Iron Chef Slides

I was introduced to Iron Chef slides at sessions I have attended by Jon Corippo and Cori Orlando. The goal is to crowd-source information and have students share it with their classmates in a short amount of time.
My first activity, suggested to me by Jon Corippo, was to have students research Parkinson's Law. In the slideshow, I added my directions and the secret ingredient, which is an additional piece they have to explain in their presentation. I then added 15 blank slides and labeled them Group 1, Group 2, through 15. 
Students got into partners and I went over the directions with them. They would have 10 minutes to research Parkinson's Law AND create a single slide to share information. We discussed the difference between thin and thick slides. Thin slides, which have images, a quote, or single words, have the presenters actually talking to the audience. On the flip side we have thick slides which are filled with text and could be copied into a paragraph, these type of slides usually have the presenters reading right off the screen. I encouraged my students to create their very best thin slide.
On Google Classroom, I added the presentation to an assignment and gave them all editing rights so it would be one complete slideshow.  As soon as the students were ready, I started the time and played the "Iron Chef" theme song to add to the mood.  My kids flipped out! Some of them were really into it and others struggled where to begin. It was interesting to hear conversations during this time and how the students organized themselves with the work load.  
When it came time to present, there were a few groups who did not finish, so we had a discussion of what their game plan would be for next time and what they learned from this first activity.  
I have seen this project be done using vocabulary words, academic vocabulary, researching important people and so much more!  Jon even recommended using this with the book, Who Moved My Cheese, in place of the typical Book in an Hour activity.
You can see my students' activity below:

Happy Techie Tuesday!

It's another Techie Tuesday! I hope your week has gotten off to a great start!  Check out this edition for some great Google Chrome suggestions from #DitchBook Twitter chat, amazing TED talk suggestions and more!

11/29 Techie Tuesday

The newest edition of Techie Tuesday is out!

This week we take a look at using Google Drawings to create graphic organizers. People are always amazed when I share digitized graphic organizers. Even more amazement comes when I tell them my students made my templates. I made a few of these graphic organizers that required more time and details, such as the writing graphic organizers, but the others, including more I don’t have listed, were student made. I’m all about crowdsourcing. Why spend precious lesson planning time creating graphic organizers on the computer when you can ask your students to create their own? I always put a nice spin on it. I tell them that the one who has the nicest and most effective graphic organizer will get it saved on My Drive and then shared out as a template with the rest of the class.  Once you put that spin, they take their time and produce some amazing work trying their hardest to be selected.

The Techie Tip is about using the revision history in the Google Suite. This has been a lifesaver for me personally because my cat likes to walk across my keyboard at home when I step away. Instead of clicking undo a crazy amount of times I simply access the revision history and go back to the version of my document BEFORE I stepped away from the computer.

Revision history also comes in handy with my students. With groups you get to see who has contributed, what they have done, and how long they spent on it. Individually you get to see when the student first began working on it and when they last accessed it. This has come in handy because I’ve had students brag about getting their work done late at night, so I look up their document, show it to the class and reveal the revision history which shows they hadn’t even started working on it until late at night. We then have a long talk as a class about being responsible and getting work done in a timely fashion. During class, I can also see who’s doing what on their documents and when. So when I get reports that someone is playing around, I can look up their revision history and see what they have been doing.

Finally, we tie it all up with talking about Hour of Code which begins next week! This is huge and is such a great program to expose kids to the amazing world of coding. Hour of Code puts it all in a fun perspective and shows real-world application of math. I love that they include fun and recognizable characters that the students love. If you haven’t tried it with your class, you totally should! It’s a lot of fun, even I do it with my class. Thanks to +Rae Fearing  for sharing your Hyperdoc on Twitter!

Techie Tuesday - October 25th

Welcome to my second edition of Techie Tuesday!

The featured website in this week's edition is Class Dojo. 

