Character Education – Page 3 – iLearn Technology

DIY: a maker site for kids

March 8, 2013March 8, 2013Kelly Tenkely1 Comment4655 views

What it is: I LOVE everything about this site. It truly embodies everything I love about learning and technology. DIY is an online club for kids to earn maker skills. Kids (otherwise known as Makers) share their creations and work with a larger online community and collect patches for the skills they learn. Each skill has a set of challenges that help kids learn different techniques and create something fantastic. When a child completes a maker challenge, they can add photos and video to their online portfolio to show off their creation. DIY is a website where kids get a public portfolio, an app that they can use to upload videos and pictures of their projects, makers can choose to do challenges to earn “Skills” badges, and a parent dashboard where teachers or parents can follow along on all activity.

Maker identities are always secure, children are asked to choose an animal and a nickname to help protect their privacy. Parents get access to see what their kids are posting online.

I love that this site encourages creativity, reflective portfolios and using technology constructively. It is an outstanding balance of online and offline activity!

How to integrate DIY into the classroom: At Anastasis, we strive to encourage a maker community. We do have a 1:1 iPad environment. For many, this equates to a technology rich environment (it is) where everything is done or consumed on a device. I can think of nothing sadder than reducing learning to a device! We most often use our technology to capture and share our learning. DIY is a fantastic site that makes way for kids to be curious about the world around them, create something new and use technology to innovate.

DIY is a great place to help students discover the love and joy of being a learner and a creator. It fosters a classroom culture of innovation and sharing of learning and accomplishment. So many of the challenges incorporate learning that support standards and other learning that is “required” in the classroom. These challenges would be great to take on as individual makers, in small groups of makers, or to tackle as a whole class. Don’t think of DIY as an “extra” thing to add into your classroom routine. Instead, look through the challenges through the lens of how it can enhance the learning objectives in your classroom. Embrace the maker culture in your classroom and allow room for creativity and innovation. The inquiry model of learning lends itself beautifully toward this. DIY could be the catalyst to making the shift away from more traditional learning and into an inquiry based model.

Tips: Instead of assigning “traditional” homework (read: piles of worksheets), assign a challenge from the DIY site. Better yet, let students choose their own challenge to tackle and make time in the classroom for them to share their creations and accomplishments.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using DIY in your classroom.

Digital Life: Video Killed the Radio Star

March 1, 2013Kelly Tenkely4 Comments2806 views

What it is: Being a child of this decade, I am LOVING @amyburvall‘s newest video to the tune of “Video Killed the Radio Star.” Brilliant. If you don’t know @amyburvall, you should. She is amazing and makes learning history so very enjoyable. The newest music video is all about Digital Life. A great one to kick off discussions with your class about digital life and clue them into what MTV used to be about in the pre “16 and Pregnant” days. How I long for those days to be back (at least as far as programming is concerned).

How to integrate Digital Life into the classroom: The Digital Life video is a fun way to start a discussion or inquiry into digital life. I don’t know about you, but the digital is becoming SO common that it tends to blend right into the background and we take it for granted. This is an important discussion with students because most of them have never known a life without idevices and smartphones that instantly connect them to the world. This “invisible” tech can be problematic. Kids can take it so for granted that they don’t see the separation between their digital life and their real life. Not everything needs to live online forever (how many duck faced pictures can a person have?). That break-up that happened in 8th grade is probably not the footprint kids want to leave for future employers.

When we talk with students about digital life at Anastasis, we make sure to highlight the following: EVERYONE has access to things posted online- even when you think it is private; deleted from Facebook or Instagram doesn’t always equate to being gone-it can always be resurrected (screenshots are killers); disrespecting others online is bullying-period; there is no sarcasm font- choose your words carefully; emoticons can’t capture every emotion-sometimes conversations are best had f2f (that’s face to face); words can be damaging and lasting-don’t be a bully; cherish your relationships off-line-take time to be away from the connected world.

Tips: If you haven’t seen @amyburvall history videos, go now. You can thank me later. 🙂

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Digital Life in your classroom.

World Education Games: Registration Now Open!

