Digital Read Aloud

Have you ever thought of using digital read alouds in a reading center? The other night I was lost in You Tube land and started searching for some of my favorite books I use while teaching. I was pleasantly surprised at all the videos that have been created of books being read aloud. Some of them have even been animated! Love it! You could use them easily on an interactive board or an iPad to read to your students or have them use a mobile device or computer in a reading center to read or reread books. You could even take it a little farther with older kiddos and have them video themselves reading a book aloud. Create a classroom You Tube account and you will have an audio book library to call your own. Older students could also animate picture books using Movie Maker or Photo Story.

Here are a few of my favorites that I ran across:

Who doesn't love the pigeon? I use these books to teach persuasive writing.

I use this one to teach point of view.

Another great website for digital books is www.wegivebooks.org There are tons of both fiction and nonfiction books on this site and they are FREE! The books are not read aloud, but I have projected them on the board or had students read them at our classroom computers. There are a lot of nonfiction books about animals that could be used for research projects. You could also project the nonfiction ones on the board to discuss text features. One more idea...you could use a screen recorder to record yourself reading one of the books from the website. Then, students could listen and read along. If you have Promethean ActivInspire, just use the video recorder to do this (see a tutorial on how to do this here). 

So...the next time you want to spice up your read aloud, check You Tube or WeGiveBooks to see if a video has been made. Or...make your own to share with your kiddos. OR...have your kiddos make one to share!

Tagxedo Roster Tutorial

Hello friends! Over the last couple of days, I have received multiple email messages about creating the classroom roster using Tagxedo that I blogged about here. So...I thought I would do a step by step tutorial for creating a roster like mine if you would like to try it for yourself.

Here is the one I created:

I have listed some common problems and the fixes below so everyone can easily replicate what I have done here.

How do I get my name to be bigger than my students' names?

Type your name in multiple times. The more times you type in a word, the bigger it appears in the word cloud.

How do I keep my name from separating into two words?

Do not space between Mrs. and your last name. Tagxedo does not read spaces. You will also need to go to click word/layout options (see below) and change punctuation to yes.

How do I get my name to be horizontal and the students' names to be vertical?
Click on Shape and then choose Classic Cloud (V) at the bottom of the screen. To get it to look the way you want, you may need to change the font, layout, and orientation. This part takes a bit of playing around.

How do I get every word to post only once?
Click on word/layout options. Then, click layout and make sure "Allow Replication" is on "No". This will allow your students' names to only show once.

These were the most common questions that I have received. If you still have trouble getting it to work the way you want, just email me or leave a comment and I will be more than happy to help!

Classroom Library Organizer

If you have a smartphone or an iPad, I have a great app for you! Have you ever wanted to know exactly what books you have in your classroom library? Do you want to check books out to your students and know who has them and for how long? Well, now you can do just that with Classroom Organizer.

You can sign up for a free membership and start organizing your classroom library. There is an app for iPhone and iPad you can use to scan the books right into the program. Students can check out books and check books back in just like a regular library! Can you say, “Awesomesauce”? I sure can.

Even though I won’t have a classroom of kiddos this year, I am going to organize my professional library to check out books to teachers in my school. I can’t wait to use this tool. I hope you can find some use for it as well.

“Mrs. ______, I Can’t Find the Website!”

How many times have you given your students a URL to type in and they just can’t seem to get to the website you intended? As an elementary school teacher, I have encountered this problem many times. Even though my students are more tech savvy than I was at their age, they sometimes struggle with typing in a URL correctly. I have found even writing it down for them and having them copy it directly into the address bar is challenging for some. It also takes a while for an untrained keyboarder to type a long URL quickly as well.

I am here to tell you that there is a wonderful website that will completely eradicate this problem. In my current grad class, I am learning about all kinds of Web 2.0 tools that can be easily used to help our little ones along.

So, without further ado… I introduce to you Fav7! By visiting this website, you can create a page of up to 7 websites that you would like your kiddos to have easy access to. All they have to type in is www.fav7.com and a code that is given when you set up a site. This is absolutely free, and you can create as many as you like.

Here is an example of what one would look like:

 

You simply type in or copy/paste the websites into Fav7 and voila! You have a nice page made for you just like this that the kids can visit and click on each site.

