Charlotte's Web Vokis

Wilbur Voki

This is a student example of a voki created by one of the students in my class about the main character, Wilbur, from Charlotte's Web. He wrote about Wilbur's character traits and his motivations.


Templeton Voki

This is a student example of a voki created by one of the students in my class about the main character, Templeton, from Charlotte's Web. He wrote about Wilbur's character traits and his motivations. He also used many higher level vocabulary words and talked about the things that Templeton likes to do.


Fern Voki

This is a student example of a voki created by one of the students in my class about the main character, Fern, from Charlotte's Web. She used the events from the story to help her figure out what to include in her voki.

Final reflection

This class has allowed me to become a more successful educator. I have learned about the importance of collaboration and the many tools for encouraging collaboration within my classroom and with my students. This school year has been a difficult year, as my class is filled with many clashing personalities. I have many students who do not work well with one another, and feel that they are better than others. I have. Students who do not know how to interact socially with other students as well, and I have students who would just rather work alone because they see themselves as better than others. Overall, the clash of personalities has been a struggle all year. I have learned that they are very visual and hands on learners, and when given the opportunity to explore and discover, they are more apt to putting forth extreme effort. Throughout this course, I was able to show the students how much technology can enhance your understanding and your learning. They just LOVED putting together the digital story, and let me tell you, I have never seen them work so well with one another, as they did with the third graders in Mrs. Klock's classroom. They were so excited about being a star in a video! This year I introduced them to blogging and showed them how. To collaboratively work with one another, and they seem to have a hold on the idea behind it, but of course there is much work to be done. I tried to put together a wiki for the students to use to collaborate with their reading groups about Charlotte's Web as well. Although this seemed to be more of a struggle than the blogging, I feel that in time, they would begin to understand how to use it. They seem to really love using technology in their learning and they enjoy when I use the smart board in the computer lab for interactive approaches to learning in all content areas across the curriculum. They are currently using a lot of technology with their state projects. They are using Microsoft word for typing their state reports and they are using it for creating a brochure about their states. They have been working on embedding pictures and text into their brochures to make them visually appealing. They are also working on a postcard project where they are writing about the different regions of the united states and importing graphics into the postcards appropriately. They have come a long way this year, and although I felt very overwhelmed throughout this entire course, I feel more confident in my ability to teach and implement technology into my everyday teaching. This semester has taught me a lot! My school district(principal) is very pleased with our digital story and she has given us nothing but positive feedback about the work that we have done this semester with our students, based on the course projects. I will say, this class is much easier if you have a classroom to use to help you create the projects and the assignments.

Vokis

Hi all! My students worked really hard the past few weeks on their vokis. We just finished Reading Charlotte's Web and they were so excited when I told them about their culminating project for the book. In centers for the past couple of weeks I introduced vokis to the class and we revisited character traits and motivations. Students created a voki about one of the main characters in the story, and boy did they have fun customizing their vokis. They were engaged and so excited about completing the activity. Last week, I tried embedding my vokis into my blog so that you could all see what a wonderful job they did on them, but unfortunately it would not let me. I turned to Michelle to help me troubleshoot it but she could not figure it out either. After an hour of trying to do it last week and an hour of trying this week, I decided that it's just not going to work. :-( on Thursday, I will be able to showcase my students' work through my voki account and hopefully you will all enjoy their vokis as much as they did and I did as well. I also used this project as an editing and revising exercise. The students were encouraged to edit and revise as much as they could using tools in the classroom. I also had the students peer review each others work. Overall they enjoyed the assignment.

Literacy project

We have one last project for this class and I am actually very excited about completing it. Originally, Michelle and I were going to complete a wiki because we are both reading Charlotte's Web with our classes and we thought that having them work together again to complete a wiki would be a neat way to get them working collaboratively and talking about what they have been reading. After last class, we were told it may be easier to do something less intense, so we both decided to do vomits with our classes. I actually thought it might be really cool to have my students do vokis as the main characters in Charlotte's Web. I have never completed a voki before, but I thought that having the students create these would be a great way to bring the reading of the book to a conclusion and this activity would help the students complete a project identifying character traits and motivations of the main characters. Any ideas?? What do you think?

