Collaboration

Recently, my Kindergarten class has been working with second grade tech buddies at our school. Given the second grade class is 1:1 with iPads, we are able to implement some of the ideas that are small group set of devices limits. The older students are not only more well versed in reading in writing, but they act as mentors/coaches for my Kindergarten students. Planning with my second grade colleague we are able to push content to students through Google Drive or Dropbox to create and save material in digital portfolios.

All projects we create are a collaboration due to the buddies working together, but they are also means for students to receive feedback from peers.

My goal’s for my students include:

1) Common Sense Media: teaching students digital citizenship

2) Educreations: how to curate content through a digital story

3) Prezi: having students collectively make a presentation about a given topic

4) iMovie: students have created an iMovie trailer. The first topic includes a how to book on their favorite food to make and the steps involved

5) Voicethread: collaboratively contribute to a book review  

6)Kidblog: allowing students to share photos of their work, write short descriptions and receive feedback from peers

In more detail, the Kidblog collaborative work will begin in January. Students will have the chance to each be the discussion leader where they have an opportunity to pose a question or topic to the class. Students will respond to content and give each other a compliment or ask a question. This will allow for students to practice The Partnership for 21st Century Skills, four C’s. Students will be able to communicate, collaborate, be creative and think critically. Being a leader of the discussion will allow students to simultaneously practice:

LEADERSHIP AND RESPONSIBILITY

Guide and Lead Others

• Use interpersonal and problem-solving skills to influence and guide others toward a goal
• Leverage strengths of others to accomplish a common goal
• Inspire others to reach their very best via example and selflessness
• Demonstrate integrity and ethical behavior in using influence and power

Be Responsible to Others

• Act responsibly with the interests of the larger community in mind (P21, 2013)
  
  
  

Lessons like these allow students to develop respectful and ethical minds through a variety of instructional skills. Students not only have the opportunity to work together, but learn from each other through sharing their work.

Reference

Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (2013). Framework for 21st century learning. Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/about-us/p21-framework

Smore: Spotlight on Strategies

What instructional goal/challenge does your SOS address?

According to the Common Core State Standards my students will be able to:

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.K.10 Actively engage in group reading activities with purpose and understanding.

Using the iPads and RAZ-Kids, my students have continued opportunities to work with leveled text to increase reading fluency, along with reading comprehension. As a part of my teacher evaluation this year, I'm conducting research in six week periods to measure progress of reading with my students. Having RAZ-Kids and the 1.5 million books available to my students, I believe each child will foster a love for reading as they explore fiction and non-fiction. In addition, they will have a deeper understanding of themes explored in the classroom. One of the most troubling areas for differentiating instruction is with individual reading. Our Language Arts adoption comes with three leveled readers each week, but this only supports a small percentage of the students in my classroom. I'm constantly looking for additional resources to support the needs of students that range from Guided Reading Level A-K at this point in the year. Using RAZ-Kids in conjunction with fluency mini-lessons on Educreations and Nearpod, I'm able to easily facilitate focused instruction to all students.

Providing each individual with a weekly timed fluency passage I'm able to track progress with data and reports from RAZ-Kids. Having this resource allows me to send home targeted readers for parents to support their students as part of their nightly homework. In Kindergarten, our homework policy is to read twenty minutes a night, complete reading studies and play. By working on the fluency folder, students practice letter/sound recognition, Snap Words and Lucky Listener: fluency passage. When used in conjunction with the appropriate, on level text, students are apply to become confident in their reading as they challenge themselves to read more.

What additional value does the integration of digital media bring to your idea in terms of students’ understanding of the concept or topic?

Through the integration of digital media, students are able to access content never before possible. Our classroom library has outgrown our school library in diverse content in fiction and non-fiction. They are excited to read thematic books that match our current learning, but explore personal interests. Using the weekly schedule of targeted instruction, students are able to become brave readers. The foundation they have in phonemic awareness will not only benefit their reading, but their writing. As they learn their Snap Words and the conventions of writing they will certainly improve the speed by which they read.

