Integrating Technology in the Primary Classroom

A primary school teacher sharing resources, practical ideas and thoughts on blogging, global collaboration and technology integration.

Integrating Technology in the Primary Classroom

Behind the News

Posted by  on Wednesday, May 13th 2009     

Behind the News  (BTN) is a fantastic Australian site by the ABC that helps students learn about current issues and events around the world. Each week a new episode of BTN is released comprising of about 5 different stories each under 5 minutes long. The stories can be watched individually on their website or on ABC television.

The website contains an archive of all episodes so you can browse for a topic that you are currently working on with your students. The website also contains activities, links, quizzes, comment boards, polls etc for follow up work.

While BTN is promoted for students in upper primary and high school, I have had great success using it with my Grade Two and Three students. There are always a range of stories, many of which are less complex and can be understood by younger students. Our class has had many rich discussions and experiences based on BTN stories and it is a fantastic way for them to learn about the world in which they live!

category: IWB, Literacy, Other great sites

Tutpup!

Posted by  on Friday, May 8th 2009     

Here is a site that my Grade Two students love. It is called Tutpup and is a place where students are matched up with other students from around the world to play maths and spelling games in real time. There are several games to choose from, each with multiple levels.

The maths games cover addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, algebra, and a mixture of those skills. The spelling game involves students listening to a word and spelling it before their opponent. 

The site is great because kids can work at their own level, they can learn about other countries (we like to look on the world map to find the country our opponent is from) and the “race” format of the game is very motivating!

Students can even play at home!

category: IWB, Literacy, Maths

Make a Screen Saver for your IWB

Posted by  on Thursday, April 30th 2009     

   

This year I’ve started making screen savers for my IWB that help student revise certain concepts. Some may call these subliminal messages!

Here are just some of the screen saver slides I have made

weekly timetable
monthly calendar
morning routine
reminders (eg “have you changed your reader?”)
spelling words
M100W words (100 most frequently used words)
maths concepts (skip counting patterns, tens facts, doubles etc)
You Can Do It foundations
class rules

The possibilities are endless! Here’s how to do it…

  1. Make a slide in PowerPoint as normal
  2. Save the file as a Device Independent Bitmap
  3. Click to save every slide
  4. Go to Display in the Control Panel
  5. On the Screen Saver tab, click My Pictures Slideshow, and in the Wait box, set the amount of time you want to elapse before the screen saver is displayed.
  6. Under Screen saver, click Settings. Under How often should pictures change?, set the slider at the interval you want between pictures
  7. Under Use pictures in this folder, browse to the folder in which you saved the presentation or slide and click ok!
category: IWB

Join a Global Project

Posted by  on Friday, April 24th 2009     

This year I became involved in a global project with my Grade Two class called the Teddy Bear Exchange Project. We exchanged our teddy, Matilda, with Theodore, the teddy of a school in Canada (see pictures below). One of our weekly writing tasks is now sending an email to the Canadian class from the point of view of Theodore.

The Teddy Exchange Project is just one of the global projects set up by iEARN who match up classes across the world for collaborative projects. The global project is helping my students learn about other countries and cultures while improving their writing in an authentic environment!

There are a plethora of global projects available that you can join through various organisations. There is usually a small fee to join the organisation. Check out these sites for other global projects…

  • Oz Projects
  • ePals
  • iEarn
  • Global SchoolNet
  • Global Gateway

    •  

    category: Global Project

    Get Arty!

    Posted by  on Friday, April 17th 2009     

    There are a number of free sites on the web for students to create cool artwork. Here are a few…

    Sketch & Paint

    This is a fun art program which allows you to create and save your own art work. The great thing about it is the program makes your masterpieces look like real artwork! Open and save your artwork in JPG format on your computer. Great for individual use or with an IWB.

    Mr Picassohead

    This website  allows you to drag and drop ‘Picasso style’ facial feature into a virtual art frame to compose a portrait. For any given part you can increase and decrease it’s size, rotate it, change color, and more. The artwork can be saved to the gallery and emailed to parents or friends. Fun for the IWB!

    artPad

    Create effective looking art working using a paintbrush and splash feature. Chose a frame for you artwork and save it to the gallery or email it to a friend. artPad allows you to replay your painting so you and your audience can watch the work in progress.

