Audio Recording

We have our students orally sharing throughout the school day. To record their ideas we often move to the writing process. Sometimes students use multimedia especially with visuals to represent their ideas. We also have apps and software that give us another way to help students share their thinking. Students can audio record using software like Audacity or GarageBand on their computers or apps like Audioboo or Voice Record Pro on their tablet to easily make their thinking and understanding available for others.

The following are some helpful blog posts to filled with ideas about how to use audio recording in your classroom:

• 5 Ways to Use Audioboo in Your Classroom
• Examples of AudioBoo Use in the Classroom
• Tutorials and Uses of Audioboo for Teaching and Learning

Note: Instructional technologists like myself work best when we can work from the instructional and learning needs of our teachers and students. With this in mind, please send me any instructional activities, student learning needs, learning goals, PD requests, etc. that you have that might be supported and enhanced by ICL. Thanks!

Mind Maps

We use all types of graphic organizers in our teaching. One excellent tool that especially supports spatial thinking and making thinking visible is the concept or mind map. One way to use a concept map to support our units of inquiry is to have students record the main concept for the unit to then write down their understandings and connections to it as they progress through the unit. One can also have students list the lines of inquiry to record their learning. 

A wonderful way to use concept maps for blended learning is to use an online provider like Mindmeister. Students can share their Mindmeister concept maps with you to provide access to their thinking-- for formative assessment of their understanding as the unit progresses. Here is a mind map template for essential questions (similar to lines of inquiry) that one teacher provided his students. Collaboration is easy if you decide to partner students, or place them in groups to work on any type of concept map. The key is that they can work on it during and after school via the web. Take a look a blog post describing how students used concept maps to answer the essential questions for their units of study.

There are several iPad apps that give students a quick and easy way to make their thinking visible. Students can drag ideas around the map grouping them and making connections. An added benefit is that many apps give students the opportunity to insert images, sounds and video to further develop and represent their thinking. 

Book Creation and Digital Storytelling

Having students demonstrate their understanding by creating short paper books is a common elementary school practice. There are many iPad apps (even more) and online resources like Storybird that empower students to be writers and publishers. As students move into the upper levels of the Primary School, they can collaborate to write digital textbooks using tools like iBooks Author or Google Sites. Teachers can be publishers as well, especially when the given paper textbook doesn't provide all that is needed and you want to include multimedia resources. Digital and online books are great differentiators of content by providing information in several modalities (images, audio, and video) and languages. Here is a sample online book. You can download free iBooks on your iPad by using the iBooks app. 

To deepen your understanding of creating iBooks, look to follow the work of Peter Pappas who is a leader in the field. Enjoy Peter Pappas' blog and listen to Edtech Co-Op podcasts where he shares his insights- podcast 26 and podcast 27. You can also download his free iBook on how to create iBooks.

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Learning Activity Types

Dr. Judi Harris and Dr. Mark Hofer of the College of William and Mary School of Education are leaders in the field of curriculum-based technology integration. They use an approach to technology integration that combines technology, pedagogy and content knowledge in a construct called TPACK. To support the convergence and application of these three areas of knowledge, Dr. Harris and Dr. Hofer worked with educators in multiple disciplines to find ways to enhance instructional strategies with technology. The result of their work can be found on the Learning Activity Types Web site in the form of instructional strategies (i.e., learning activity types) for teaching literacy, math, music, PE, science, language arts, social studies, visual arts and world languages. The instructional strategies in themselves are worth reviewing even if you don't want to use the technology that can support them. Note that some of the listed technologies are a bit out of date, though. Please let me know if you find instructional strategies that you would like me to find more up to date technologies to enhance them. 

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Video in the Primary School Classroom

FYI:

-The next Teachers Teaching Teachers (TTT) workshop will be on the topic of screencasting video creation. It will take place October 7th at 3:45 with a second session at 4:00. The sessions will be in room 209.

-There are new mailing groups in Gmail that list just the homeroom teachers and assistants for each grade. So when you just want to contact the four teachers at each grade level and assistants in early childhood, start typing for example “Grade 3” and you should see the choice of “Grade 3 Homeroom” to choose from.

-I hope these weekly PD newsletters are helpful. One of the shifts in professional learning is to make PD much more personalized with teachers drawing from a variety of digital sources including blogs, podcasts, Pinterest, Twitter, etc. to subscribe to specific providers of content to best meet one’s professional and personal learning needs. With this in mind, I am going to stop sending out this e-mail newsletter to the entire staff. You have a lot on your plates. So if you want to continue to receive this newsletter, please just REPLY to this email. I will then add you to the subscription list. Now to the topic of this newsletter...

Video in the Primary Classroom

There are so many ways that students can produce videos to share their understanding. A few possibilities are documentaries, book reviews, tutorials, interviews, TED Talks, and news reports whether current day or in a historical context. Video production supports project-based learning and collaboration. Screencasting on the iPads gives students the opportunity to use visuals, annotation and voice to make their thinking visible. To read more about video, view examples and see the latest video production from Cecilia and Carmen, go to the Videography section of the Web Resources for Learning website. And don’t forget to let me know when I video record a lesson from your classroom.