Week 2: Empowering Young Learners to Reach New Heights
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As I browsed through the various webinars and became familiar with the vast array of topics featured, I found one that really piqued my interest. (...this was evidently only after I was 40 minutes deep, ferociously taking notes on a webinar that I had chosen based off of the title and NOT so soon decided, "Hmm? Funny?... This really doesn't have anything to do with my major or teaching objective?!" Hence, I soon made a shift in direction, discovering rule number one in the world of webinars--titles can be a little bit deceiving.) Pushing forward, I did manage to find a webinar that was very informative and that I am confident will have a positive influence on teaching young learners, particularly in grades K-5.
I am pursuing my Master's in Elementary Education; hence, I was thrilled to find a webinar located in http://edtechteacher.org/webinars/ targeting my specific goals and demonstrating the various hands-on technologies that we, as educators, can integrate into the classroom. The webinar entitled, "Empowering Learners with Technology" featured a panel of four knowledgable enthusiasitic presenters located throughout the east coast from New Hampshire to New Jersey. Speakers Beth Holland, Suzy Brooks, Samantha Moora, and Brenda Doubette (all of whom share an experienced background in teaching elementary aged students) enlighten the audience with recommendations on website resources, and numerous programs to integrate into effective teaching. I especially appreciate that they each demonstrated how it works and provide excellent examples of children's work to give viewers a concrete visual.
I am pursuing my Master's in Elementary Education; hence, I was thrilled to find a webinar located in http://edtechteacher.org/webinars/ targeting my specific goals and demonstrating the various hands-on technologies that we, as educators, can integrate into the classroom. The webinar entitled, "Empowering Learners with Technology" featured a panel of four knowledgable enthusiasitic presenters located throughout the east coast from New Hampshire to New Jersey. Speakers Beth Holland, Suzy Brooks, Samantha Moora, and Brenda Doubette (all of whom share an experienced background in teaching elementary aged students) enlighten the audience with recommendations on website resources, and numerous programs to integrate into effective teaching. I especially appreciate that they each demonstrated how it works and provide excellent examples of children's work to give viewers a concrete visual.
As I navigated my way through the infinite world of webinars I was guided by my main objective--to find quality technological approaches that I could utilize with elementary aged school children. What struck me in particular about the technologies being featured in the classroom by these presenters is that they didn't compromise the integrity of the lesson, nor did they stifle the creativity of the young learners being taught. This had been a definite area of concern that had been dispelled once I witness the quality of work manifested via means of the technology being featured. In fact, I found these approaches in building a lesson to be quite to the contrary! The technology featured gave a fresh and innovative approach to engaging the students, while creating a solid platform for which they each had the opportunity to gain a more in-depth understanding of the common core content in fun and creative ways. Panel presenter, Samantha Moore, boasting over 20 years of experience teaching 1st-2nd graders in public school and now a Technology Specialist summarizes the intent of their webinar's instruction by saying, "We focus on students as creators not just consumers. Giving these fantastic tools, how can we create? How can we curate? How can we communicate with our students? As we use these tools we realized our goal is to create active learning environments to promote self-directed, passionate, autonomous learners who desire mastery."
As such, I am thrilled to share with you all some tools that I learned about that are web based as well as useful on mobile devises.
- ABCya.com Abcya.com is a teacher-created website which provides fun and educational games and apps for kids to use under the guidance of their parents and teachers. The games do not collect personal information and children and adults are able to visit the site and play the games without providing any personal information to ABCya.com. To learn more about the author and how the site was created please read the ABCya! story
-NO log in
-30 Sec of audio recording
-Works on an device
-Share by email, link, embed code or social media
- ChatterPix Kids Taking a spin off of Croakit.com, this website is a brillant way to create talking photos and images. One example of its use one teacher gave was to pick a person that is not on a coin, put it on the coin and narrate the picture. Children took picture saved it to photos, pulled it to coins and saved it, pulled it into ChtterPix Kids. Students learned multiple strategies with this assignment. Silly and fun way to present information and learn language.
- Padlet As demonstrated in class, Suzy Brooks expanded upon Padlet and provided exciting ways to engage students, parents, and the community. Like "online sticky notes." Easy entry level that can grow with students as there skills grow.
