Congratulations to Julia Pugliese, our lucky winner. She's a second grade teacher at Alta Vista, who won the raffle for participating in the Hour of Code. After participating in the Hour of Code last month with her class, she remembered to fill out our Google Form. Thank you to all of the 66 teachers who filled it out, and anyone else who participated. That adds up to a lot of students who are learning code in our district!
We put all the names of our participating teachers in the Random Name Picker, and Julia's name came up!
Julia's prize is an Osmo kit, a Sphero, and two iPad minis! Wow! Now we think that is a pretty awesome reward. Congrats, Julia! We hope you and your students have fun with your prize. If you missed out on participating this year, we hope you will join us next time.
It's that time of year again! Many of you may remember the Hour of Code from last year, and for those of you who don't, it is a worldwide movement where teachers and students of all ages dedicate at least an hour during the week of December 7th to learning how to code. If you aren't sure if you have the time to fit it into your busy schedule, consider some of the many reasons why you should make time to do it.
Maybe you are not sure how to teach code or even how to do code yourself. The best part is, it is actually much easier to do than you would ever imagine. Check out this hyperdoc created by Lisa Highfill which is filled with kid-friendly resources. It's really just a matter of letting the kids "play" with them while they work at their own pace. Kids are amazing, and they do figure it out on their own.
Be sure to sign your class up for the Hour of Code, and then fill out our district Google Form. All teachers who get their classes to participate will be entered into our district drawing to win a free mystery technology item that is going to be awesome! Also, if all classes at your school participate, your school will be entered in the big Hour of Code drawing sponsored by the organizers to win $10,000 of technology for your school site. You can even printHourofCodecertificates in bulk atcode.org/certificates. Students will also see a certificate when they complete an HourofCodetutorial, but some students won’t make it to the very end in anhour— and that’s okay.
After learning about how to customize the size of the pages of a Google Slide presentation, Carla Dunavan put together a short tutorial on how to do it. Thank you, Carla, for sharing your directions with us. Teachers, you may notice that this is a great way for students to create an e-book. And because it is a Google Slide, Google Drawings, images, or YouTube videos can be easily inserted.
EduWin Nomination from Heather Koleszar for Julie Nguyen-Ebadi
Julie Nguyen-Ebadi is a second grade teacher at Noddin doing great things with her students in Google Draw. Recently, Julie had students find images on Google to show the life cycle of a butterfly. Thanks, Julie, for showing us how your students are reinforcing their learning using online tools.
Do you use video in your classroom to inspire thinking?
Last month I attended Fall CUE up in the Napa Valley and ever since then, I haven't been able to stop thinking about Lisa Highfill's session titled YouTube Lessons That Will Leave You Thinking.
I was truly inspired, and after searching through the Highfill Crew YouTube playlists, I came across the video WWII vet forms unlikely friendship with toddler. That video sparked an idea about creating a Google Sites HyperDoc that could be used across grade levels. I decided that this was a great video about friendship, which seemed to tie in nicely with Thanksgiving. This led me to create a website with tabs for different Thanksgiving themes that teachers can explore with their classes, or have students explore on their own.
I invite you to check out the USD Learns Thanksgiving Hyperdoc to see if there is anything that might inspire you and students the week before Thanksgiving. There are some interactive pieces where students can share their thoughts or turn in links to their work.
Please be aware that any Padlet on this Thanksgiving site is a shared learning space where students can freely post their thoughts. Before trying it with your students, please have a conversation about digital citizenship and ask them only to post ideas and content that they want other students and teachers to see.
Want your students to be a part of our USD is Thankful Video?
If you would like to participate, you can find more information about how to create class videos on the Gratitude page.
I am thankful to be working in such an amazing school district with such creative and innovative teachers. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your students, friends, and families!
Don't forget that the November 13th Digital Citizenship Video Contest deadline is quickly approaching. The good news is that it's not too late to encourage your students to participate. We've come up with 4 simple low-tech project ideas with suggestions about how to turn those creations into videos:
Write a poem
Create a poster
Write a song or rap
Create a comic
Here's a Digital Citizenship HyperDoc with examples and how-to videos that can help get you started. You'd be surprised how easy it is to turn these projects into short videos.
Once you have your students complete a project, you may like help creating videos. The Tech ToSAs are available! Please fill out the 2 question Digital Citizenship Video Lesson Sign-Up and one of us will contact you to coordinate the lesson.
Don't forget to turn the videos into the Official Entry Form by November 13th. We can't wait so see all of your students' creative digital citizenship projects!
*If you are having your students create their own videos for the contest, here are some digital story video templates to help them plan a script before creating the video.
Here is a simple Google Doc Halloween lesson that I originally created for a 2nd grade class. It gets students to play around with the simple, basic functions of Google Docs in a fun way. Here's what students do inside this activity:
read a Halloween poem
change font and color of 2 important word from each line
use the Research Tool to insert an image to match lines of the poem
learn how a Google Drawing works inside of a Doc
Teaching students how to use the Research Tool is an important feature in Docs. Just in case students finish the activity early, I added the magnetic poetry to the 2nd page for students. Students are invited to create a spooky sentence, or a spooky poem.
Halloween always sparks some really creative an imaginative ideas and I used to always have my 4th grade students write different kinds of poetry in October.
This Google HyperDoc gets students to plan and create a Cinquain poem. Completing a class copy of the Cinquain Poem Template Doc is a great way to get the students thinking about their own poem. After the poem draft is completed, you can give your students art supplies for their final draft, or I gave suggestions of some tech tools that they can use to creatively display their work.
I kept this template neutral so that it can be used any time of year, not just Halloween.
If you have any questions, or would like help trying out any tech lessons in your classroom, please email me at pacadag@unionsd.org.
Hopefully by now you have heard about our Digital Citizenship Video Contest and have been promoting it with your students. To make it easier to get started, we'd like to highlight some of our favorite easy to use video creation tools that we are suggesting students use to make their videos. If they have access to iPads at school (or at home), Adobe Voice is probably the quickest and easiest way to make a professional looking video slideshow. It is the same app that we used to make the video promoting the contest and it's free!
It comes with access to a huge library of copyright friendly free graphics or images that are easy to search for and use that are automatically added in the credits at the end. This speeds up the process of making the video and eliminates the problem of copyright infringement while modeling proper use.
Don't have enough iPads to go around? Why not have students work in groups for a fantastic opportunity to collaborate?
Still worried that it might take too long or be too hard? No pressure or anything, but check out this Adobe Voice video made during one center session by a student in Mrs. Kamali's kindergarten class giving a tour of the classroom. Claire even used her own images! Now that's pretty impressive!
For more information on how to use Adobe Voice, check out this tutorial that will make it even easier to get started. Enjoy!
And of course, this week's EduWinner goes to Helen Kamali! The second time her Kindergartners made Adobe Voice videos, they demonstrated their understanding of the life cycle of a pumpkin and the structure of a book. No parent volunteers for centers? It was no problem. Her students made them all by themselves! We think Mrs. Kamali must have done a great job of teaching them. She claims she's not so tech savvy, but we disagree. Congratulations, Mrs. Kamali. We are amazed!
If you want to learn how to do this in your class, I highly suggest you attend Helen's Union University class. It's called, "Movie Making in the Primary Classroom" on Monday, November 16th from 3:30-5 at Noddin.
