Mrs. Matasovsky's Musings

Like the little acorn that grows into a mighty oak, such has been my journey with technology.  Ok, I am far from being a mighty oak, but when I started the certificate classes I had no idea what to use a computer for beyond Word and email.  Slowly I built upon those two little skills and became very comfortable with using all the great features Word has available if you are willing to look and play around with them!  I learned that blogging is just as easy as email and you can write as much as you want without worrying it will bounce!  As I was putting together my web page, I took a nice trip down memory lane.  I went through all of our old assignments and I noticed a definite theme…I focus mainly on using technology to improve upon Language Arts.  While teaching the kindergarten students to read is basically the top goal of my year, I decided I really need to start looking beyond this genre and move to another subject!  I am very excited to implement my TechQuest in the fall and have created some great interactive lessons for improving my students reading and writing skills.  I am proud to say that projects I have created in previous classes have all been implemented with much success and the skills I learned to create them have beeen put to good use while I teach my co-workers.  One of my goals going into this class was to explore digital storytelling, Audacity and VoiceThread.  I am so excited about our SIG project and the great resources that our team created for digital storytelling.  I cannot wait to spend the next couple weeks exploring these at greater length and developing ways to create new projects in my classroom.  Audacity is going to be a great tool while I work on having the students record their stories.  I am excited about the possibilities!  While I did not get to explore VoiceThread as I had hoped, I know that I will be able to figure it out.  I am confident that after learning Audacity, how to create a podcast, add new features to my website, etc. I will be able to figure it out as well. 

What I have learned about the use of technology in the classroom is that it comes in all forms but you need to evaluate what you want the end result to be before you just throw in fancy tools.  When I looked back to my TechQuest, I was first considering using digital storytelling to fix my problem of figuring out what the students were trying to write when they use their “thinking spelling”.  This was a little overkill and way too complicated of a project to solve this smaller problem.  Through my research, I discovered that ESL students were using digital voice recorders to listen to their sentences and improve their reading and writing skills.  This simple little device could help me achieve the same thing with my class.  Don’t get me wrong!  I do want to start doing more digital storytelling with my class, I just need to be able to listen to what they are trying to write first!  I have also found that technology does an excellent job of scaffolding the students learning when you take the time to research quality websites, software and tools.  I try to teach each lesson to my students using at least 3 different modes of learning,  Websites have really helped me bring more resources into my classroom and aid in their learning.  My new goal is to move beyond reading and writing and start exploring ways to improve upon my science and social studies lessons.  Kindergarten has such a tight schedule that I feel these two areas often get the least amount of time.  I am hoping that I can utilize more websites, interactive lessons and streaming video to make these more exciting and engaging to my students.  I would like to switch from so many “Sage of the Stage” lessons, to being more of a “Guide on the Side”.  I am excited to have access to our mobile lab this year and be able to have all of my students using computers at the same time.  Once we get through the initial training on how to use it, they will be able to do so much, all at the same time!!  The other goal is to really become our “in house” expert on digital storytelling.  Many of my co-workers are excited about these types of projects but have no idea where to start.  I am hoping to be able to come and work with their classes while we create them together.   My other goal is to  continue to strive in my own education endeavors.  I would like to continue on the EdTech path for both my endorsement and eventually my Master’s degree.  I would love to be able to provide technology support for the parochial schools in my area that have the interest but lack the know-how when it comes to integrating technology. 

Right now I am looking forward to the new school year, armed with new websites for my students to use and a digital voice recorder that hopefully will change how we develop our writing skills in our classroom.  I an excited about the next week of preparing for school, knowing that I am much more confident using these web 2.0 tools and seeing how much they can assist me in my classroom.  I may not be the mighty oak, but at least good sapling planted in some rich soil!