Spotlight on Strategies

From the Mouths of Babes

After speaking with a number of my Kindergarten students, I was able to discuss the role of creativity in our classroom. When I asked them about creativity, many of them were unsure of the meaning in isolation, however when I described examples of creativity in our school, they were anxious to explain the impact it had on our learning. Creativity not only made learning “fun,” but allowed students to “learn in different ways other than paper.” One of the best parts of being a Kindergarten teacher is having discussions where they provide their input or opinion. I commend the ATT ad campaign, “it’s not complicated” for their rendition of Kindergarten classroom. Each and every one of these commercials reminds me of being a Kindergarten teacher.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijeg-jeTUBs

Students thought that creativity was important for all students. More specifically they valued the time to play and express themselves through coloring, dance and songs. They thought art with Mrs. McTaggart was the best time to be creative because there was no “reading or writing.” They believed creativity was done often, but “we should try to use it more.”

When asked if the iPads could help us be more productive students responded with:

“Our second grade tech buddies help us be creative”

“Educreations helps me be creative.”

“I like being creative on iPads”

“Using my imagination is creative”

As one may see from their responses, creativity is important. Infusing creativity into their work allows kids to have fun while learning. Giving students choices allows for more creative work as everyone learns differently and they don’t want to create the same product. It’s important to remember that part of the fun in learning is the journey to reach the answer.

If students were to change anything about their learning using Digital Media technology they responded with:

“Everyone should get their own iPad”

“We should have Mrs. McTaggart every day.”

“More social center time because it lets us be creative with our friends.”

Overall, my five and six year olds associate creativity with having fun, art and the iPads. If they were to teleport directly to high school, they would be in for a rude awakening comparing the creativity opportunities we provide in Kindergarten. Looking forward, the biggest challenge is for students to remain as creative throughout their education as their first year of school. Before people’s opinions, stereotypes, scope and sequences rob the time they once had to explore and express themselves. It’s our duty as Kindergarten teachers to make the learning fun and creative. Like every grade, rigor has drastically changed the game leaving us with less time to promote a valuable skill we all need; creativity.

Creativity

After watching the presentation by SIr Ken Robinson, I was able to see the importance of creativity in schools. We easily forget that creativity is as important as literacy. Instead schools reward left-brain thinking instead of whole brain thinkers. Society does, as Robinson says, reward people who achieve greatness academically, such as good grades on standardized tests, along with a high GPA. However, does this really show who will be successful in life; no. More often than not we push our kids and students to get good grades, take AP classes, attend a prestigious college. Is this the answer? I’m afraid not.

Sir Ken Robinson is right with promoting creativity in our classrooms. Schools who have pulled the arts to implement more literacy and math time are doing their students a disservice. “You were probably steered benignly away from things at school when you were a kid — things you liked — on the grounds that you would never get a job doing that." Well guess what? We should encourage students to dive into art and chase their dreams because you can’t judge intelligence or future success on grades in school. Sir Ken Robinson sheds some insight into our definitions of what human intelligence is, which he sees more as a hypothetical construct rather than something you can actually measure, along with creativity. We must build on these passions and allow our students to foster creativity in their learning.

Children have extraordinary capacities for innovation", says Sir Ken Robinson, "All kids have tremendous talents and we squander them, pretty ruthlessly." The squandering comes from the hierarchy of our outdated education establishments worldwide with math and languages holding firmly to the top, followed by all humanistic, leaving the arts at the bottom. There is even a hierarchy among the arts, according to Robinson, music and painting are more valued, always, than drama and dance in schools.

Picasso says "All children are born artists, the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up." With this in mind, we must find ways to support creativity in the classroom through the arts as we mesh the standards of Common Core into our daily routines. Through the use of mobile technology and the iPad, our role as facilitators of learning and creativity has become more accessible. Looking toward the Partnership for 21st Century Learning, educators have guidance to support students in age appropriate technology based learning. When paired with tools like Educreations, iMovie, Prezi, Nearpod, Voicethread and Google Drive, students have opportunities to embody creativity in their learning each and every day.

http://www.p21.org/our-work/p21-framework

Partnership for 21st Century Learning:

Think Creatively

• Use a wide range of idea creation techniques (such as brainstorming)
• Create new and worthwhile ideas (both incremental and radical concepts)
• Elaborate, refine, analyze and evaluate their own ideas in order to improve and
• maximize creative efforts