     

    category: Art

    About del.icio.us…

    Posted by  on Monday, April 13th 2009     

     My list of favourite sites have become so large that I’ve saved them all on my delicous account. Click here or on the picture below to check the links out. I have sorted them into tags (categories) which you can click on on the right hand side. There is a search box on the top right hand side. Enjoy!

    What is del.icio.us?

    del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website, which means it is designed to allow you to store and share bookmarks (your favourite websites) on the web, instead of inside your browser.

    This has several advantages…

    First, you can get to your bookmarks from any computer.

    Second, you can share your bookmarks publicly, so your friends, coworkers, and other people can view them for reference, amusement, collaboration, or anything else. (You can also mark bookmarks on del.icio.us as private – only viewable by you – if you like.)

    Third, you can find other people on del.icio.us who have interesting bookmarks and add their links to your own collection.

    Check it out! Type in a topic in the search bar. This could be a topic you are currently teaching or something you want to find out about (anything from photography to travel, recipes or renovating). del.icio.us users have probably already compiled lists of their favourite websites which might be useful for you!

    You can also browse popular tags (keyword descriptors) for topics of interest to you!

    category: General

    Writing Ideas!

    Posted by  on Friday, April 10th 2009     

    Here are four free sites that you could use on your IWB in writing sessions….

    Magnetic Poetry

    In this virtual edition of magnetic fridge poetry, students are given a large bank of words which they can drag, arrange, and rearrange to create a poem or story. There are four type of magnetic kits to chose from: Kids Kit, First Words, Best Friends, and Storymaker.  There is a refrigerator, locker, or whiteboard background to chose from.  Completed poems can be emailed (to parents perhaps) or saved on the site. Great for small groups to create texts together on the IWB! A downside is you can’t use any punctuation but this could be done by annotating with the pen on the IWB.

    PicLits

    On this site students create their own PicLit by chosing a picture and then chosing words from the wordbank (or their own imagination) to describe the picture.  “The object is to put the right words in the right place and the right order to capture the essence, story, and meaning of the picture.”  Great to develop create writing skills. Can be used on the IWB with the whole class, a small group or with individuals on computers. Created PicLits can be saved embedded on blogs or emailed. The could also be printed out and made into a class book!

    Power Proofreading

    On this site, students develop their proofreading skills through fun and interactive games. They are introduced into a real-world situations where proofreading skills are needed eg. fixing TV scripts, memos, and other writings at the tv station. Students select their grade level (2-8) and enter their name before beginning.

    Scholastic Story Starters

    This is a fun writing site for Grades 1 to 6.  The Story Starter machine generates writing ideas for newspaper articles, letters, notebooks, or postcards.  Students are given prompts that focus on character, plot and setting. Students can get a new idea by keeping some elements of the idea and spinning again to change elements.  Students can then write their story, draw a picture and print it off. Great to use as a whole class, small group or individual writing prompt.

    category: Literacy

    Integrating Technology into Guided Reading

    Posted by  on Friday, March 27th 2009     

    Lately I’ve been trying out some ways to integrate technology into my small group Guided Reading session. I’ve been trying these things in the 15 minutes or so we often have spare after reading a book. Most of these involve an IWB although you could use a classroom computer. Here are some ideas….

    VOICE RECORDINGS (using a microphone and Windows voice recorder or a program like Audacity)

    • have a different student from the group summarise the beginning, middle and end of the text.
    • have each student find an interesting new word from the story and find out the meaning. Make a voice recording explaining the meaning of the word.
    • have each student chose a character from the story and record a short oral review describing them and their role in the story.

    FILMING (using a Flip video camera, webcam or standard video camera)

    • each child practices reading a page of the story with fluency and expression. Film and review attempts until the child thinks they are reading very fluently and expressively.
    • create a summary of the story from one character’s perspective. Film a student retelling the summary as if they are the character.