As I prepare for the upcoming school year, there are many new lessons and methods I would like to implement.  Using digital voice recorders to aid in my student’s writing is going to be first on the list.  I believe that this project will influence my student’s work throughout the year.  I feel that I will see the results of our efforts by the end of the first semester.   In past years, this was the point of the year when I would see my students begin to grasp the concept of creating their own sentences and begin their “thinking spelling”.  This year, I will be implementing this procedure as soon as school begins.  I believe that using the recorders will give students meaningful feedback as they hear their own voices to help keep their ideas flowing.  I will be able to hear their ideas as they are tied to their writing and can give better feedback.  I will be able to guide my students in the direction that they wanted to go in a more effective manner.  I will be able to converse with the parents at our conferences in October and am looking forward to their feedback as they see their children’s writing samples.  By recording the student’s sentences and stories, I will be able to compare their early attempts with samples done a month or two later.  I should see significant growth in their writing if this plan is working.  I am also interested to see their test scores as they take their achievement tests in the spring.  I believe that this writing process will improve their sounds and letters score, as well as their sentence reading.   All of these advantages should allow my students to be more successful at their early attempts at writing, compared to previous years.  If my students are eager to write and excited about creating their own stories, this too will indicate success!

If I were to take on another project such as this, I would do so in the spring.  The advantages would be that 1) my students would be present so I could implement the project and make any needed revisions and 2) they would have the classroom routines and skills already in place so we would have a better gauge on the effects of the project.  For my past Edutech classes, I have been able to take what I learn and immediately put it to work in my classroom.  This has been extremely rewarding and has kept me motivated in my role as a student.   I feel that I have been teaching kindergarten long enough to have a realistic view of the possible pitfalls.   I have tried to develop a plan that will allow success for all students; however I really wish I had been able to try out the digital voice recorder with even a small sampling of my students.  I am very curious to see how well they will be able to operate this device and if my recording studio will be quiet enough to allow a clear recording.

My research leads me to believe that this will be a very successful project and my worries about the children and their use of technology are not valid.  As I have stated before, my students took to the interactive white board like they had been using it all of their life.  I am confident that this little recorder will be no different.  Another reason I am confident that this plan will work is that I know the parents will be there to assist me if I need more hands in the classroom.  I am blessed with the opportunity to have parents and co-workers that are very eager volunteers and support the use of technology in our building.  If I were to impart any wisdom on fellow teachers attempting similar projects, it would be to focus on communication.  As I began my first educational technology class, I let parents know what my plans were, how they could help and what they could hope to see in our classroom.  As my knowledge base has grown, I am proud to show off projects we have created in our classroom with technology, but I also make sure to show the educational benefits and progress their child has made.  By explaining the sound pedagogical reason behind my interactive lessons, streamlined videos and now digital recorders, the parents know I have their child’s education first most in my mind.   Open communication has been the key to all of our technology projects in our school and is the only reason we are able to have so many great resources today.  If you are new to teaching, my humble advice is to get the parents on your side from the very first day.  Communication paves the way for success.

Implementation Podcast

music provided by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), “Off to Osaka”  Licensed under Creative Commons “Attribution 3.0″

Where to begin??  What strategies to take??

The research for my techquest was broken into three types of searches.  I began with broad strokes, using common search engines. I started with using many of the Boolean Methods such as Technology AND Writing.  I found most of these search engines provided other examples as well so I would try those.  I used three main sites; Yippy (formerly Clusty), Google and ask.com.  I have to admit that Google provided me with the most information on actual use of Digital Voice Recorders but at the cost of having to sift through tons of ads for the recorders themselves and product reviews.  I found that using + and – worked well.  Ask.com worked well with searching by natural language. 

The second section of research was heading to MSU’s electronic resources. I felt this would give me more research and fewer ads about actual devices.  I had used this extensively when researching my project for our 810 class.  Unfortunately, I did not have as much success this time around.  I found that this was too limiting to get many articles pertaining to writing.  I backed up to a more general term of educational technology.  This gave me too much information!  As I began to feel like Goldilocks, searching for the term that was “just right”, I found ProQuest.  This was one of my favorites in the MSU site. It gave me suggestions for topics I could try and allowed me to find ones that were full text versions, instead of just an abstract.  I narrowed in on Writing AND Technology and was able to view a couple articles this way.    

