Monday, May 23, 2016

Student Technology Geniuses

Today, Senora Stewart's Spanish I students at West Ashley High School worked on their family naming project.  The standard project was to create a poster of their imaginary family tree with photos of their imaginary family members and Spanish naming to go with each one.  For example, a student might choose a picture of Johnny Depp as her father, and his picture would be labeled Mi padre es Johnny Depp.  Without technology, this poster project usually takes two 45 minute periods.

As a member of the Digital Learning Cohort, Senora Stewart shares a cart of iPads with another cohort member.  Wanting to digitize this project, Senora Stewart decided to use the iPads.  Using either Keynote or Google Slides, the students were given requirements to create their family tree with the same titles and pictures AND a 2 descriptive sentences in Spanish.  At this point, the project is purely substitution/augmentation on the SAMR chart, so Senora Stewart and I worked to add something new to the project.

Because foreign language standards require heavy duty communication activities, we wanted to work in a verbal recording of the presentation.  To solve this request, we decided the students could insert their slides into iMovie and then record the words on the slide for each slide.  Now, we are at modification in the SAMR model.

On the day of the project launch, I met with 1/3 of the class in a quiet space to teach them how to use iMovie.  It took approximately 25 minutes to go over how to personalize  a Google Slide show, take and insert a screen shot, add an audio recording, lengthen or shorten the picture to match the recording, add transitions, and more.

Once the training was complete, that first group became the "iMovie Geniuses" for the class.  Upon returning to the class, each Genius took on two trainees and trained them on iMovie.

Here are some pictures of the high school iMovie Geniuses training their classmates.  The students were not told to stand and teach, but some chose to.




Grammar and Writing Differentiation

For differentiation in the ELA classroom, No Red Ink is a godsend.  First offered through Edmodo as an app, it is migrating completely to its website on June 30, 2016.  See the company announcement below.

As you may have heard, NoRedInk will no longer integrate with Edmodo starting June 30, 2016. On that date, we will transition your account to the NoRedInk website. Your data and classes will travel with you, and the site will look and behave just as it always has. The only change is that you will begin logging in at noredink.com
 rather than through an Edmodo app.
On June 30, we will send instructions to this email address. If you’d like to use a different address, please launch the NoRedInk app and go to your settings page. 
You can learn more about the change here
. Also feel free to reach out with questions. 
Thanks for all that you do,
The NoRedInk Team

If you haven't already been using No Red Ink, now is the time to go to their website and set up an account.   This app offers grammar practice with parts of speech, sentences, commas, parallel structure, MLA citations and more.  This app could take you from 3rd grade through college.

If diagramming sentences did not excite you, try No Red Ink on for size.  It just might surprise you.