ed until now and I think it is amazing. I already shared this with a couple of my coworkers who are equally as excited to use it as I am. I think for me this remaining of the year Ted-Ed will be extremely helpful. I can be an excellent resource for teaching and learning in many different grades and subjects. I would like to use it in different ways for teaching science for kinder through fifth grade students.

I would like to use this for my tutoring students. I have begun to tutor fifth grade students to begin providing them with additional help in preparation for the upcoming STAAR science test. I would like to look back on certain topics that they may have struggled with and find information then can build on what they know and show them videos and examples through TED-Ed. I like this because I have computers in my classroom that the students can use to complete the lessons. I also like the fact that the students can all work on a different lesson during tutoring, especially since they need help on different concepts. I can create these lesson specifically for each individual student or for a group.

Another way I would like to use this is also to organize myself while planning. I like to plan way in advance and many times I either write down the video I would like to show during my lesson or I save the link on word, but now I would like to just plan everything on Ted-Ed and access them when I am ready to teach the lesson. I can go through the lessons with my K-5 classes as a whole group and they later can access them again to review or look at additional links. I can also use these lessons that I create to review them with my tutoring students.

I would like to start creating lessons as soon as possible for science. I would like to start with fourth and fifth grade where I find similar experiments to the experiment that they will do in the science lab. I think this will give them a clear understanding of what they are going to conduct in the lab. It can provide them with background information as well as generate ideas in their minds prior to the activity. I can ask a discussion question and use what they have answered as an introduction.

TED-Ed

http://ed.ted.com/on/3jgcDBwV

 

I created a lesson in which the students can explore experiments showing force. The lesson provides them with background information  and links for additional information.

Blog Post 18

I would like to use Google Photos in class for writing. I think that the fourth grader can use Google Photos to create stories through photos and write an accompanying story for the pictures. I would like to even add random pictures to an album and have the students choose a couple of the provided pictures. The students will use the pictures they chose to create an imaginative narrative or expository. This will allow the students to use their imagination because they will not be given a topic to write about they will decide what to write on their own. The students can also find pictures for stories that we read in class. Many of the stories that we read in fourth or fifth grade do not have pictures therefore I would like to assign the students a story in which they can search for photos and upload them to Google Photos. The students must make sure they they arrange the photos in sequence and they follow the order of the story.

I also thought that Google Photos was very easy to upload and most importantly arrange the photos. I would like to give the students in fifth grade a science topic such as weathering or erosion and have them find picture examples for the given topic. I would have the students research different topics related to science and find examples to show the class. I think this would be great in fifth grade because often in science we read about a topic and certain students still struggle to understand the concept therefore finding appropriate pictures for the topic would be great because it provides the student with a visual. 

 

In fourth grade social studies we talk about different concepts that without pictures students might have a hard time understanding what is meant because we are discussing things that happened hundreds of years ago. Google Photos can be used to show the students how certain artifacts looked and what they were used for. Social studies lessons would benefits from Google Photos because we can save them and they will be available on any computer as long as there is an internet connection. Throughout the year I would like to create albums for different events in history. At the end of the year or whenever we need to review we can access these photo again and create a timeline of the different events using the photos.  

Google Photos

https://goo.gl/photos/6WgpnjPYTLrZF6XT6

I created a story of a hungry cat who waits for a penguin chef to cook some delicious soup. He naps until the soup is ready and once the soup is ready the cat eats up all of the penguins soup. The penguin is super furious at the cat for eating all of his soup.

Blog Post 16

I subscribed to Edutopia RSS and read an article titled, Pen Pals 2.0: Can Technology Foster Global Tolerance? This was a very interesting read because it mentioned having students have pen pals using online tools to email or messaging to communicate with students across the globe. Technology has changed the world when it comes to communicating. When I was in elementary school, I had a pen pal from Virginia and we had to wait weeks for our letters to come in. Today the students can get instant messages from another student on the other side of the world. I liked the idea of using online tool to teach tolerance among future generations. It allows students to explore other ideas and cultures. As mentioned in the article the students were writing to each other, then at the end the students used a webcam to finally meet. These students got to meet their pen pals from South Korea via webcam which I thought was fascinating. I would love to try something similar to this with my fourth graders especially since they take the STAAR writing this would be a great way to motivate the students to get a little more excited about having to write. The students can be assigned an expository topic to write about and share with their pen pal.

https://www.edutopia.org/article/pen-pals-can-technology-foster-global-tolerance-holly-korbey

I also subscribed to Free Technology for Teachers and read Six Tools for Creating Classroom Quiz Games. I liked this because this is something I was just looking into recently. It is a comparison of classroom quiz tools which is perfect because there are several different ones and this break it down so that you can choose to use the quiz game that would be suitable for your class or topic. It shows features that they have such as whether they can play in team mode or if the students can play as homework. Therefore, you are able to see what would work for you. I knew about Kahoot and use it in my classroom but I looked into some of the other ones and they actually would work better for my upcoming unit. The game platforms that are compared in this article are Kahoot, Quizizz, Quizalize, Triventy, Socrative, and Quizlet Live. They have similar structures for example the teacher is able to review the responses in a spreadsheet once the students answer. Quizizz and Quizalize allow students to play as homework which I thought was a neat idea and something that I plan on trying in my class.

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2016/11/six-tools-for-creating-classroom-quiz.html#.WCogtvRBGhE