    BRAINSTORMING ON THE IWB (create a brainstorm on a flipchart on the IWB)

    • find all the words that end in ed, ing, s, er, tion etc
    • find all the words with a certain sound (eg sh, ch, th, oo, er etc)
    • find all the words with 3/4/5/6 letters or syllables
    • find all the words beginning with a capital letter (sort them into start of sentence/name of person/name of place etc)
    • find all the contractions in the story and write what the contraction is short for (eg don’t = do not)

    USING ONLINE APPLICATIONS

    • create a comic strip representing the story as a group with the free website ToonDoo.
    • have the group summarise the story and have an avatar (Internet character) “read” the summary the group has written on the website Read the Words. The kids love choosing avatars and accents!
    • Use Read the Words to demonstrate fluency by altering the speed at which the avatar reads the text you insert.
    • Create a flowchart of the events of the story on Lovely Charts; a simple drag and drop online diagramming application.
    • Create a poster about the story that mixes graphics, photos, videos, music and text using the online application Glogster.

    to be continued….

    category: Literacy

    Finding videos to use in your classroom

    Posted by  on Wednesday, March 18th 2009     

    There are a number of sites on the net where you can find streaming educational videos to show your students

    YOU TUBE: While it was only launched relatively recently in 2005, most people have probably heard of YouTube. It is the most well known site for watching and sharing videos. Unfortunately, while there are thousands of videos which are probably great to show your students, YouTube is also overflowing with material that is innapropriate for children. There are a few safer sites with great content that you can use instead….

    TOTLOL: Totlol is a video website designed specifically for children from 6 months to primary school age. It is community moderated by parents and members. Totlol is constantly growing and is powered by YouTube.

    TEACHER TUBE: This site launched in 2007 with a goal of becoming a space to share and watch instructional videos. TeacherTube is free for everyone and teachers can also post videos for their students or the general public.

    HOW STUFF WORKS: The video channel of this site has some great videos to explain how all sorts of things work. While the video aren’t aimed specifically at children, many of them use simple English and are a great resource for the classroom. http://videos.howstuffworks.com/

    GRASPR: A collection of instructional videos in 19 categories. The videos are made by people all around the world who upload them onto the site. There is an education category with some appropriate content for school students. http://www.graspr.com/ 

    EDUBLOGS.TV: This site is similiar to Teacher Tube; it is a site to watch and share educational videos. Edublogs.tv is supposed to be easier than You Tube or Teacher Tube to embed videos from Edublogs.tv onto your blog. 

    category: General

    What is Web 2.0?

    Posted by  on Tuesday, March 17th 2009     

    Web 2.0 is a term that is coming up quite frequently in the world of eLearning. It is a term that is used to describe the way the Internet has evolved into an interactive resource. Web 2.0 is the “second generation” of the web. Where as the Internet used to be used as a one way resource (eg for simply reading information), it is now more about interaction and information sharing….doing something.

    A typical Web 1.0 activity may have been reading an article online about say, kangaroos.

    A typical Web 2.0 activity may be going to a site such as Wikipedia where you can read plus add, edit and correct an article about kangaroos (or nearly 3 million other articles!).

    There are a number of web based tools and services that demonstrate what Web 2.0 is all about. These include blogs, wikis, tagging, social bookmarking, social networking, multimedia sharing, podcasting, RSS and syndication. All of these tools or services emphasise collaboration and sharing. Reading this blog should keep you up to date with all of these newer concepts! You can also check out http://www.go2web20.net/ which is a directory of Web 2.0 sites.

    Web 2.0 is being embraced in education as it can make learning more collaborative, personalised and innovative. While teachers and students must make themselves aware of security issues with using Web 2.0 technologies, there are so many fantastic opportunities for enriching teaching and learning which must not be missed!

    Now that you understand what Web 2.0 is, some people are talking about Web 3.0 where the Internet becomes more personalised to you and can be almost like a personal assistant. Stay tuned for more info on that one!!

    Here is a description of Web2.0 from socialcomputingmagazine.com

    Here is a description of Web2.0 from socialcomputingmagazine.com

    category: General
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