The third approach was going directly to some of my favorite technology sites and online magazines such as THE Journal and Tech&Learning. By this point, I had determined that I was very interested in using digital voice recorders so I started searching using that term.  While many articles would appear, very few actually dealt with using that device.  I entered “Digital Recorders” and was able to sift through many pages of information. 

Surprises/Bumps in the Road

My biggest overall surprise was that using digital voice recorders for the writing process has not been well documented, at least that I can find.  They seem to be used a great deal for teaching foreign languages and for ESL students.  Concerning the writing process, especially in the primary grades, there were a few classrooms that are using flip cameras and pursuing digital storytelling.  This is of real interest to me in the future but is not the solution for which I am looking.  This became a hindrance, or more aptly labeled, a distraction!  As with anything involving web 2.0 tools, it is easy to spend a lot of time reading and lose focus of on your end goal. 

Another disappointment was that using MSU’s electronic resources took the most time in narrowing search terms and locating relevant information.  I feel that it was not so much the resources the university is using but that digital recorders are not as popular.  Flip cameras in the classroom are really on the rise and provided some great ideas that I found on all of my searches.

Improvements for next time

While I feel that I used every search term and combination I could think of, I believe there is still more information to be found.  The biggest change that would need to be made is time itself.  Our classes for the edutech program are fast paced and there never seems to be enough time.  It is the reality of the world in which we live.  The positive side is that I have bookmarked several sites that I can come back to in the future! 

Research and Resource Results

Digital Voicerecording – Next steps in using ICT in the primary Languages classroom (Stevens, 2008)

This webinar by Lisa Stevens demonstrates ways that MP3 recorders to get students to think about the direction they want their writing to take and provides examples of how she has used podcasts as great source of motivation in her classroom.  She believes that getting the students work online, where it can be shared with others is a key in their development as readers and writers.  I appreciated how she said that the students work does not have to be “perfect,” the point is to give her students practice and an audience.  This is something I sometimes forget as a teacher.  Our human nature wants us to have the best work possible when we are showing it to parents.  Sometimes the parents need to see that work in progress, so they can see how far they’ve come!  She is using recorders for her primary grade students to practice foreign language, but this is similar to what we are doing in kindergarten.  They are just learning to write the English language and can benefit from recording their stories and editing them based on the feedback they receive from themselves and others.

Digital Voice Recorders Turn Students Into Interviewers (Ash, 2009)

Ash makes a great argument for using these in the classroom.  It helped me zero in on the specific area on which I wanted to focus… digital voice recorders.  “Because of their portable size, low cost, and ease of use, ed-tech experts say the new generation of digital voice recorders makes ideal classroom tools.” states Ash.  The article describes several ways that these could be used in the classroom such as:  interviewing for a report, recording a story then evaluating the content, fluency, etc. and even for repetition for ESL students.  I think that my kindergarten learners often can benefit from some of the techniques used with ESL- especially repetition!  The article describes what to look for when selecting the right model for your classroom.  It was helpful to get a teacher’s point of view rather than the typical salesman approach.  I did not realize that some models come with removable memory cards which would be great so the device could be passed from student to student without having to transfer the files immediately.  I found the article also brought up new ideas I had not considered, such as using them for podcasts.  Depending on the model and the file formats it uses, this could be great in sharing recordings of the students’ stories with their parents.

Digital Language Arts V: “When I Grow Up…” (Maxlow, 2009)

This is a blog that primarily focuses on using digital tools with high school students; I feel that it has many ideas that can be incorporated for use with any age. Mr. Maxlow identifies the problems his students have with being embarrassed about doing reports in the front of the class and his solution was to use audio recorders.  He states, “This is essential in getting them to become more and more expressive over time; they can re-record until they are satisfied with their tone, pronunciation, rhythm, and so on. Further, when they hear their own words read aloud, they are more likely to go back and edit for greater clarity, and, as appropriate, different rhyme schemes.”   In another post of this blog, Stretching Limited Resources, he has some great common sense approaches to the problem many of us feel…there is never enough money!  He describes ideas for scheduling time with the technology, free versions of software and solutions to finding the right hardware.   He suggests the idea of using the computers (or this could be digital recorders) as a center or station in your classroom.  This supported the idea that I felt worked well in my own classroom. 