Symbaloo…Who?

If you haven’t heard of Symbaloo, I am here to tell you that you MUST check it out. I have fallen in love with this site after learning about it from my professor, this semester of grad school. Symbaloo is a site that let’s you create Webmixes for your home screen. If you are an organization freak like me, you will LOVE it. It works a lot like iGoogle, but with a nicer format that allows you to arrange websites you visit often into a tiled screen. You can create as many different Webmixes as you choose. You can even create mixes of RSS feeds so you can just click on one screen and keep up with your favorite blogs or other sites with a feed.

Here is a quick peek into my Symbaloo home screen!

I have arranged it so that I have school sites on top, personal on bottom, Web2.0 tools on the left, and social sites on the right. There is a little shopping down there at the bottom too!

The large tile in the middle can serve as a Google search, but it will also show Facebook and Twitter feeds when widgets are used.

You can also do this:

That my friends is RSS feeds from some of my favorite technology blogs. I don’t have to visit Google Reader to see them anymore!

Did I mention that you can share Webmixes also? Yes, that is right. You could create one to share with fellow teachers. I plan on creating some for units of study to share with my grade level team. You could even share them with your students. A login is not required for others to use the mix you create if you share it. You can share it via email, Facebook, Twitter, or even embed it into your class website. My gears are spinning right now! I think I am off to create a mix for my students to use for our upcoming unit on the Civil War. I will make sure to share it with all you wonderful blog friends when I am finished.

Where Have I Been?

I have unfortunately neglected two of my favorite things, my blog and my bloggy friends.  I apologize. Holy moly, life is chaotic. On top of all the teacher responsibilities, I have been training fellow teachers on Promethean ActivInspire across my district, and grad school has reared its ugly head. I really love to blog and share things with all of my wonderful teacher blog friends, but I haven’t been able to find the time to sit down and share over the past couple of months. I have been too busy reading about educational philosophies, which might I add, is NOT one of my favorite things to do. However, I have reflected on my teaching tremendously and I do believe I am ready to conquer the educational world. We shall see…
Next up in the grad school hiatus is a technology class. YIPEEE!!! I am stoked. I can’t wait to get started, and I just know I am going to learn a lot of new things that I can share with Blogland. Stay tuned for updates on this little adventure that starts this coming Thursday.
While away, I received the Liebster award from two awesome blog friends, Brittany over at A Day In First Grade and a new up and coming blog, Think Share Teach. Head on over and check both of them out, you won’t be disappointed!

This award is given to spotlight up-and-coming blogs with less than 200 followers. The rules are:
1. Copy and paste the award on your blog.
2. Thank the giver and link back to them.
3. Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
4. Hope that your followers will spread the love to other bloggers!!
Here are the five blogs I chose for the Liebster Blog Award:
        


Crayons, Calendars, and Caffeine

Make Up Work Made Interactive

Hello friends! I am so thrilled to have found a moment to blog. Life is chaotic, geez!!!

I wanted to share a little ActivInspire tip for all you Promethean users/lovers out there. Do you know about the video tool? This tool can be used to conveniently record lessons while you teach. It will record your voice and everything you are writing/manipulating on the board as you teach. Basically, it is a screen recorder built right into the ActivInspire software.

Have you ever had a student absent? Ummmm….Yeah! How fun is it to catch students up when you have twenty plus other ones needing your attention. You taught a very important math lesson on the day Johnny was absent and he really needs to see it in action. Fret no more my friends! Record your teaching using the ActivInspire video recorder, and little Johnny can watch and hear the whole lesson when he comes back to school. 

I have used this tool a lot in my classroom, and it really helps my students who have been absent. You can even send the videos via email if you have a child who is absent for a long period of time. Did I mention that I love it? I love it!!!

So here is how it works:

1. Open ActivInspire

2. Go to Tools---More Tools---Screen Recorder----Fullscreen Recorder

3. Click the read button to start recording. Name your video what you want to save it as.

4. Click the stop button to stop recording!

5. Open your video by going to where you saved it and VOILA!!!!

Here is a sample one I made for some ActivInspire training I am doing in my district.

Maybe this little tool will come in handy for some of you out there. I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving and enjoy the break!!!