Literacy Project - Kidblog

I used Kidblog for my literacy project.  My students are blogging with another second grade class in West Hartford.  I found Kidblog to be an easy program to use.  It was easy to set up my class and then link with my former colleagues class.  The students are able to navigate around the blog easily and they can't really do any harm while they are on there.  I have found a couple of posts that they deleted by mistake, but since everything they do is moderated (posts, comments, trash) I was able to retrieve the posts. Some of the students have really gotten excited about blogging and comment from home too. I also am posting "questions of the day" from me based on something that we learned in class.  They have an opportunity to answer the question at home or the next morning on the computers in our classroom.  This is a great way to check in quickly with them to see if they understood what we learned in class.

For my literacy project both classes read and compared Cinderella and Yeh Shen (Chinese version of Cinderella).  The students had to write a post about the stories and state one thing that was the same, one thing that was different, and tell which story they liked best.  Comparing to version of a story is part of the Common Core for second grade (CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.2.9 Compare and contrast two or more versions of the same story (e.g., Cinderella stories) by different authors or from different cultures).  We are waiting to hear back from our blog buddies about what they found to be the same and different when they compared the two stories.

Click on the picture below for a link to our class blog (kidblog.org/mrsmckenziesbloggers/)

Blogging in the computer lab

Digital Story - Polygons

We worked on a unit in math on polygons.  The students need to identify triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, and hexagons by the number of sides and angles each shape has.  This unit covers Common Core Standard 2.G.A.1 Reasoning with Shapes and Their Attripbutes. The main focus of the unit is for the students to be able to sort the shapes by their attributes. The Digital Story shows pictures from the artist Rob Gonsalves. The students needed to identify a polygon from the picture and explain how they knew it was that shape.  The students worked off of scripts that they filled out the day before and practice.  I used iMovie to add music and labels to video I took with my phone.

Web 2.0 - Class Reflection

 

I was brave and added my own voice to my Voki!  I don't really like how I sound, but it was very easy to do.  I know my students are going to enjoy hearing me (or themselves) in future Vokis.

I can't believe this class is over already!  I am so proud of all of us for how much we have learned.  Before this class I had never heard of Animotos or digital stories, and I didn't know how to begin using a blog and Wiki.  Now I am happy to report that I am addicted to blogging and my students are too! These are all great tools to use in our teaching to enhance students' literacies and promote collaborative thinking.

Diigo

Here is the link to my Diigo library.  I have to admit that at first I wasn't too excited about Diigo.  After spending time trying it out I have changed my mind!  I wish that I had know about it sooner.  I have been using Pinterest for a while and will continue to do so, but with Diigo I feel that it is easier and quicker to locate things.  I am finding that the more I use Pinterest, that the more crowded my boards are becoming which makes it hard to go back and find what I am looking for.  Diigo's tags and lists features make it easier to see what you have saved.  I do like that Pinterest shows you the picture of the idea.

At first I did not use the list feature, but when I went back to create lists I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to add previously saved items to the new lists.  Each time I save something new to my library, it is just one click to easily add that item to the appropriate list.

I also saw the "play as webslide" feature on the lists page.  It shows the web pages from the library in a slide show.  This can be helpful to help you remember what was on the page that you wanted to save instead of looking at multiple pages on the same topic.

Digital Story Telling

Here is my first attempt at my digital story project.  I hope that this is OK because it isn't in a story format as far as having characters, setting, plot, etc.  We are studying polygons in math so I had the students apply what they are learning about the different number of sides and angles that polygons have.  I found an optical illusion calendar with the artwork of Rob Gonsalves and had my students choose a picture they liked.  They had to find a polygon and then explain how they knew it was a polygon.  This was also a great activity to promote speaking.  Some of them had a hard time speaking loud enough in the microphone, but most of them were relaxed enough and enjoyed it.

Story Kit app

Check out this post on one of the Manchester cohort's blogs.  It is about a free app called Story Kit (I think for the iPad).  Kids can draw pictures for a story, type words, and record themselves reading the story.  I think some of my reluctant writers would love it.  The teacher who posted it also uses it to create her own mentor text for writing.

More Digital Storytelling Tools

This site has a lot of digital story telling tools to try out!  I don't know which one to use for my project.