The next two blogs are referencing Kathleen Holton who has been conducting projects with DVR’s at her school in Flintshire, Wales.

Kathleen Holton on digital voice recorders, blogs, wikis, mind maps, e-portfolios and peer assessment (Dale, 2009)

Joe Dale blogs about Kathleen Holton, a teacher from Flintshire and her uses of digital voice recorders in the classroom.  This site contains the link to the MP3 interview with Ms. Holton.  Some points that she makes about her findings were very interesting.  She had difficulty with her female students being shy in front of the class, so to work around that, she had the girls’ record themselves out in the hall.  I had the opposite problem in my classroom this year.  My boys were the ones who did not like to get up and speak, were embarrassed to write stories and hated to draw.  She suggests putting the students recordings on the interactive white board and then the whole class can listen and give feedback.  This could be a very useful tool when we first start out with the writing projects.  I could demonstrate to the whole class what happens after we listen to the recording and show them how they can hear themselves and write out their words.  Joe Dale has a nice outline of this interview on the blog, for those who don’t want to listen to the whole thing. 

Using Digital Voice Recorders in the Classroom (Salt, 2008)

Amanda Salt’s blog contained a recap of another one of Kathleen Holton’s workshops on using DVR’s in the classroom.  Some more practical tips include recording the teacher’s corrections so that students can use these corrections when they are revising their work.

Digital Voice Recorders Lesson Plans

Digital Wish has lesson plans as part of their website.  This is a fantastic resource, especially if you are new to these devices, like me, and are not sure what you want to do with them or what else they could be used for.  When funding is being considered for a project, we are often asked of all the potential uses the device could have.  This site gives many ideas for grades K-12.

Case Study: Using Flip Cameras in Primary Education

This case study was conducted at Manor Green Primary School in Denton, UK.  While the purpose was to study the use of flip cameras in retelling a familiar tale, they were using the flip cameras so that the students could see themselves as they performed the story.  They were focusing on expressions, fluency, tone and pitch.  While I am primarily focused on the writing aspect with my class, this study is similar in that as the students gain experience in reading, I want them to practice their fluency and expression as well.  This study also brought up some problems with having too many students recording in the same room.  This is something I need to keep in mind when using recorders with my class.  The advantages that the school saw by using Flip cameras were similar to what I have heard about the digital voice recorders…they are small and easy for students to handle.  The recordings can transfer through USB cables and be accessed immediately for the students and finally, that this brought some new life to storytelling for the students.  I especially liked that this study found the students discussing how certain characters should sound, such as Father Bear should have a deep voice because he is older and larger.  This level of deep thinking is something I strive for in my classroom.

Bibliography

Ash, K. (2009, July 13). Digital Voice Recorders Turn Students Into Interviewers. Retrieved July 2010, from Education Week’s Digital Directions: http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2009/07/16/04recorders.h02.html

Dale, J. (2009). Kathleen Holton on digital voice recorders, blogs, wikis, mind maps, e-porfolios and peer assessments. Retrieved from Integrating ICT into the MFL classroom:: http://joedale.typepad.com/integrating_ict_into_the_/2007/09/kathleen-holton.html

Maxlow, J. (2009, June 3). Digital Language Arts V: “When I Grow Up…”. Retrieved July 2010, from Digital Language Arts: http://digitallanguagearts.net/2009/04/14/digital-language-arts-v-when-i-grow-up/

Salt, A. (2008, November 6). Languages and Learning . Retrieved July 2010, from http://amandasalt.blogspot.com/2008/11/using-digital-voice-recorders-in.html: http://amandasalt.blogspot.com/2008/11/using-digital-voice-recorders-in.html

Stevens, L. (2008). Digital Voicerecording- Next steps in using ICT in the primary Languages classroom. Retrieved July 2010, from Slideshare.com: http://www.slideshare.net/lisibo/digital-voicerecording-next-steps-in-using-ict-in-the-primary-languages-classroom

The need for extra time is a problem of practice to which both teachers and students can relate.  Teachers need more time for planning, correcting papers and working with their students.  Students often ask for more time to complete assignments.  As the kindergarten classroom teacher, I do not have enough individual time with my students to really work with them on their reading and writing skills and give them proper feedback.  I lead the students through the basics of writing and teach them to break the words into the sounds that they recognize and write down what they hear.  We call this our “thinking spelling”.  As their teacher, I then encourage them and assist those that need extra help with the letter sounds or coming up with ideas to write about. 

