Blogger is the new Journal Notebook

As an ELA teacher, I remember many years when I tried to implement the journal prompt a day.  While this was good in idea, the difficulty I had was in keeping students accountable for doing their daily writing.  I can remember taking 2 large boxes of notebooks home for a weekend in order to read through, respond, or grade these journals.  With all of the other writing that needed to be graded, I was also lucky if I was able to do that twice a grading period.  Therefore, I give you:

5 Reasons why I think blogger is going to be great this year:

5.  Students can see progress and growth throughout the year

4.  Their journal can double as a place for notes which we know is what would really happen to a journal notebook anyways, even when it was supposed to stay in the room cubbies.

3.  I will get more than 1 word responses and real thoughts and opinions.  Afterall, some students spend hours on online social communities where they are more than willing to share their lives, ideas, thoughts and opinions with an entire world through a little screen... and they enjoy doing this.  I'm not going to tell them that one of their hobbies is actually journaling.

2.  I will no longer have to haul boxes of notebooks home with me

1. Students can't really say they lost their blogger and the dog can't eat it.

Digital Classroom Supplies List

I recently went shopping for my kids' school supplies.  On the first day of class one of the first things teachers go through with the students is the list of supplies needed for the class like a binder, notebook, folder, pens, pencils...   That leads me to think about how I can bring the traditional school materials into the 21st century classroom tools.  Some ideas:

1. binder for resources online:  Evernote combined with google drive
2. Journaling and taking notes: Blogger
3. Scissors, glue, construction paper, crayons, markers...:  Prezi, Powtoon, and other presentation tools that I will discover this year.

Will all of my resources be digital?  No!  While computers open up endless possibilities, this can also be overwhelming.  Variety of Key.

Great for Last Minute Sub

Breaking News English is a great free resource for connecting current events news with reading comprehension skills.  It contains interesting articles on current events and then has pages of activities that can accompany that article.  I will say that most of these are more of your read and recall and don't require the deeper thought that the common core expects but it does make for a last minute lesson for a sub as you can just pick and chose from the many activities that go with each article.  It would be great if in the future there could be more activities or lessons directly related to the common core that go with each article.

Summer School Ipad Class Summary

This year's summer school ipad class (Ilearn with Ipads) has come to an end and has again been a favorite for many students.  For each session kids left the first couple days saying, "I love this class."  Part of this was because they can't help but love a class where they feel they are just playing games on an ipad.  What they don't see is that the "games" they are playing help students develop their problem solving skills, creativity, artistic side, math facts, vocabulary, or spelling.  Every year I am frustrated with the amount of time that needs to be spent up front finding and testing apps but in the end I always feel good about the class that I was able to offer.

When choosing apps, my primary objectives are to find apps that:

• help students develop problem solving skills and the ability to think outside the box to find answers
• help students persevere when apps become challenging rather than give up
• offer students a list of challenge or academic apps that they can add to their own home devices 

I can consider an app successful if after introducing the app:

• students come in to tell me they just put the app on their own device
• students come in and can't wait to start playing an app so they can get to the next level                 (One T Draw was good for that 2nd session)
• play the apps I introduced during challenge and school time instead of playing old favorites            (Big success when these apps beat out minecraft or clash of clans)

Apps used this year 

Most often played during free choice (and beat minecraft or clash of clans :)

• Falling stars: Also introduced in a music class
• Magic Piano: Cool and new this year for kids
• Smule Sing
• Pottery:  Always a favorite
• Draw N Guess: played most often.  Students liked the social aspect of playing over wifi against friends.
• Spy Mouse: probably most downloaded by students on their own devices
• One T Draw
• Dump Truck
• Flockwork
• HairSalon: students would create their own hair style and have students vote on which they thought was the best do.  What I thought was cool is that they specifically explained why they liked one style over another.

Students liked but didn't often play on their own

• Educreations
• Soundrop
• Sketchin
• Brain Lab
• What Pic
• Scratch Pic
• 4 Pics 1 word
• Brain School
• Stack the States
• Google Earth
• Flow: Favorite last year but most kids had already played it
• Munch Time
• Greedy Spiders: always a difficult game but kids still enjoy it
• Slice It
• Quell
• Flockwork
• Where's Perry
• Where's my Water
• Where's my Cheese
• Lazors
• Doodle Destroy
• Math Evolve
• Math Zombies
• Numbers
• Math Ninja
• Math Rocket: played only the first session.  Turns out you don't even need to do math in order to build the rocket.  Kids cheat.
• Letris

Introduced but not really hits:

• Educreations:  Great App for introducing themselves the first day
• Animation HD: some kids did great with this but others didn't really want to put the thought or time in to create something nice
• Singing Fingers
• World of Oil: Tough game for a lot of the kids to play
• Toy Physics: Again, kids struggled
• Connect the Bulb: Students didn't really understand the game.  I really liked it though.  Maybe it was too difficult

Ideas for next year:

• More social games!  Maybe even a class of just social games with the ipad??  Will need to pay for many of these or create game center accounts.  Each ipad could have a generic account.