Skype with my son

I just have to say that I love Skype. Sometimes Skype is difficult to work with because the connection gets lots very easily, but my husband, my son, and I use Skype almost every night. My son is 4 and he is at the age right now where he wants to show everyone everything that he can do or things that he got at school, etc. My in laws don't live very far away....they live in Rhode Island. For my son's third birthday, they bought us the camera for Skype and it has been a great way for our son to interact with his grandparents. There were so many occasions when he would try and show his grandparents things through the phone and we would try to explain to him that they cannot see them. This frustrated him. Using Skype has allowed him to stay in touch with his grandparents and he loves sitting and talking with them on the computer.

Skype from last class

What an amazing opportunity it was to Skype last week with the high school students involved in the girls program with Mr. G. I thought it was really great that we were particularly able to see how technology has impacted the student learning of these students at the secondary level. It was nice to talk with them and learn. About how they have adapted to the online class meetings and projects. It was very interesting to me about how flexible they were able to be when completing projects with others peers around the world. I can now see that there is a lot of organization and planning that needs to go into completing these projects successfully as a group, in order to demonstrate their understanding of the topics being taught to them. After talking with the girls on the Skype call, I was able to understand the importance behind technology and the differences between completing an online class and going to class. These girls had a lot of important things to say about the differences between actually going to class and taking part I an online class through Skype and other collaborative technology tools. Overall, I was very impressed with their level of enthusiasm for their professor and their class projects and assignments. I wish that I could have been provided with such a positive experience like them, when I was their age, but technology was still up and coming at that time.

Digital Story-Symmetry: Final Draft

Digital Story Project: Rough Draft

Michelle and I have spent MANY hours working on this Digital Story project, from the planning, to the implementation, to the organizing, it has taken a lot out of us! Obviously, in looking at this digital story, it is no where NEAR being finished, but that is just what a rough draft is! After using multiple trial and error techniques and consulting our district technology coordinator and our band director, we are very pleased with the progress that we have made, and we are very excited to show you our DRAFT. We practiced incorporating the text feature, and realized that we have some more learning and some more research to do about changing the font style, the sizes, and the way that it is organized within the digital story. We are looking forward to learning how to make these necessary changes to make the digital story its best. We have not recorded the voice yet in our digital story, but will be working on this as the week goes on. Our classes are really looking forward to seeing the finalized product! We are looking forward to spending more time working with iMovie to create a well organized, and error free digital story about symmetry!!

Geoboard Symmetry

Yesterday Michelle's 3rd graders and my 4th graders got together and they completed their last day of symmetry center activities. This is a picture of a partnership using geo boards to create symmetrical designs. They really enjoyed this activity!!!

 

This is an example of symmetrical design developed by a 3rd grade and 4th grade partnership using pattern blocks. You will notice that there are different shades of the colored pattern blocks, but we only have a minimal number of supplies! 

Digital storytelling

Picture taken from google images

What an awesome past couple weeks it has been! My class and mrs. Klock's third grade class have been working collaboratively together on a common unit in both grades:symmetry. Last week and the week before we introduced the topic and explained what the unit would like and how they would be working together to complete different activities practicing identifying lines of symmetry and reflection. Last week we started implementing different hands on manipulatives to use to help the students identify line symmetry. Last week we used geoboards, pattern blocks, and overhead transparencies to practice identifying and reflecting different patterns. This week we began exploring kid pix and we make reflective bookmarks and painted kites. I am very pleased with the amount of collaboration and cooperation that my class and the third graders have been implementing into the activities. They have been working so well together and they have been communicating effectively. They have been very upbeat about the collaborative aspect of the unit and the activities and they have been very motivated to complete all activities in a positive way. They are looking forward to completing the final digital storytelling activity!

I found a great digital story that helped show different ways to help teach different organizing skills to help students in the area of reading and language arts. I particularly liked the idea of using a cluster map to help brainstorm the different ways your could use a vocabulary word.