Class Dojo is a fantastic site that is a new take on classroom management. Students earn and lose points based on skills/behaviors that you can select. It has basic behaviors to begin with, but then you are able to edit them or add new behaviors with point values. I really love this site because students can earn points back after they lose them. It's all about second chances and positive reinforcement.
One trick I have learned over the years, is to create a fake student. I have a student in my class named Whacky Wilbur. He serves as my warning when I am about to take away points. Typically all I have to do is give Whacky Wilbur a few negative points, the students hearing the sound and straighten up. It has been a lifesaver for those times when it's more than a couple students being disruptive.

Ghostly Goals

Goals are extremely beneficial to students, especially when students intentionally set them. There's no more "I'm going to get Honor Roll this quarter" generic goals. Now they have to explain the steps they are going to take in order to earn Honor Roll. Short term and long term goals are both equally important. I have students who need those shorter ones that help keep them on track for the larger goals, and then I have students who are always thinking big picture and looking further down the road. 
In the Hyperdoc above I included links to what my 5th and 6th grade goal sheets look like, as well as a link to a very simple SMART goal that can be used both long and short term. At my school we are fortunate enough to have planners, and that is where my students write their SMART goals.

Techie Tip of the week

A very useful trick in Google Drive is starring items. There are documents I use on a daily basis, ranging from my morning directions to my Math and ELA pacing guides. Instead of searching for them every single morning, I use the "Add Star" option.
When you come across a file or folder you would like quick access to, right click on it then select "Add Star". After that your file or folder will appear in the "Starred" section on the left hand side of your Google Drive. Isn't that handy?

Is there anything you'd like to see featured in Techie Tuesday? Any techie tips for using Google Drive you'd like to share?  Post below in the comments!

Open House

Every year in May my district has Open House. This is basically a showcase of student work in our classrooms. My students had a lot to show off this year, especially with technology!  Here are some pictures from my classroom:

Overview of my classroom.

Showing off tech projects: There were 6 laptops lined up here so the students could show their parents their Minecraft projects (MinecraftEDU in the Classroom) and then we had a few other laptops so the parents could see the Guardians of Time website the students helped build (Guardians of Time Project Part 2)

Several mornings a week the students would come in and have a writing prompt or picture posted on the board. Each of them had created their own Google Slides presentation to write in. I had my students choose their favorite morning writing, edit it, and then illustrate a picture of it to showcase on the board.

This is a fun project where the students get to create their own amusement park. The students get to sketch it out and find the ordered pairs of their attractions on graph paper. Then the students have to write a descriptive paper talking about their park, from the sights and smells all the way to descriptions of the attractions. If you would like to check out more details, you can download all the directions here.

I was a little nervous about this craft because there were so many pieces to it, but my kids LOVED it! This really helped them understand photosynthesis. You can check out the craft here.

My students also did a craft to learn about plant and animal cells. It was very detailed. This craftivity was made by Runde's Room and you can get it here.

I LOVE this wall! My kids had so much fun doing our Science Vocab Wall. You can find the freebie from The Science Penguin here. Instead of having it just a picture, I had my kids draw a line towards the bottom and writing what the words means as well.

The One and Only Ivan extension activity that I discussed here. My students had to take a stance on animals being held in captivity. Their response was amazing.

I really enjoy when the students get into a book and start relating to the characters. This is our Character Trait Stick Quilt. The students were given eight craft sticks and had to use four sticks to write four quotes and/or character traits from the book, and then do three sticks with symbols or illustrations that would represent that character and then the last stick was for the character's name.