February 1, 2013Kelly Tenkely1 Comment6257 views

What it is: Holy cow, I am SO excited! Today registration is open for World Education Games!! If your students have never participated with World Education Games (like World Math Day), this is the year. They will thank you for including them in this fun world wide contest. February 1st, that’s today, registration is open and the official warm-up training period for students begins. On March 5h students can participate in World Literacy Day, March 6 is World Math Day, and March 7 is World Science Day. March 22nd Global award presentations begin with the Official World Education Games Awards. The World Education Games is an annual global online olympics to get students from age 4 to 18 excited about learning. The fun comes in the friendly competition between countries as students compete to represent their country in the games. There are 3 days of games focused on literacy, math and science. The games are a great way to help students in speed, accuracy and general fluency in core computation, number and spelling skills. World Science Day has been designed to encourage curiosity and excitement in science while helping them answer knowledge, application and reasoning questions. Each game (a competition against other students from around the world) lasts just 1 minute. Students can go head to head as often as they would like, but only the first 50 games are counted toward the competition point tally. World Math Day was launched in 2007 and my students have taken part in this fun competition each year. Since then, Literacy and Science day has been added to the games. SO much fun!

How to integrate World Education Games into the classroom: World Education Games are such a fantastic way to encourage students to practice foundational skills. In the past, I have hosted an “opening ceremonies” at my school and done it up like the Olympics with flags, songs, etc. We go over what the World Education Games are and then make a big deal about the handing out of usernames/passwords (like lighting the torch) and then we kick off our training portion. Students get excited about participating in this fun day and we get lots of “training” in before the big day. On the actual day, we wear red, white and blue and play against kids from around the world. This is great fun in a one-to-one setting or a computer lab where all students can participate simultaneously. Don’t have that option? Because the games are 1 minute long, students can play 5 games each on classroom computers in a rotation.

Since your students are competing against students from around the world, why not use the competition to practice using a map and identifying countries? Since we have a one to one iPad program, we do this digitally with a Google Map. Each time a student competed against a country, they would come up to the board and put a “pin” in the map. Don’t have devices for each student? Use an interactive whiteboard or the paper map and actual pins on a class bulletin board, these options are just as fun!

Don’t forget closing ceremonies at the end of World Education Games. Make up fun medals and give them out to top performers, hardest trainers, etc. Think outside the box on these. Not all kids are speedy in their fact recall…find a way to honor their participation and hard work…did they see huge improvement or growth? Honor those achievements!

The World Education Games are available for free on any internet-connected computer and as a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10 app.

Check out the Resource page for teacher and student guide, a world map, a poster, and for School-in-a-box information.

Tips: Schools participating in the World Education Games can also work toward giving other children the opportunity to start school. World Education Games has partnered with UNICEF to make this happen. During the games, host a fundraiser to purchase “School-in-a-Box” Each $236 donation is enough to send 80 kids to school! What a great way to help kids understand what a privilege education is and model compassion and empathy for others.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using World Education Games in your classroom.

The Literacy Shed: a treasure trove of ideas

June 25, 2012Kelly Tenkely2 Comments11551 views

What it is: The Literacy Shed is a fantastic blog/site I learned about on Twitter from @missmac100, thanks Carol! The Literacy Shed is maintained by primary teacher Rob Smith and is packed full of teaching ideas all related to literacy. The site is separated into “sheds,” each with a different genre. There are short films images and book suggestions that are each accompanied by a teaching idea that includes discussion questions and writing prompts. The Literacy Shed has plenty of ideas to keep you going all year long! This truly is a treasure trove that will keep you coming back again and again. You will find the following “sheds” on the Literacy Shed:

Fantasy
Ghostly
Other Cultures
Inspiration
Moral
Picture Book
Great Animation
Love
Inventors
Fairytales
Reading
Poetry
Adventure
Mystery
Film Trailer
Fun
Lighthouse
Flying Books
Resource
Non-literacy
Weblinks

How to integrate The Literacy Shed into the classroom: The Literacy Shed is a great one-stop-shop for inspiration and ideas to improve literacy and critical thinking in your classroom. The ideas can be used with a variety of age groups, different ages will pick up on different themes and discussions using the same videos/images/books. Students will become familiar with a variety of genres and become comfortable with the characteristics of each.

There is something here for every classroom and unit. As I said, it is a treasure trove of resources! Use the ideas in the Literacy Shed to spark meaningful discussions and writing direction for your students. I always like to start with discussion and end with a written reflection because it gives students the opportunity to listen to other ideas, and then solidify their own ideas and reflections in writing.