The students’ role is to use their knowledge of letter sounds to begin writing their own sentences.  Students are given a topic or the beginning of a sentence and are asked to complete it.  The majority of the students are able to write down the initial consonant sound, a vowel and the ending consonant sound.  As students become more familiar with their letters and word families, their writing improves. 

My classroom averages about 15 kindergarten students a year, some of which leave at noon and the bulk of which stay all day.  There is not an aide available to assist in our room.  Our mornings go by very quickly as we plow through the required curriculum, making sure that those half timers are not missing anything.  Despite the fast-paced schedule, we create many individual stories. 

The problem I experience with this writing is that while I am circulating through the room, I can assist the children and know exactly what the student is writing and can guide them as necessary.  When I collect their stories later though, I often have a hard time deciphering what they were trying to write and my memory fails me.  If I cannot remember what they were writing based on their few letters, their friends and family members really have a hard time!  I want story writing to be something that the students look forward to and enjoy, which is why I feel very strongly that they use their invented spelling and not stress over if the word is spelled exactly right.  I want the students to be able to share their work with their friends and family so they feel a sense of ownership and pride in their work.  I do not have the classroom time to be able to sit and listen to them read on the same day that I am still assisting those that have not completed the story yet.  I need to find a way for the students to be able to read their story to me, but in a way that I can review it at a later time and have a chance to provide better feedback for them. 

The solution I am proposing is to set up a recording studio for the students to use while they are creating their stories.  I have begun researching the use of digital voice recorders and flip cameras as a way for students to record their stories as they begin the writing process.  After viewing a video describing Renee Webster’s Red Cedar’s Writing Project I became very  encouraged that this solution would be a positive change in my classroom.  The video gave examples of using digital voice recorders in a first grade classroom.  Ms. Webster indicates in her study that her students literary skills improved and the students were able to take charge of their own learning.  “Being able to hear their voices gave wings to my students words! This ability to take students voices outside the classroom and into the popular culture engaged my first graders as I have never before experienced.” (Webster, 2010) A voice recording can be played back for the student as a way to hear the words again and to trigger their creative ideas while continuing their stories.  The recording can be used by me, the teacher, to compare their written work to what they were recording.  I would be able to listen to this recording with the student while we are working at school, or when I am at home grading papers in the evening.  One concern that I have is the novelty of the recordings…will the students just play around with the cameras or recorders.  My other concern is for classroom space and the distraction it may cause for other students.  I am encouraged by the use of the digital voice recorder though based on the following interview with a third grade teacher, “Because the device is so small and easy to use, the technology itself fades into the background…the technology needs to be invisible, and the content needs to be in the forefront,” says LaMar. (Ash, 2009)  The hope is that once the students have been trained in using this new technology, it will not be as noticeable and will just become another extension of their writing tools.  While I considered using digital storytelling to assist with my student’s writing, I have decided that it is not solving the most basic problem which is being able to hear the words the student was trying to write.  I want to be able to set the students up with recordings during the first month of school so that they are familiar with the procedure from the beginning.  Tackling digital storytelling would, in my opinion, be putting the cart before the horse.  As my students gain experience using the recorders to improve upon their work, we may be able to advance to more of a performance with the use of flip cameras or other visual recorder.  As the students get more acquainted with the writing process and their fine motor skills improve with their illustrations, I would like to pursue digital storytelling. 

I believe that using digital voice recordings will also solve the second part of my problem, which is sharing the student’s work with their families and friends.  Recordings of the student’s story can be played at conferences when discussing progress or can be shared via the internet as a way to promote their writing to others outside the school.  The Red Cedar Writing Project demonstrated several ways that the students were able to share their writing with the world, opening a whole new world for them.  My desire is for the students to have that kind of enthusiasm towards their work. 