Student Tech Team

For the past several years, before 1:1, my school has had a student tech team. We have learned a lot about managing it throughout the years, although we still have a lot more to learn.  In my school, I am one of two tech teachers who helps the other teachers out before we have to call out IT. We do our best to take care of little problems, but were having troubles getting to everything so we call in the student Tech Team.
Every year I hold a meeting for those interested in Tech Team and a lot of kids sign up, but only a handful remain steady. We train these kids in phases.
**Note: Our school is now 1:1 with Acer laptops running the Ubermix. The students have their own WiFi network that is separate from the staff network.**
This year we started just going over the basics: how to connect to the internet, how to troubleshoot a connection or a basic computer error.  Once they conquered those we moved on to more difficult tasks such as reimaging a laptop (our student laptops run the Ubermix so reimaging restores original settings), troubleshooting printer errors, and even checking networking errors.  My students blow me away with how quickly they catch on and how they're always eager to learn more.
With the school year ending, now when I receive an email request for help I can quickly go over what I want my students to check and look for and they can troubleshoot it before I have to! This has made the turn around time on tech help requests so much faster!
Here are some of the crazy things my students have done this year with Tech Team:
1. At the beginning of the year, one of my 4th grade teachers was having networking issues and her student laptops would just not hold a connection. Two team members went to her room, troubleshooted all of the connections and then found the issue was with the router placement in the room (they knew this just from hearing me talk about it in class from a conference I went to). My girls then disconnected the router, placed it elsewhere in the room, reconnected all the laptops (including the teacher) and the network was up and running again!
2. I received an email about a teacher having an issue with the sound on the projector. I showed my Tech Team member what cords to look for, what buttons to check, and how to check the sound output and then I sent her to the other teacher. My student came back with notes to report what all she checked and the cords that were or were not connected. IT was contacted to check on it further for the missing cords, but the problem was solved within 10 minutes of my Tech Team member going over there.
Tech Team doesn't only troubleshoot and help with problems, they also teach classes!
Currently, two of my girls are working with a 2nd grade class and teaching them how to use their laptops. They have taken the kids through Google Docs, Slides, and Drawing as well as Edmodo and Moby Max. Those little 2nd graders are flying through their technology lessons!
Moral of this story: Do not be afraid to turn over power to your students! I have been amazed at the growth of my Tech Team members. They are starting to learn things on their own because they want to understand more of what is going on with the technology. Does your school have any type of technology team set up?

Guardians of Time Project Part 2

I started this project before Spring Break, so over Spring Break my students had the 'homework' to write their superhero origin stories and draw a picture of their superhero. I was shocked when 80% of them came back ready to go!
I wanted this project to be published somewhere and an easy place for my students to work collaboratively with each other. I decided to create a Google Site for the students to publish their work on.  My students were very excited about being published on a website.
Google Sites and Google Docs work VERY well together.
I started with a basic site. My students helped me brainstorm ideas for our agency name that all their heroes would work under and the name of the project itself. I told them that this was my first time doing this project and wanted it to be a collaborative effort amongst all of us.
Once we decided on the project name, Guardians of Time, and our agency name, H.E.R.O.E.S., my wonderfully talented brother-in-law created our graphic for our agency. I posted this to the site to make it feel 'professional' for the students. They got the biggest kick out of it. 

After creating a page for the superhero origin stories, I knew I would have difficulty keeping up with the site itself with adding links and documents. In their superhero teams, each team selected a leader and this leader was in charge of keeping their web page updated. Crowdsourcing at it's finest. :)

The team leader updated their team mission page, journal page, and their interactive story page (which I'll get to later).  Below are some screen shots to the webpage and a link. I am not sure how much you will be able to see at the link because my district has a closed server through Google. 

Link: Guardians of Time Homepage 

Here's the full site picture. 

Here's the menu side bar with the different parts of our site. 

If you have any questions feel free to comment or post on my Facebook page. 

Google Apps for Education

With the roll out of the 1:1 implementation, I was thrilled to find out we would be using Google Apps for Education (GAFE). I had been using Google Docs, personally, for several years now and had even used it for my school work as well. My students and I worked through GAFE together as we brainstormed ideas on how to use it in the classroom and how to increase collaboration.  The 'Share' button became my students best friend! For those of you unfamiliar with GAFE, the 'Share' button allows you to share that document with another person and they can work on the document at the same time as you. It's great for collaboration!
It was hysterical when I first started quick reading their essays during class. I would pop into one students writing while they were working on it (They were all required to share their work with me). The entire group that person was in would fall silent and stare at that one computer screen as I made a few quick comments on the paper. I would here "Miss Camp's posting on my document" in whispers across the room as I hopped from essay to essay. Here are a couple of things we did using GAFE:

Amazingly, my Special Angles Artwork project was featured over at Alice Keeler's blog here:
Math: Creating Angles in Google Drawing