Creativity

I enjoyed reading the article, "Education for Innovation."  Here are some of the ideas that stuck out to me form the reading:

1. "If the core of the knowledge society is creativity, then the key task for educators is to prepare learners to be capable of participating creatively in an innovation economy."

2. "What classroom environments lead to creative learning?"

3. "To educate for the innovation economy, schools must provide students with opportunities to engage in collaborative knowledge building activities, through disciplined improvisations."

4. "Imagine the immense benefits if we unlocked the creative potential of the world’s population by systematically implementing creative teaching throughout schools."

After viewing the ISTE standards, I see that creativity is described as applying existing knowledge to generate new ideas, products, or processes.  This means creating original works as a means of personal or group expression.

I plan to do a project with my students that inspires them to create a poem from readwritethink.com.  Here is how the project connects to the standards:

1.  Creativity and Innovation - Students will create an original poem on the website.  They will use knowledge about poetry to create a poem.

2. Communication and Collaboration - Students will discuss their poem ideas with a partner.  When the finished product is created, we will collaborate and share with another classroom through a digital media presentation.

3.  Research and Information Fluency - Students will be using one source and media.  They will need to select a poem topic using digital tools.

4. Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making - Students will plan and organize their poem in order to complete their project.

5.  Digital Citizenship - Students will use a jumpcode to access the poetry website.  They will practice digital citizenship by only going to the correct website.  Later, I can show some high ability learners how to use a haiku website to extend their thinking.

6.  Technology Operations and Concepts - Students will need to understand and use technology systems to create the poem. They will then email me a saved PDF version.  This will allow me create a presentation with their recorded voice reading the poem.

21st Century Writing Workshop

After readying the article about Mrs. Bogard's classroom, I am very motivated to increase technology use during writing time.  I often think writing involves a pencil and paper, but I am intrigued with her use of ipods and Livescribe Pulse Smartpens.

I used Popplet Lite to create a graphic organizer.  I love this app!  I read the directions on how to create a graphic organizer and was finished in 5 minutes.  I felt it was very user friendly.  I had no trouble as I added text, more bubbles, and pictures.  Here is the graphic organizer I plan to use during writing time.

Students can sketch in the larger boxes.  The smaller boxes will be useful when they go to write their five page small moment story.  This will definitely help with the planning stages of writing.  I also know students will be more motivated to write when technology is involved!

Flipped Classroom

I am very interested in the idea of a flipped classroom.  Allowing students to watch the lesson ahead of time can allow the teacher to have more time to coach and facilitate learning instead of instructing.  I chose to make an EduCreations video for our shared reading lesson this week.  We are studying how to follow directions found in informational text.

Here is my link: https://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/screen-cast-text-features/30194881/?s=jLBDgt&ref=appemail
*I did notice that the format is different when I play it on my ipad vs. the computer.  I'll have to look into this more...

I plan to show the video on Thursday and then email it to parents with my weekly newsletter.  This way, students can access the directions at home if they plan to make one of the activities in the lesson (i.e. directions about planting seeds, making a guitar, and making a shaker).

I look forward to intentionally planning more ways to utilize screencasts for my students and their learning.

Digital Citizenship

Technology is all around us.  We teach students how to be safe, respectful, and responsible in the classroom and this connects with how to be safe, respectful, and responsible when using technology.  After viewing the digital curriculum, I see several lessons I can teach to first graders.

1.  Keep It Private:  Our first grade curriculum covers safety at home.  We discuss several types of safety including: how to be safe around strangers, what to say on the phone, how to be safe during fires, and how to be safe on a computer.  While learning about computer safety, I could teach this lesson in order to help children understand what information they should and should not give out on the internet.  We can discuss what kinds of information should be private and effective usernames.

2. Sending Emails: Students go to a writing center each week.  Here they can choose to write a letter or a card to someone.  I could easily integrate this lesson on how to send emails during this time.  Students know that I email families each week with my newsletter.  They also know I email updates and pictures throughout the week.  Every student has an email address through LPS, but I have never introduced it to them.  It would be powerful to allow them the opportunity and resources to learn this life-long skill.  Currently, several students tell me, "My mom is going to text you about...."  What the student means is that mom is going to email me.  Some don't understand exactly what emailing entails, so this lesson would be helpful.

3. Using Keywords:  Students are full of questions and the desire to get the answers.  With the internet at our fingertips, I am often the one who will search for the answer to a student's question.  However, I could teach this lesson about keywords to empower students to find the information on their own.  I could connect this to the essential question each week.  For example, this week we are studying inventions.  Students could search for other inventions by using keywords.  Also, students could use the keyword lesson to find information for their animal research unit.  They currently use Pebblego to find information, but keywords would broaden their resources.