Cost is a factor that I need to consider in this solution.  I have found that a digital voice recorder can range from an average of $30-$300.  Using an internet based program like Audacity would be free, however I would be confined to having students sit at the computer station and they would need more assistance in getting the program set up and trained to not open or close other windows on the computers.  Over the next few weeks I will be comparing the pro’s and con’s of these items.

As mentioned previously, I would like to implement recording the student’s stories during the first month of school.  As part of my research, I will be gathering up a group of my former students to try out this technology and assess how it can be implemented with my new class.  I believe that trying this out on a small group of students, I will be able to see if this idea is too complicated and needs to be adjusted.  I may discover that these “digital natives” adapt easily to this idea and I could expand the technology to include some digital storytelling.  As it stands, I would like to begin teaching my students the basics of recordings in September so that we have some good recordings to share with the parents by conferences at the end of October.  This project could then be expanded to use recordings as a way to practice their fluency in reading.  I have witnessed that kindergarten reading skills really emerge in the winter months.  It would be great if we could turn their stories into something like a podcast which we could share with other students, families, etc.  There are many avenues to consider but for now…stay tuned!

Works Cited : 

Ash, K. (2009). Digital Voice Recorders Turn Students Into Interviewers. Education Week: Digital Directions .

Webster, R. (2010, February 10). Hearing our Voices. Retrieved July 14, 2010, from YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTGugNPPXoA

To begin the TechQuest journey we are to state a problem of practice in our own classroom.  My classroom is made up of 16-18 kindergarten students, some of which leave at noon and the bulk that stay all day.  I have no aide or assistant teacher for my classroom.  The problem I am frequently faced with is not enough individual time with my students to really work with them on their reading and writing skills and give them proper feedback.  This is especially true of my half day students.  Our mornings go by very quickly as we plow through the required curriculum, making sure that those half timers are not missing anything.  Despite the fast-paced schedule, we create many individual stories using a combination of sight words they know and their own “thinking spelling”.  While I am circulating through the room, I can assist the children and know exactly what the student is writing and can guide them as necessary.  When I collect their stories later though, I often have a hard time deciphering what they were trying to write and my memory fails me.  If I cannot remember what they were writing based on their few letters, their friends and family members really have a hard time!  Parents have offered to come in and assist during the day but often times the parent spells everything out for the student or tells them what to write, thereby negating the whole idea of the student’s invented spelling and getting their own thoughts down on paper.  I want story writing to be something that they students look forward to and enjoy, which is why I feel very strongly that they use their invented spelling and not stress over if the word is spelled exactly right.  I want the students to be able to share their work with their friends and family so they feel a sense of ownership and pride in their work.  I do not have the classroom time to be able to sit and listen to them read on the same day that I am still assisting those that have not completed the story yet.  I need to find a way for the students to be able to read their story to me, but in a way that I can review it at a later time and have a chance to provide better feedback for them. 

One avenue that I have heard mentioned is digital storytelling.  The students could create their story using pictures and then use an audio recording of themselves as the storyteller.  This idea appeals to me because we are going to have a mobile lab of Netbooks this fall and I could feasibly teach the students how to use these as a group, but then work in small groups to get them started on their story.  The downside I see in this is that it does not solve the problem of their writing skills.  I have not done anything with digital storytelling, so I will need to do research to find out if I am mistaken and if there are other ways I can incorporate their writing into this idea.

Another possibility is using a program such as Audacity, where the students could read their own stories from their papers, into the microphone on the computers and then have the story recorded and available for playback.  Again, training would be needed both by myself and my students on using this program. 

Since school is not in session yet, I plan to “test drive” my TechQuest on a few of my students from last year that are staff children.  My hope is to implement my plan in September, but by testing it out this summer, I will be able to better identify potential problems and make the necessary changes.

In the upcoming weeks I will be researching the best solution to this problem and am open to all comments and suggestions.  Please let me know if you have had any experience with this situation and working with these young students.

