Atomic Learning Assessment

Okay, I took the atomic learning assessment and honestly scored about where I thought I would be. I was thinking somewhere around 50 and I scored 62. I definitely do not feel comfortable teaching anything to anyone, which is just silly, because I know I probably can in some areas. I think the things I felt the most confident in were the things I have been forced to do on my own. Thank goodness for Lynn pushing me to apply for the laptop, which in turn made me take some classes. Also wanting to hold up my end of the planning in our classroom and integrating technology has made me improve in certain areas. I am probably weakest in the numbers area, just because Lynn is so good at setting up our graphs and charts to record data, that I just depend on her to do it! Areas I need to work on are the ones that just take time to practice doing. Don't we all wish we had more time! Well, I guess I will push on to the next technology challenge....glad I have friends joining me on this journey!

More With Comic Life

Enhancing learning by using technology to make visual connections has been a goal of ours in Kindergarten this year. I have been trying to use powerpoints to make visual connections to songs we use to learn skills or concepts. I was exploring one of our new Jack Hartmann CD's when I came across the song Benny the Blending Baboon. It just jumped out as one to be made into a fun powerpoint. After googling some great baboon photos I just needed a way to display them. The templates in Comic Life were perfect. I picked one with three frames on top and one on the bottom. Each frame on top contained the baboon with a dialog bubble containing a letter and the bottom frame contained the baboon with a dialog bubble containing the whole word. The kids just loved reading/singing along with the slides!

(I tried to insert an example here, but after trying to upload the photo three times and getting an error from blogger three times, I gave up for today!)

To extend the lesson I will take individual photos of the kids and put them in the same template in the Comic Life program. Print them and then the students can choose a word from our word family lists they would like to show how to blend. They can write in the letters and words on their paper. We can put them together into a great "blending" book to use as one of our Home and Back books to share with parents.

Checking Out Comic Life

Comic Life is a program used in our district that I am just beginning to explore. My teaching colleague Lynn was able to take the intro course this fall and has got me started with the basics. I began trying to set up some templates with my own family photos around the holidays. I took all the fun candid shots of my kids opening gifts from the various relatives and dropped them into one of the "brick" layouts. Then I helped my boys type in their "thank-you" comments to make awesome looking thank you's to send to our family members. It was super easy, no complaining about writing thank you's and everyone got great photos. The relatives that had sent gifts by mail especially thought it was neat.

Now to apply the concept to the kindergarten classroom. We have kindergarten registration coming up for next year. I am thinking I will take photos of the kids doing different activities, have them help me select the photos and then have them dictate language to me for the photos about what they are doing. I think this will be a neat way to have them evaluate and think about their actions/learning in a purposeful way. It will allow them to see it as a way to communicate to others. For the incoming parents and students it will be a real look into our classroom and a way to take part of school home with them to share with their whole family!

Technology Breakfast a Huge Success!

Our technology group was invited to come for a breakfast/sharing session on our teacher work day. Honestly, I wasn't sure if very many of the group would accept the open invitation on a busy work day. I was hopeful for a good turnout, since our leader Lynn has worked so hard to get us all moving towards implementing new technology into our classrooms. Needless to say I was thrilled when most of the group stopped by the breakfast. It was a great time of sharing, trouble shooting problems we had encountered with software and a chance to try some new programs! Several people got their linkin-log sites set up. Many of us took a look at the program Comic Life and brainstormed ideas for its use. It was fun to share some of the powerpoints I am using with kids and get positive feedback from my colleagues. I am very pleased with the effort our group is putting forth. We have all stepped out of our technology comfort zone in some way. And regardless of how big the step may be, it is huge in the sense that we are all learning and growing in an area of education that will benefit our students now and in the future! I am proud to work with such motivated and caring educators!

Technology Group Assignment-Digital Camera Thoughts...

