Google Expeditions: More Than a Fun Tool

Virtual field trips are an awesome way to help students visualize what they are learning about or making connections to their learning. Since we already have a kit... Expeditions are very inexpensive field trips.

For example I had a third grade class that was reading a book that took place in Egypt and that classroom teacher took her students, using Google Expeditions, to Egypt to see the Pyramids. Another class, 2nd grade, was reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and they virtually visited a chocolate factory. There are a lot of Expeditions that can be used with science or social studies standards. You could use an Expedition as a writing prompt. If you think outside of the box, any of the Expeditions that include numbers in the information for each slide can be used to create math problems. See video below.

I created a Google Expedition for the Tour of Standish so that 3rd grade classes at Edna Libby and Steep Falls don't have to take the tour via a bus ride. Link Here Also below is a tutorial video on how to search for Expeditions on your iPad. On your laptop search here or check out this Doc. When you make an appointment with me please let me know which tour you would like to do.

Using Google Expeditions for Math

Google Expeditions AR: Great for when you don't have a kit!

How to Search for Google Expedition Tours on an iPad

Book Creator Ideas for All Subjects

Book Creator is one of my favorite tools for elementary students. In my school district we use it on iPads, however it can be used with any device. Tech Coaches in MSAD6 have created several digital interactive workbooks for educators to share with students. Click here for access. Some of the digital interactive workbooks include Next Generation Science Standards books for most grades. The interactive science workbooks have links to interactive games and videos that open up within Book Creator so that students don't get lost searching around Safari or YouTube. Students add to the workbooks as they learn. Lastly at the end of most of the science workbooks there is a document that shows what standards were covered and resources for educators. Many grades have more than one science digital workbook available and there is more in the works. Also there are a variety of literacy books like Vocabulary Journal, B or D?, Hunks and Chunks, My Alphabet Book, and My Scrabble Word Book plus the books you see in the image below right.


The Book Creator team is constantly making it an even more awesome tool for students. For example this summer they added an auto draw feature where the user starts drawing an object and the App will give the user picture choices to choose from. Students just need to make sure to choose the auto draw pen before drawing.

Below you will find resources to get you started with how you can use Book Creator in the classroom with your students, tutorial videos to follow along as you work with Book Creator, and videos of students using Book Creator to learn.

Resources

Visit Book Creator Resource Site for Tons of Ideas
Click an Image Below to Learn More

 

Tutorial Videos

Students Using Digital Workbooks in Book Creator

Word Cloud App to Enhance a Google Doc Writing Piece

The Word Cloud App by ABCYa is a wonderful creation App that makes writing fun. Students are motivated to know that they are going to do something special with the words they type.

A couple fun projects for the beginning of the school year...









Ms. Nappi had her students write Bio Poems in Google Docs. Then when I visited the classroom we had students copy their poem and paste the words into the word cloud app. From there students had fun adjusting the word cloud until it looked how they wanted it to display. After students saved their project they made a black and white version that will be 3D printed to serve as classroom avatars.

Mrs. Gervais' class recently did a project with word cloud as well. Her students wrote their thoughts and ideas about being kind to one another in Google Docs. Then her students copied and pasted their words from docs into the word cloud app.

*Students could also place the image they create with Word Cloud into their Google Doc for a nice visual.




Video Tutorial...
How to use the Word Cloud App:

Read with Me Edna Libby

Recently a Kindergarten teacher, Sarah Martel, and I have created a reading blog for students to use over the summer. The hope is to give students access to stories to prevent summer slide. In case you are not aware of summer slide, the term refers to students losing some of the progress they have gained during the school year. To remain at the same level as when leaving the previous school year is ok, but to slide back level(s) is hard for students and is not in their best interest.

Another tool we are using to prevent summer slide is to hype up the Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge. We have students all excited about competing with other schools by logging their reading minutes over the summer. Right now they are logging their minutes while at school, but hopefully with all of the practice students will continue logging minutes over the summer.

On the blog parents and students can access information about the summer reading challenge, ideas of where to find free books, things to do at home to improve learning, and the blog will feature one Read With Me story every day starting June 10th. Some stories will feature school staff reading picture books and students reading original stories.

Celebrate the Awesome!

I attended and presented at the ACTEM18 state of Maine technology conference. Our Keynote for the second day inspired me to celebrate my teachers more. If you haven't heard of Joe Sanfelippo yet, you should check out his site or follow him on Twitter, @Joe_Sanfelippo. He is a superintendent that thinks outside the box and celebrates the work educators do.

So here is what I came up with so far to celebrate my teachers...

Good Morning Teachers,

I have a new addition to my Weekly Tech Tips. Each week I will celebrate something awesome I witness from a classroom teacher because you ALL are Awesome and doing great things in your classrooms. Let's celebrate YOU! This is my perspective and I don't catch every moment so please celebrate each other in your own way or feel free to share with me and I will announce the awesomeness on my slide deck.