For the next 8 weeks I will be using this blog for my CEP 812  class through MSU.  You will see the development of  my TechQuest, my SIG (Special Interest Group) project and many other reflections.  At the end of August, my blog will be shifting gears and reflect on the daily life of my kindergarten classroom.  Stay tuned!!

As my 811 class wraps up, I was thinking back at what my goal was for this class.  I wanted to created a class blog and learn more about those.  So did I accomplish this?  Well, sort-of.  I discovered that making a blog was actually much easier than I thought.  Big shout-out to Edublogs for that!!  I did not start a class blog, but as you are experiencing now, I have created my own teacher blog.  I am actually enjoying it more than I thought I would too!  I am planning to start the class blog in the fall with my new kindergarten class.  At this moment, having just learned all of these cool things, I feel a bit overwhelmed with work and not enough time left in the school year to bother.  The same goes for my website.  I really like my website and again, much easier than I thought!  I am going to make it accessible for my kindergarten parents next year.  Right now, I use TeacherWeb and it has taken 132 school days and they still don’t read it as often as I would like.  If I give them another website to look at, I think they will give up all together.  I am planning to put my website skills to use for our Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts at our school and develop one that they can use to communicate better with the parents and the leaders. 

When we started this class, I had no idea what a WebQuest was and now I am making plans for the ones I want to develop over the summer!  These have turned out to be a great tool for my students.  We have done some individually and many as a group.  I am spending a lot of my weekends looking for good WebQuests that are age appropriate. 

An area I want to develop is using more kid-focused products like Pixie that I saw at the MACUL conference, but haven’t had time to look into for my classroom.  I would like my students to use more tools to create digital books but I haven’t had time to play around with these.  An important strategy for working with young children is allowing them to have as many means of expressing themselves as possible.  I think book writing, drawing and verbal storytelling are great ways to assess how students are comprehending the information they are presented with.  I use many methods to see which works for which student since we all express ourselves by different means.  I would really like to add some technological tools to support this learning.

Once again, it all boils down to time and finding more of it to explore new programs, find new interactive lessons, even just install a new game on the student’s computers.  I do not think that adding technology will “take up” more time, because I believe I have done a good job incorporating it into my lessons so that it is just part of our routine.  I do like to be prepared though and want to make sure sites are up and running, links work and images are clear before I start using them with the students.  I like to look at my lessons for the week and make sure that I am using some information gathering with the internet, traditional means such as books, writing, labs and then mix in some interactive lessons or video that support the lesson.  I like to make sure that I present the same lesson at least 3 ways to make sure I am reaching each learner. 

So has this new web-based learning changed my teaching style?  Absolutely!  I find that I am more conscience of the many strategies the developer used to reach the learners.  I look at the copyrights!  I decide if this technology is going to improve the lesson or if it is just getting thrown in for the sake of using technology.  At this time of the year, we are getting ready to count down the days left of school, anticipating summer vacation.  Now, I am looking forward to planning for next year and all the potential that is there.

Yes ,we are teaching in the digital world and I am a digital girl!  Sorry, I had to break out into song for this one!  Perhaps I am inspired by the well -written Michigan Merit Curriculum or maybe it’s just that Moulin Rouge is on for the 4th time this week with many hits from the 80′s, but none-the-less it is an exciting and challenging time to be a teacher. 

I have remarked in the past that I love my Promethean ActivBoard in my classroom.  I can’t believe I once thought I would never use this with my young students!  Now, I cannot imagine my life without it.  How nice it is to be able to pull up Google Earth and show the students exactly where we live on a large screen, as opposed to everyone hovering around the globe and listening to “I can’t see the mitten!!”.  We have so many resources available because of the internet, it’s crazy not to take advantage of it.  Does this mean we should just put on a streamlined video everytime we need a minute to sit down?  I sure hope not!  Nor should we assume that everything on the net is appropriate and fact-filled.  Just like we teach our students, we have to be prepared for class.  Preview and edit!

For my kindergarten class, I intend to use the internet and WebQuests as my main methods for exposing the students to the digital world.  I have been very pleased with their involvement in the WebQuest  I developed for my MSU class.  They used the internet to discover facts about farm animals, but then worked in groups and individually for many projects along the way.  Each day they would come to school, asking if we would have the farm animals on the screen.  They couldn’t wait to get the virtual cows prepped for milking.

