writing prompt – iLearn Technology

How to create an online Advent calendar

December 1, 2013Kelly Tenkely3 Comments16485 views

I love this time of year, it comes with such wonderful anticipation of things to come. A time to be mindful.

You can build some of that anticipation into your classroom with a digital advent calendar that reveals something each day in preparation for the holiday season. Advent comes from the Latin word adventus, “coming.” In Christian traditions, this refers to God’s coming into our midst. Anastasis is a faith-based school, so the advent calendar I created for our students and families is to be in celebration of this coming. Your classroom advent calendar doesn’t have to be faith-based.

Your advent calendar could be in anticipation of the coming new year, the coming break from school, or just a fun way to surprise your students with something they get to reveal each day. It would even be fun to reveal some sort of “Mission Impossible” task each day for your students. Be creative! This could be related to something they are learning/working on in your classroom, a kindness challenge, a video of the day, a writing prompt for the day, brain teaser, a book/poem/website for the day, a peek into your classroom for families, inquiry question of the day, song/podcast, 25 days of science experiments, etc. Even as adults we enjoy moments of anticipation, why not capitalize on that in your classroom?

I used Weebly to create our digital advent calendar. You can follow our calendar here. Weebly is an easy to use, WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) website builder. It makes it simple to quickly put together a site that you can easily edit in preparation for the next day of revealed surprise. Weebly also lets you include a nice variety of content so that it is flexible enough to meet your needs. I started December first with some text and an image. My plan is to take a video each day of our students sharing a verse, quote, thought, blessing, song, etc. and embed the video using the YouTube option. The only thing for me to do each day will be to take the video and upload it to our Anastasis YouTube channel and then copy the url into the Weebly image for the day. SO easy to keep up with each day!

How to build your own Weebly Advent Calendar:

Sign up for a free Weebly account
Choose a template to start with for your calendar. Any of the templates will work, choose the look you like best!
Start by dragging some text onto your page. This is a great place for a few sentences about your calendar and what students/families can expect to find each day.
Under the “Structure” section, select and drag over the “Columns” onto your page. I chose 5 columns. Repeat so that you have multiple rows of 5 columns. I have a total of 5 for 5 rows and 5 columns.
Into each row and column, drag over the “Image” option so that you have 25 image place holders.
I used Apple’s Pages software to create my daily images with the dates listed on them. I used some digital paper, layered a solid box of color, and two text boxes. I took a screenshot of each date (I just created one image and then changed the text for each screenshot).
Back in Weebly, click on the image placeholder to upload the images created (alternately, you can just use the search option to find images to use). Repeat for each image.
Create a new page (under the Pages tab a the top of the Weebly screen). Be sure to check the box so that the page is hidden from navigation. This is going to be your “come back on the appropriate day” page. Click “Save and Edit.”
On your new page, add some text and an image. Type a greeting message from those who are trying to sneak a peek early.
Navigate back to your home page. Click on each image, an edit box for the image will come up. Select “Link” and choose “Standard Page” and then the page you just created. Save.
Create other pages for your site if you would like to, I created an “About” page for those who are curious about Anastasis. It might be fun to include a “contact” page where students can submit ideas for the calendar (maybe original writing or other work?)
Publish your site.
Each day go back and click on the image for the appropriate day. From the edit box, go back to “Link” and change where the image links to. It can link to another page that you create on the Weebly site, a website or video, a file, or an email address (what if your students got a new email address each day to email an encouraging note to?). Alternatively, you can delete the image for that day all together and embed a video, html, flash, etc.
Don’t forget to re-publish after you’ve added/edited the site!

There is something truly wonderful about revealing a surprise each day. Don’t leave the families of your students out, it would be great to give families a glimpse of your classroom so that they can see what there kids are up to each day. This can be photos, original student writing, video, or fun activities to be completed as a family in lieu of homework.

Students can also be in charge of creating their own advent calendar. The possibilities for this are endless!

What great ideas do you have for using an advent calendar in your classroom? Share them below!

From the Mouths of Babes…

December 27, 2011Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment1534 views

Since I am on holiday, I have time to sit down and really read the blog posts of our students at Anastasis Academy…all 500 of them! I am so proud of what our students do and the ways that their teachers challenge them to think and reflect. As I was reading, I kept sending out tweets with links to the posts…I forgot that to read an Edu 2.0 blog post, you have to be registered on Edu 2.0. Oops! I thought I would share some favorites here. None of them have been re-touched or edited.

These are from an intermediate class who started with the prompt: “I used to believe, now I know.”