In my last post I talked a little about my digital camera usage. I have been trying to incorporate photos of students into our "visual learning" power points to reinforce some of our math skills. Our cameras in the building are not very "updated" and are not always available. (We have over 30 classrooms trying to share several cameras.) Anyway, I thought I might expand more on some of these powerpoint ideas, when another situation came up in my classroom that just screamed..."I need a digital camera in the room all the time"!

Here's what happened, I had planned a somewhat complicated art center. No problem, because I had a para available to work with the kids and take them through the project step by step. Well, due to some schedule changes the para became unavailable at art center time. I could attempt to write out the steps on chart paper and make lame drawings of each and hope the kids get it! But if I had a digital camera I could take a "real" photo of each step, print them in "real' color and post them at the art center. I am sure even my most challenged learners would be able to follow the photo directions.

This of course inspires me to think about all the other places "real" photos would come in handy. We already label a few supply areas with photos and of course use student photos on cubbies, coat hooks, folders and journals. But a lot of the center areas could benefit from photo directions or photos that would be a double check to see if all materials were put away correctly. Allowing for much more independence for students and frees up teacher time too!

Photo labels and/or photo directions is not really a new concept, but one that we have all gotten away from using because it is just too time consuming to take the photo, develop the photo, mount it and then do it all over again the next week. With digital photos, once you have them you can use them over and over again. They are stored right at your finger tips and ready for printing immediately.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a "money" opportunity to come our way to help purchase cameras for each of us, and in my wildest dream it would come with plenty of photo paper and colored ink for our printer too! Think of the fun we could have!

Technology Group Assignment

I believe our assignment was to pick an area of technology that we wanted to "study", "research" or "incorporate" into our classroom teaching practices. I have to say I really haven't selected anything specific because I have so many areas to learn about. Recently however, I have been working to incorporate powerpoints into my teaching. My teaching partner, Lynn began doing this last year with some power points used to reinforce reading skills that she would show using the LCD projector. This year she has created awesome powerpoints that incorporate all the "concepts of print" skills into a fun way to introduce our daily helpers. She shows them on the T.V. using that nifty little connecting cord that allows you to connect your laptop to the T.V. ( I know it has a special "tech-name", but you get the idea). So all of this inspired me to give it a go!

Lynn and I knew how powerful songs/music could be to help kids learn skills. It seems like in Kindergarten you can always find a song to go with about any skill. But just singing the song lacked the visual connection to the concept kids were learning. I decided to take a couple of our new math songs (Thanks, Jack Hartmann!) and make powerpoints to create a visual image to match what the song was teaching. I took clipart or photo images from google searches and real photos of the kids to illustrate the concepts. Needless to say the kids love them, "Again! Again!" is the resounding cheer when I introduce a new one! They really don't take much time and certianly do not have to be very elaborate. So far I have created ones to go along with our math objectives of counting by 10's and money identification/value. In the works are ones for counting by 5's and the months of the year. I am hoping to add a little more animation to those.

Probably the biggest obstacle I have faced is not always having access to a decent digital camera to get the photos done when I need them. Otherwise it has been a fun project to challenge myself with. If you are interested in seeing one, stop by sometime. I would be glad to show them to you!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year To All!
Time to make those new year resolutions! My new year's resolution needs to be that I work on keeping better track of websites I use in and out of the classroom! Since our computers are being reimaged at school, this gave me the incentive to get moving on this process. Thanks to my good friend Lynn who happens to be very "tech-savy" I am set up to get going on this project. I have my linkin log account set up through the district site so I am ready to go! It really has turned out to be a fairly pain-free process. I have set up quite a few of my favorite sites and tried to put them into categories that will make sense to others who check them out. Now if I can just figure out how to get it all linked from my blog and my website (which needs to be my second resolution....get my website in better shape) I will be in business!

Hope the new year holds many new adventures for you!

Click on the link below to check out all my favorite bookmarks:
http://misc.lps.org/misc/linkinlogs/userfront.cfm?userName=kzetter