So what else can the 5-6 year old crowd do? Well, I admit when I look at the list the MMC has, it is a bit daunting, but that is why the new requirements start in 6th grade.   I am interested in listening to some Podcasts with my students though.  We have tried Science on the Wild Side’s podcasts, which are fantastic, but go a bit too fast for my students to catch the info.  My goal is to start a class blog as well.  While my student’s will not be able to type everything, I would like to try having them as the “reporters” who dictate to me.  We will be able to put up samples of our work and items they are working on.    We already use the internet for research, interactive lessons and even some communication with friends around the world.  I have high hopes of getting us on VoiceThread and creating a digital story.  We will get there eventually!  Everything in it’s time… 

Time, which for this teacher, is the biggest challenge.  Students who are just learning to read and need a lot of individual time with me.  Students who need time to grow and learn.  One of the blessings of teaching in a parochial school is that I have the opportunity to watch these students as they progress all the way through 8th grade.   Getting everyone on board with the digital plan…it is sure to be a great time!

I had heard about Picasa at the MACUL conference this spring and was excited to try it out.  Did it live up to it’s hype?  YES!  Downloading their software was a snap.  It immediately found thousands of pictures on my computer and I was able to view them, make edits, upload, email, and everything else I could ever want to do.  The best part was, while I can edit pictures, for instance, change a photo to a Sepia finish, it does not touch the original!  Even when you save the photo with the changes, it makes a copy automatically.  I basically stumbled my way around the features but if I didn’t know what to do, the “Help” tab at the top was really well written.  It gave specific steps, written in normal language that anyone can understand.  Could my students do it?  Well, probably not, since they can’t read independently for something like this.  Could upper Elementary and High School?  Definitely!

So here was another cool feature I haven’t seen in before:  face recognition that will find pictures of the same person and group them together.  I began with picking a photo folder that had pictures of my students in it.  It found their faces and put a list of faces on the right side of the screen for me.  I then typed in their name for each one and Picasa did the rest.  It started scanning through the files and finding similar facial features and grouped them together.  Very cool right?  Well yes, but…

I thought it would stop with the one file I had started with.  I was mistaken.  It went through all of my pictures….I gave up and went to bed.  When I woke up this morning though, it was all done and I had to simply click on the student and all of the pictures Picasa identified were displayed.  After that, you just scroll through them and if there is a picture of someone else, you can click on “remove”.  It was a bit tedious, but it sure beats going through each folder, looking for pictures that include that student and having to cut/paste them into new folders and making copies of the pictures that contain more than one student.  You can play around with making photo collages of the student, upload to a web album, print pictures and even make a gift cd/dvd.  My plan is to make the cd’s for each student and give it to them at kindergarten graduation.  They will have a year’s worth of memories to take with them and their parents will have a copy of Picasa on the cd for them to use as they want.  I know many of the parents are scrapbookers so I think they will enjoy the options they will have to edit the pictures themselves. 

If I had planned this out better, I would have read more and found a way to focus Picasa on just a certain directory.  This would have saved time by not going through thousands of family pictures that I did not need for this project.  This is something the classroom teacher would want to keep in mind before starting…check what pictures you have out there already.  As any good teacher knows, you need to be prepared.  Play with Picasa before you introduce it to the students.  As I had mentioned, using the people finder option took all night.  That would not have worked if we were trying to get it done in one class period and the students would have been frustrated.  This does provide a great way for students to start editing their own photos.  They could use this for virtually any project that they wanted photo’s for.  They would able to make it into a movie or slide show easily.  Because students are naturally curious, I suspect they would figure out the software even faster.  I do enjoy the tool tips (hover-over-item feature) that allow you to move your cursor over the icon and it tells you want it does.  When uploading pictures to the web albums, there are different privacy settings you can pick.  For student privacy, you can make them password protected. 

I have not used Flickr to know how this compares, but I loved that Picasa was free, easy to use and had great tips/help for those who need it!