Work Creatively with Others

• Develop, implement and communicate new ideas to others effectively
• Be open and responsive to new and diverse perspectives; incorporate group input and feedback into the work
• Demonstrate originality and inventiveness in work and understand the real world limits to adopting new ideas
• View failure as an opportunity to learn; understand that creativity and innovation is a long-term, cyclical process of small successes and frequent mistakes

Implement Innovations

• Act on creative ideas to make a tangible and useful contribution to the field in which the innovation will occur (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2013)

In addition to this material, SIr Ken Robinson has stated that teaching is an art form and standardized testing has demeaned that position. In a link from Sir Ken’s Twitter feed back in April, he links an article titled, “What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland’s Schools Success.” This article not only talks about the importance of cooperation, not competition, but of creative play in the classroom. Not only a great follow-up to the TED Talk, but food for thought on our future as educators in the United States. 

References- 

Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (2013). Creativity and innovation. Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/about-us/p21-framework/262 

Student Learning Center

In what practical ways can a media-infused presentation help foster the development of both the disciplined and synthesizing minds?

According to Gardner, approaching a topic in a number of ways allows teachers to introduce materials to address students learning style through varied entry points. Through these points, students may immerse themselves in stories, debate, dialogue, humor, role playing, graphic representations and video (Gardner, 2008). Learning opportunities like these encourage us to nourish the abilities of all students to foster a disciplined mind. Our goal is to draw on several intelligences and through the use of web 2.0 tools we can effectively create digital presentations with a variety of media that may be used as Independent Learning Centers.

Tools like Prezi allow teachers to effectively introduce content without ever interacting with a student. Teachers may now present information to students through the use of mobile technology or a computer. "The ability to knit together information from disparate sources into a coherent whole is vital today", (Gardner, p. 46). Teachers can easily provide rich media presentations that include audio, video, graphic representations and infographics. With this varied approach, students are able to make deeper connections, think critically about the material they are learning and work at their own pace. Using a variety of digital media, teachers can make age appropriate presentations that provide multiple sources of representation preparing our students for the future. “The synthesizing mind takes information from disparate sources, understands and evaluates that information objectively, and puts it together in ways that make sense to the synthesizer and also to other persons” (Gardner, p. 2). Students can access this content while in class or at home as many times as they see fit. If they didn’t understand the material, they may rewind and watch it over and over until they understand the concept. When a teacher is giving direct instruction, students hear the material once and unless they ask for clarification, the idea is gone. Here’s where Independent Learning Centers that teachers create for their students make for more meaningful learning opportunities.    

Through activities like these, teachers are able to reach more students, while demonstrating a deeper understanding of content. We are no longer looking to memorize facts, instead ways to process content with an understanding of its application. These strategies have certainly shown a shift in pedagogy that allows students to make meaning of their learning as they develop both the disciplined and synthesized mind.  

Gardner, H. (2008), 5 minds for the future. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press.

Plane Shapes Prezi

EduClipped

Having previously used Educlipper to search for Kindergarten content, I had trouble finding age appropriate materials that rivaled Pinterests abundant resources. From my experiences, Educlipper appears to be a site geared toward older students who access websites independently. In hopes of finding materials to support our upcoming units in Kindergarten, I began my search.

What are you looking for?

Language Arts- prediction, characters, setting and plot (Nothing)

Math- geometry: plane and solid shapes (Nothing)

Social Studies- Now and Long Ago (Nothing)

Science- Matter (Nothing)

With each search I found information that supported upper elementary classrooms, but not my Kindergarten students. So, I decided to hone my search on mobile technology, in hopes of finding information to support my next staff meeting presentation. So far, we have discussed digital citizenship, Educreations and iMovie. My next step is to challenge the app frenzy with some authority. Like everyone, I once became overly excited about the skill based apps available on the iPad. However, now that I’ve worked with these devices for three years in the classroom, my goal is to work with apps that support 21st century learning skills. I hope to redefine learning (SAMR Model) while students curate content that reinforces critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration. Through resources found on Educlipper, I will provide my colleagues with the support to develop rich learning environments that redefines learning.  

Please view my eduClipboard for 21st Century Learning Skills.