Post 1

I used to think the traditional way of school was the only, iPads are a new way to learn.and best way to learn. Now I think using IPads, sitting around the room, and being creative is a great way to take advantage of the generations advanced technology. Are homework, tests, and grades the correct way to teach a student? Are discipline, punishment, and un-creativity a way to rotten the brain into what people now call an adult? Then it’s probably time to get a new perspective. The traditional way isn’t bad, don’t get me wrong, but trying something new is always good. Instead of my teachers asking me the correct time to start and finish something. They let me be creative and dig deeper into the subject. Also, the teachers allow me to watch videos that spark my imagination. Free writing is also a great way for me to get my creative juices flowing. I love writing, always have, always will. That’s why I love being able to put my best ideas on paper and watch a story come to life right in front of my eyes. I think that’s what other kids love too but are too afraid to speak up. Plus, students are afraid that they are going to get a bad grade. “Learning abuse” is what I like to call it. Every kid, even I, have experienced learning abuse. It’s when children receive a big fat F slashed across their paper, or get a “No, that’s not what you’re GO TEAM ANASTASISsupposed to do!” glare from their teachers. I’ve learned that if we change the boring way of school into a creative school, fewer children would die of learning abuse. Laying around the room helps me learn, and it does with everyone in my class. So, I think having electronics and creativity is the best and most creative way to learn. I think that ever since I went to Anastasis, my life has changed, hands down. Thank you for the new way of learning!

Post 2

I used to think that I was just supposed to remember things I learn in school, now I know that you should be creative with what you know. I know this because when I came to Anastasis, I used what I know to be creative and find out more information, instead of just remembering things I learn in school and checking it off the list. I personally think that creative learning is much better, because you should let your creativeness flow through your imagination instead of being like a robot and learning things so can just remember them and not even care. If you get a job in a factory pressing a button every 2 seconds in one hand and getting paid money in the other hand, how is that using creativity? Being creative is a great quality to have because creativity has no limits. You can use it to be a leader or a other quality. It allows you to make great things that haven’t been done before. It also lets your imagination stretch out and be creative. If you use your creativity during your lifetime it will help you in school, your job, your life at home, and even in other places. God gave you creativity to use everywhere, not just in one certain place or not at all. Use the talents God gave you to worship him.

Post 3

I USED TO THINK, BUT NOW I KNOW… I used to think that just getting the grade was the best for me, but now I know that it’s better to be creative and really know what we’re learning. Sometime in school, we all think… “Oh if I pass this test and get the A+ I will be number 1 in our class. That’s all that matters.” Now I know that the A+ doesn’t matter in the long run, but what really matters is being able to… Explain, Create, Retell, Analyze, and Remember. School isn’t about the teacher telling us the problem, we memorize it, put it down on paper, get the A, than forget about it, you know the process. Instead, we should really discover and really understand the process. Some schools think that the best way is too give you a test, we get the grade then they think we know it all. But we don’t. And we are missing the most important meanings of learning. I did a project at my old school, Cherry Hills. We had to create a cell, and its’ insides. We did this project at home. So my dad ended up doing most of it. I took it into school presented it, and got the A+. Now at this school, we do our own projects AT SCHOOL. We learn to be creative and really understand the concept. It definitely makes more sense to do it by yourself and maybe it won’t look as good as your dad, but thats not the point. The point is actually learning, and being creative.

From the mouths of babes I tell ya!

Google Street View Gallery

March 3, 2010Kelly Tenkely5 Comments2948 views

What it is: Google Street Gallery is a must add bookmark for any classroom. This is a collection of Google Street views of famous landmarks, buildings, and art, sport, and entertainment venues from around the world. Landmarks includes places such as Big Ben, Tower Bridge, Golden Gate Bridge, Space Needle, Gateway Arch, CN Tower, Tokyo Tower, Plaza de Cibeles, Eiffel Tower, Arthur’s Seat, The Colosseum, Arc de Triomphe, and Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. In Famous Buildings students can see the street view of Westminster Abbey, City Hall, St. George’s Hall, Coventry Cathedral, Sydney Opera House, Sagrada Familia, Chateau de Chillon, Belem Tower, St. Peter’s Basilica, and Taipei 101. In Art, sport and entertainment students can tour Angel of the North, Coronation Street, Trafalgar Square Fourth Plinth, Tate Britain, Wales Millennium Centre, Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, and The Louvre Museum. Not only can students explore the street view of all these places, they can also see users pictures embedded right in the street view. Each place can be viewed on Google Maps with the click of a button. Students can also quickly find more information about any of the landmarks by clicking “more information”. Students are taken to a Google Search that shows the location on a Google map, gives details, photos, videos, reviews, tells about nearby places, and gives more information about the place.

How to integrate Google Street View Gallery into the classroom: Google Street View Gallery makes it easy to whisk your students away on virtual adventures around the world. Bring your geography, history, and social studies lessons to life by letting students take a virtual field trip with Google Street Views. Using an interactive whiteboard or projector, your students will feel like they have visited landmarks around the world during class. Allow students to be the “tour guides” and navigate the street view and pictures associated. Make sure to view the Google Maps so that students can get a sense of where each landmark is located and practice their map skills. Google Street views can be used during math to study architecture shapes, angles, etc. in real world settings.

Display a Google Street View on your projector or interactive whiteboard and ask students to imagine they have just visited this landmark or building and write a story about what happened there. The street views make excellent writing prompts.

Tips: I love using Google Street Views with an interactive whiteboard. Students really get the sense of what it is like to stand on the street in the middle of Prague or London and take a look around. It is fun to imagine the stories that take place every day on those streets.

Google Street View Gallery is not a comprehensive collection of available Google Street Views, it is a great collection of famous landmarks and buildings, grouped together for easy access.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Google Street View Gallery in your classroom.