Tips: You can follow the Literacy Shed on Twitter: @redgierob

Please leave a comment and share how you are using The Literacy Shed in your classroom!

10 ways to eliminate the distractions around YouTube videos

June 13, 2012Kelly Tenkely2 Comments3856 views

What it is: YouTube is a truly wonderful learning resource. What isn’t so great: all of the garbage that can come along with it (i.e. advertising, comments, related videos…in short-distractions). Luckily, schools have some great options for using YouTube differently. Some of these tools I have written about before and some are new additions…hence the new post! 🙂

YouTube for Schools- This is a YouTube that has been created just for schools. Network administrators must be involved so that they can add this option for YouTube into your filtering system. This is a completely customizable option that lets teachers and administrators add videos to a playlist that you have predetermined you want students to watch. Teachers can find videos by Common Core Standard, subject or grade. Students can watch videos that teachers and administrators have approved or any YouTube Edu video (think Kahn Academy, PBS, TED, Stanford, etc.).
SafeShare TV- This site lets students watch YouTube videos without ads, links, comments and related videos. You also have the option to crop videos and share videos with a unique URL.
YouTubeXL- This is a service that YouTube provides that lets you watch videos on large screens without the ads and comments. Neat tip: if you time “quiet” before the YouTube url, it takes you to a safe page where you can watch a YouTube video. WAY cool and easy to do on the fly!
Clean VideoSearch- This site lets students search through YouTube videos without the comments, ads and busy sidebar. It has additional features like the ability to choose how many videos you want to see on each page in your search.
Clea.nr– This service (a browser plugin) deletes all of the obnoxious extras that hang around videos (ads, comments, related videos). You can also search YouTube without all of the extras showing up.
ViewPure– This site cleans out all the clutter and gives you just a video. Bonus: There is a quick button that you can add to your browser so that you can go to a video, click on “Pure” in your bookmark bar and instantly have a clean video.
Dragontape– This service lets you drag videos into a timeline and share them easily with students. This is great for mashing up several videos, or cropping multiple videos into one.
Movavi– This is a video conversion service. Wonderful for teachers who can’t or don’t want to access a video directly from YouTube. Copy/paste the url you want to convert, choose a file type, done!
Zamzar– This is another great video conversion service. Works quickly and easily!
SaveYouTube- This site used to be called KickYouTube. Here you can enter the url and download it to your computer to play offline.

How to integrate less distracting YouTube videos into the classroom: This one is really a no brainer: want to use YouTube? Clean it up! I find great content I find on YouTube (as do my students). All of the “extras” around the videos can be SO distracting as a searcher and viewer. These options are outstanding for making videos less distracting so that your students can focus on the learning happening.

I find that students head to YouTube (even before Google) when they want to learn something new. They are generally pretty successful at finding a video that will teach them how to do what they want to do. Very handy for self guided learning!

Tips: Always try these tools out at school BEFORE using with students. Some of them won’t work depending on your school’s filters and policies.

Leave a comment and share how less distracting YouTube videos are rocking your classroom.

iCivics- teaching students civics through games

June 11, 2012Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2659 views

What it is: iCivics is a great way for students to learn about civics in the United States. The site features 16 educational video games that help students understand our government. In addition to the great games, iCivics has great standards-aligned civics curriculum available for free to teachers! Games include topics like: Citizenship and Participation, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, Budgeting, Foreign Policy and National Defense, Separation of Powers, the Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch, and the Judicial Branch. The games are fantastic, and put students right in the middle of the action and story.

Activate- Students campaign for an issue of their choice.
Cast Your Vote- Students choose the questions in a debate, rate the candidates responses, and cast a vote.
Immigration Nation- Students help newcomers along their path to citizenship.
Responsibility Launcher- Students help others with civic common sense.
Argument Wars- Students argue a real Supreme Court case using persuasive abilities.
Do I Have a Right- Student run their own law firm that specializes in constitutional law.
Counties Work- Students make decisions about community programs and services.
People’s Pie- Student control the budget of the federal government.
Crisis of Nations- Student work to solve international problems.
Branches of Power- Students control all three branches of government.
Executive Command- Student get to be president.
Win the White House- Students get to manage their own presidential campaign including raising funds and polling voters.
Supreme Decision- Students help cast the deciding vote.
Court Quest- Student help others navigate the US court system.