Click the pic below to access this slide with links and all of my previous slides of tech tips. As always, shoot me an email if you want help with any of these ideas.

Best,

Nicole Gleason

Technology Coach SAD#6

Blog, Website, and Wiki

George E Jack, Steep Falls, and Edna Libby

In the final analysis it is not what you do for your children but

what you have taught them to do for themselves that

will make them successful human beings.

Ann Landers

STEM Challenge Videos

During the end of last school year and the beginning of this school year I have been creating a series of STEM Challenge videos to make STEM easier for the classroom teacher. I started with videos for Kindergarteners. Yesterday I created a video for Team Building through STEM for grades K-5. All videos are uploaded to YouTube and include an instruction, material list, and further exploration sheet linked in the description of the video.

All videos will be located in this playlist. Check back frequently as I plan to add a lot more this school year for grades K-5 and work on correlating them with the Next Generation Science Standards. Below are some of the ones that I have created so far.

Weekly Tech Tips Now as a Page on My Blog

I have created a page on my blog where my Weekly Tech Tips will now live. Scroll through the slide deck to view tips from previous weeks.



If you want to enlarge the slide, click on the broken square.

Weekly Tech Tips September 13, 2018

Email I sent to my classroom teachers...

Welcome to my brand new weekly Thursday Tech Tip blast!

Every Thursday I'm going to be sending out a single slide to highlight technology integration things from the week. It's meant to be a quick hit and not suck up a lot of your time to look it over. I'll embed the slide into my email, like I did below, and then you can access all of the links by clicking on the image to go to the full deck of slides.

Miss a week? Not a problem! Open the slide deck and just scroll back.

Same goes with the "Tool of the Week" that I'm featuring each week. Click on the link to learn more about them and you can scroll back through the past week's recommendations any time.

I hope you find it helpful. Have a great day!

Welcome Back 2018-2019

Welcome back everyone! I hope you have an awesome first day meeting your new cherubs. I have put together an email to update you on the changes of some of the programs the district pays for and some of the free ones that we use. I also created it as an article on my blog if you prefer to view it in a more friendly form. (Article Link) As always, let me know if you need help implementing these or any technology tools in your classroom.

Mystery Science - Paid for by Curriculum. Please click on the link and create an account if you don't already have one. There is a brand new Mystery for Back to School geared towards any grade level. For your convenience Mystery Science has added a tab for all mini lessons as well. They come out weekly.

BrainPopJr and BrainPop - Paid for by Technology. Students and teachers can access all short educational clips plus other features 24/7. Please shoot me an email if you don't know the login password. You can also use the code if you want to set up a class and track your student quiz scores.

Freckle (Formerly Front Row) - Paid for by Curriculum. Since there are many new features, I have pasted the link to explanations for each of the new features.

Here's what's new: 

• A new look for the teacher dashboard
• New fiction stories in ELA Skills Practice
• Sharing and transferring students is easier than ever
• New ELA skills domain for Claims and Evidence
• New state standards alignment
• ELA articles are grouped by category for students
• Answer keys for Inquiry Based Lessons
• Spanish audio support is rolling out into the math domains
• Teachers can update a student’s coin balance
• Middle school constructed response questions
• ELA standards page
• ELA Groups Report now includes standards
• Simplified K-2 student screens
• Freckle Text Levels

Seesaw - Free! Awesome for student digital portfolios, sharing student work with families, and communicating with parents. Seesaw has a crazy amount of activities for you to use with your students now.

Epic! Books for Kids - Free! Bring thousands of books to your classroom without taking up precious classroom space. If you don't have an account already, sign up for a free educator account here.

Ideas for using Epic! via their website...

10 Creative Ways to use Epic! in the Classroom

1. Use Epic! for the "Listening" portion of Daily 5 using Read-to-Me and Audiobooks

2. Project Epic! on your interactive whiteboard to teach a specific skill or strategy

3. Use non-fiction books for research projects, such as reports on animals

4. Students create a "wish list" of books and then partner up to explain that list

5. Epic! is perfect for Read Aloud, Shared Reading & Independent Reading Time

6. Students create book reviews and recommend favorites to classmates

7. Expose students to different expressions and intonations using Read-to-Me books

8. Perform experiments using ideas in Epics!'s STEM books

9. Create book commercials using multimedia tools such as iMovie, Telestory, or Chatterpix

10. Compare two books by the same author

(I would like to add to number 9 some more tools like GreenScreen, Spark Video, Book Creator, or Draw & Tell.)

Let me know if you would like me to sit with you to discuss any of these tools or model a lesson in your classroom.