- Great for reluctant writers
- Good for quite consumers that you know have some great ideas, great
Used Padlet for families. Created parent Pad that encouraged students to power them through the rest of the year. First post guided them to self-teach and parents added images and students loved to visit the blog.
Connected to the greater community. Projects on display. So much work had been done for the event and created a dynamic site that interacted with the community and extended the event beyond the confids of the school wall. Parents and interested parties could take picture and post. Teacher could monitor pictures, post, ect. and post to the site. People could keep coming back to the site and access it, and benefit from it.
- Padlet & QR Codes Instead of having everyone grab markers and run up to the sticky chart. Student scanned QR Code and it was a direct link that allowed them to voice their thoughts on what they knew about frogs. It is a way of extended the physical (Chart) to the digital.
- Popplet Add concept map that allows you to add videos, photos, graphs, etc. Can be used to showcase students work also.
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"Popplet was perfect because they can type text and draw. They could type the number sentence for expanded form, and then draw the greater than / less than symbol. We’ve been drawing dots on the symbols to help us remember what they mean – 2 is greater than 1, so the 2 dots should point to the bigger number. There is an EXCELLENT post over at Math Coach’s Corner about helping students understand these symbols, and why we shouldn’t call them alligators. Check it out!"--Meghan Zigmond
Course Learning Outcomes:
Learn ways to promote student reflection using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify students' conceptual understanding. This learning objective was met on varying levels. First off, I personally found this webinar to be extremely insightful. I am currently testing out the educational activities with my son and daughter (ages 7 & 5). I believe this webinar allowed me to gain an in depth understanding of not only the terminology in technology, but the wide range of tools that can be easily utilized within the classroom. Honestly, the entire webinar and content featured was new to me, and I enjoyed it immensely. This webinar really drove home various examples of how educators can use the technology as a collaborative tool. This was made very evident as Samantha Moora explains, "Yes, we are talking about even going all the way down to Kindergarten! It can be done as it is appropriate to them, but giving opportunity to use these tools, and use them in ways that are meaningful to them…" Throughout the webinar the presenters really focus on demonstrating how students can use various technological resources to gain a broader understanding of the content. Or in other words, to clarify student's conceptual understanding. Moreover, I can completely see myself utilizing these user friendly tools to create engaging lessons that I believe young children will be delighted with. I am also in the midst of deciding whether to be a troop leader for the youngest girl scouts in our area. I think that Padlet would be a great way to connect with the parents and students. I am very excited to utilize the resources that I researched! I see this as a great growing opportunity for everyone!
Demonstrate through application how state and national standards are implemented within the curriculum. The presenters/instructors in "Empower Learners with Technology" are clearly attuned with the Common Core Curriculum Standards. The presenters make several references throughout the webinar on how a particular technological resource may be utilized to meet these standards in literacy, math, social studies, and science. For example, instructors highlighted Popplet as a tool that can actually enhance a students knowledge of math. They demonstrate how students could use Popplet to illustrate the concept of: greater than, equal to, and less than. Moreover, Brenda Doucette, Instructional Technology Specialist in middle school, makes direct reference to the Common Core standards as she demonstrates innovative tools such as Google Lit. Trips for Young Readers that allow students to take a tour of a whole book. She goes on to explain how the .kmz file opens up and students can tour a part of the book, comprehension question are given, photos accompany content, and students have popup windows that they can open up to give a closer look to a particular area.
With the Common Core Curriculum in mind, I have personally experienced some additional websites that are fantastic for reading comprehension and math building skills. My son practiced on these sites in his Kindergarten Class in CT, and it was truly remarkable. The math program Xtramath.com races the student to beat the teacher. We noticed a measurable difference in my son learning math fact and building his accuracy and speed. At 6 years old he was able to do addition up to 11 in less than 3 seconds! Also, it's a great way for parents and teachers to gauge their student/child's progress. Furthermore, Razkids.com was a great reading comprehension website. Stories are read to the children and then they answer questions and test their comprehension. As the students skills progress so does the skill level of stories. They are a great way to build vocabulary and reading comprehension.
In conclusion, whether your students have access to iPads, Chromebooks, laptops, or a computer lab, technology can empower even the youngest learners. In this webinar we explored a handful of fantastic tools that nurture essential K-5 developmental and learning skills that you can use immedietely. I would highly recommend this webinar "Empowering Learners with Technology" to everyone as a very valuable resource. Enjoy!
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