#edtech #edchat
I just uploaded a new episode of The Elementary Tech Teacher’s Journal.
http://www.bradflickinger.com/Brad_Flickinger/Podcast/Podcast.html
#edtech #edchat #elearning
Today I would like to tell you about an incredible project I did with my 5th grade students last year. Like many of you, I was struggling to find great tech projects that are full of 21st Century Skills, to solve this I turned to Atomic Learning. Soon I was searching through their ready-made lessons that are full of 21st Century Skills. It wasn’t long before I found a project that was age and tech appropriate for my students.
The project was called “What’s for breakfast?” and here is the description from the Atomic Learning website:
This project promotes health literacy and supports awareness of global health issues, through the exploration of how to make sound nutritional choices about the foods we eat for breakfast. The example project shown here was created using Excel 2007; however, any spreadsheet application would work just as well. We will be creating a spreadsheet to track and compare three breakfast menus. We will begin by searching for and evaluating Web resources about nutrition. After we input nutritional data into our spreadsheet, we will compare the nutritional value of different choices through the use of graphs and charts.
Student sharing data from "What's for Breakfast?"
#edtech #edchat
I just uploaded a new episode of my Elementary Tech Teacher’s Journal podcast.
Episode 2
http://www.bradflickinger.com/Brad_Flickinger/Podcast/Entries/2011/1/24_Episode_002.html
#edtech #edchat
I just uploaded a new episode of my Elementary Tech Teacher’s Journal podcast.
http://www.bradflickinger.com/Brad_Flickinger/Podcast/Entries/2011/1/17_Episode_001.html
Enjoy!
#edtech #edchat
I have been hearing the ideas about building your own PLN for the past year and even though I have most of the parts already in place, I think that it is high time for me to get serious about doing it up right.
Step 1: Understand exactly what a PLN is.
A PLN or Personal Learning Network is really a collection of online and offline resources that you will use on a usual basis to make you better at whatever you do. Since I am a tech teacher, my PLN will be resources that will make me a better tech teacher.
- Image via CrunchBase
Step 2: Start with Twitter.
I don’t know why I started with Twitter, but to me making room in my hectic schedule to read 140 characters is a lot easier that finding time to read a book on edtech.
I have had a twitter account for years, but if you don’t have one, or you have no idea what twitter is, a good place to start is the video below. When I searched Atomic Learning I found 57 video tutorials about Twitter — so you have no excuse not to set up a Twitter account.
Once you have Twitter you now need some people to follow. After using the search function for edtech and school technology to find some people to follow, I clicked the follow link on the people I liked and thought could help build my PLN. If you want to see who I am following, just click the link below.
Brad Flickinger’s Twitter Account
The next thing I did was to set up some twitter searches for the hashtags (#) that people from my list where using as a sort of keyword for subjects that might help me as well. I found these hashtags to follow on Twitter.
- #edtech
- #edchat
- #elearning
- #elemchat
Now I can follow Tweats about these subjects for my PLN without following individual people. Following these hashtags really gives me a “feel” for what is happening in the world of edtech — this keeps me up-to-date. I use a program called TweetDeck to keep it all straight on my laptop. For example, right now while writing this blog post; Twitter is buzzing about tablet computers and teaching — cool!
Already now that I am a little more organized, I feel like my PLN is starting to look better. The last thing I did was to schedule a little time three times a week to check in on Twitter and see what is happening. I feel smarter already.
Check out Part 2 in a few days.
Related articles
- Twitter as PLN (twowritingteachers.wordpress.com)
- My Personal Learning Network is the most awesomest thing ever!! (elearnspace.org)
- Developing and Deepening your PLN with Twitter – Hashtags For Educators (newtrierlibrary.blogspot.com)
- The Power of the PLN – Getting Started (List 1) (citrushightechnology.com)
Young students can’t podcast.
Young students can’t make movies.
etc. etc. etc.
The truth is they can.
But does this mean that we throw the idea of doing age-appropriate lessons out the window? No, of course not. We do not ask a second grader to blog the same way that we would ask a high school senior, but they both can blog.
When I first started to do movie making with my fourth and fifth grade students, many of my colleagues thought I was crazy. And perhaps I was, but I at least wanted to give it a try. So I started with the idea of how could I make movie making age-appropriate for my young students? And how could I do it with just a few pieces of inexpensive equipment? Since I knew nothing about movie making, I studied the Video Storytelling Guide on Atomic Learning. Now I knew about shots, audio, and filmmaking.
The next thing I did was to sit down with the students to get the outline for the movie. The students had been studying dramatic writing so they knew all about how to tell a good story with a beginning, a middle and an end. Since we knew the limitation of our equipment we decided on a few rules:
1) It had to be shot in the school. We had no money to go somewhere else to shoot.
2) Any dialogue would have to be done using a close-up shot so that our audio would be good.
3) All the shots would have to be simple, static shots. We would avoid panning or tilting the camera.
Soon we had our movie outline and script, so we were now able to start shooting. We broke the script down into a shot list and from there we started to shoot. One of the funny things that we didn’t see coming was that the actors had to remember to where the same clothes every Wednesday so that the shots would match.
Both the students and myself were amazed at how well the movie turned out.
Dude! Where’s my pencil? http://www.youtube.com/user/bethkeelementary#p/u/0/9TEBqs7kX2k
#edtech #edchat #elemchat
Although I have been doing a weekly news show with my elementary students for the past two years, I am not happy with how it looks. Getting 8, 9 and 10 year-olds to do a news show is tough enough, but a high quality news show is next to impossible. But I like to give my students impossible tasks and see what they can do — most times they blow me away.
So I stewed about the news show all during my winter break. I wrote and rewrote the outline for the show about 10 times before I came up with a format I liked and what I thought my students would be capable of doing. So today on my first day back (and without students) I started to rearrange the studio to reflect the new outline. Granted, my studio is really small so there is not a lot to work with, but I went forward anyhow.
I hope to have a new show using the new format some time next week.
I am very interested to see what other schools are doing for morning news… just comment below to tell me what you are doing.