Students can join iCivics for free. When they do, they can take part in the Impact Competition where they play games, earn points, spend points on a iCivics real life project of their choice.

As a teacher, you can sign up for an iCivics account where you can add classes and students.

How to integrate iCivics into the classroom: iCivics is a great way to help students better understand the US government. The games are engaging, relatively quick to play (one class period), and teach everything that students need to know to play the game. Students with little or no understanding of the topic will be introduced to everything they need to know within the game.

The games are a great way to learn about civics because they put students right in the middle of the action, the games remind me a little of the SIMS games that I played as a kid. Students will enjoy being the decision maker in the game-this isn’t a power point presentation disguised as a game (you know you have seen those!).

iCivics is best played on individual computers in a one-to-one or lab setting. If you don’t have access to a lab where your students can play, students could play as a whole class using an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer. Make sure that every students gets a chance to participate and weigh in on decisions that are made.

Tips: The lesson plans in the teacher section are truly well done. These are worth using in your classroom! Games are now available in the app store as well!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using iCivics in your classroom!

Pinterest Classroom Inspiration Roundup

May 21, 2012Kelly Tenkely4 Comments21587 views

Holy Smokes. It has been a CRAZY couple of weeks. Don’t let anyone tell you that starting a school is an insane amount of work; that is a piece of cake compared to ending your first school year! Blogging has obviously taken a back seat. It feels strange not to blog every day after making that a habit over the last 4 years.

Today is dedicated to Pinterest. I find so many fantastic things that spark ideas for must-dos at Anastasis. I’m sharing a few of them here. I hope they spark some ideas for your classrooms!

This year we did some composting, this was followed by planting seedlings in newspaper just like this. Each student made a newspaper “pot” for their seeds. We love that it is biodegradable!

We are ending the year at Anastasis with a Storyline Expo. This is a showcase of student work throughout the year. We wanted to show a progression of learning and a timeline seemed like a great way to do it.

We are making preparations for our first field day. Water noodle target practice looked like a great activity. What are we most excited about? A food truck for lunch. We are cool like that.

We have spent a good majority of the year sharing wishes and dreams. For our storyline expo, we are creating silhouettes of students sharing what they love about our school.

We have done SO many hands on experiments throughout the year. This one was particularly neat to visualize weather in a cup.

We took pictures of all the kids “holding-on” to rope like this. They made great bookmarks for our first ever read-in!

Every student created a poster with this quote on it. It so perfectly summarizes what we believe about students and learning.

This is SUCH a great way to practice equations and algebra. Each number on the clock is represented by an equation. Our students made some unique “geeky” clocks this year.

We really wanted students to find freedom in their learning this year. Creating unique thumbprints with information and thoughts from each student was a great way to kick this thought process off. They turned out great!

Words we live by daily!

To see the originals of these images (and many more), visit my Pinterest Classroom Inspiration page. Pinterest is my guilty pleasure, I add to it even when I don’t have time to blog! If you haven’t joined Pinterest yet, I highly recommend it. Fair warning: it is addicting!

An Awesome Book by Dallas Clayton: Free online

April 12, 2012Kelly Tenkely3 Comments5494 views

What it is: Dallas Clayton created An Awesome Book for his son. The book is about the idea of dreaming BIG and never giving up. He decided to self publish and worked hard to spread the love of reading the world over. Since then, Clayton has offered his book free online (lucky us!) and started a foundation to give away one book for every copy of An Awesome Book he sells.

How to integrate An Awesome Book into the classroom: An Awesome Book is an awesome book about dreaming big dreams. It is a great book that encourages kids to believe in themselves and in those fantastic dreams that they have. An Awesome Book is wonderful for reading as a whole class on an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer. You could also set up An Awesome Book on classroom computers for students to read through independently. Fantastic!

When students are finished reading, ask them to create their own awesome books with their big dreams.

Tips: To learn more about An Awesome Book and it’s creator, Dallas Clayton, check out the Very Awesome World Website.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using An Awesome Book your classroom!

You Are Your Words

March 27, 2012Kelly Tenkely24 Comments16616 views

What it is: The American Heritage Dictionary has a new webtool that lets students create a self-portrait using their words. Students can link to places where they have already written (Facebook or Twitter) or write something unique specifically for their portrait. The unique image can be shared, saved and printed. You Are Your Words works best in Firefox, Google Chrome, or Safari Internet browsers. I’ve found that pictures with high contrast work better than pictures with similar coloring and low contrast. After you create you image, you can adjust the colors, contrast and font.

How to integrate You Are Your Words into the classroom: You Are Your Words would be a great getting-to-know-you activity. It would give students a neat way to share who they are with the class. At the beginning of the year, a You Are Your Words bulletin board or classroom display would be a fun way for everyone to get to know each other. This site could lead to really interesting discussions about the power that our words have, what they reveal about us, and how they impact people’s perception of us.

You Are Your Words would also be a great way for students to create a mini biography about a hero, person of interest, historical figure, etc. Students could upload a picture and include famous quotes or words that describe the person. These could be used as part of a larger project, or as an independent research project. The site asks where the eyes and mouth of the picture are, so uploading another image or diagram to describe might not work.

Students can create character description cards with words, quotes and phrases that describe fictional characters in the reading they are doing. If you have a class or small group that is reading the same book, each student can choose a character to do this for. Create “trading cards” of the characters that students can create and share with each other so that each student has a card for each character in the book. If students are doing an author study, they could create a “You Are Your Words” about the author.

As students are learning about different roles within government, they could create a You Are Your Words image about each position using a picture of the person who holds that position in government. The writing could be related to the job description of the position.

The picture above is an example of a You Are Your Words image that I created with the words from this post!

Tips: If you have an iDevice, the Word Foto app works very similarly and lets you use ANY picture. This allows students to define vocabulary words with pictures.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using You Are Your Words in your classroom!

Edible Schoolyard Project and Truck Farms

February 28, 2012Kelly Tenkely2 Comments2646 views

What it is: There are some things that I think should be essential to every school experience. Some place where kids can sink their hands down into the earth and have a part in growing something is one of those essentials. Edible Schoolyard is an incredible site with a goal to bring children into a positive relationship with food by connecting it with nature and culture. The great part: good health is the outcome. The Edible Schoolyard Project shares a food curriculum for schools around the world to put into practice. I share their dream of making an “edible education” as part of the core of every school in the country. I love that Edible Schoolyard wants to provide every student with a free nutritious lunch and interactive experiences in the classroom, kitchen and garden…transforming the health and values of every child.

So…what exactly does the Edible Schoolyard project do?

Maps the grassroots efforts of edible education programs around the United States.
Gathers and shares lessons and best practices of school gardens, kitchens, and lunch programs.
Documents 15 years of Edible Schoolyards.
Trains educators at the Edible Schoolyard Academy.

How to integrate Edible Schoolyard Project into the classroom: The Edible Schoolyard Project has some excellent lessons, tips, guidance, and encouragement for starting an Edible Schoolyard Project at your own school. The great thing about the resource collection on Edible Schoolyard Project is that it has been created by educators. The lesson plans aren’t just focused on food, they are all tied in to a variety of disciplines…you know, like it happens in real life.

There is something so human and important about growing food. It is something that we have separated ourselves from and as a result, we are happy to stuff ourselves with a combination of chemicals and additives. I have taught students who truly didn’t know that potatoes grew. Seriously.

At Anastasis, we are working to start our own Edible Schoolyard Project. Our challenge: we lease space from a church. There is no little piece of land that we can call our own. We don’t let anything stop us at Anastasis, we just have to be more creative. In the past few weeks our students have been composting in 56 2-liter bottles. It can be stinky…but the kids are learning so much about decomposition! My next plan for our own little edible school yard project:

Truck Farm. I learned about Truck Farms from a way cool little restaurant here in Colorado called Beatrice and Woodsley. They take advantage of Truck Farms for some of their produce. Brilliant idea. A truck farm is an old pick up truck whose bed has been retrofitted as a container garden. The result: fresh produce that is mobile. SO great for a school that puts everything on wheels! While it isn’t exactly like getting your hands into a plot of land, students will be able to have their own little kitchen garden that they can grow.

****As a side note, if anyone has an old pickup they would like to donate to Anastasis or help funding this project, please let me know!

Tips: Explore the Movement is a section on the Edible Schoolyard Project where those in the US can find others in their state to network with.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Edible Schoolyard Project in your classroom!