Techie in Primary

Pic Collage This week I downloaded and investigated a "new to me" digital tool. I decided to explore the PicCollage app because I was so inspired by it's use in the active learning lessons I looked at a couple weeks ago! Image from  PicCollage.com Pros:  The app is free!  This is a fun and easy to use app that would give students the opportunity to make picture collages.  This is a very flexible digital tool. Students from kindergarten to high school could use PicCollage to create projects.  The ability to add text allows us to differentiate projects.  Students can be creative with various backgrounds, fonts, stickers, using the drawing tool, etc. What could be a boring picture collage is now more creative and engaging for students.  There are school settings in the app settings to disable social media icons and web images.  Cons: One negative to the app are all of the pop up messages to download additional items. I think th...

Ed Tech Research This week in Edu 776 I studied some research on educational technology. There was one area of research that I wanted to take a closer look at. Common Sense Media interested me because my district is starting to use the Common Sense Digital Citizenship curriculum this school year and I piloted a lesson in my kindergarten classroom last year. Embarrassingly, I hadn't actually read the research available, so I figured this was a great opportunity to do so! GIF  via GIPHY The first document I looked at was the  Common Sense Census: Inside the 21st Century Classroom . It was great to read that "teachers who used any type of digital citizenship curriculum in their classrooms, approximately half said it was “extremely” or “very” effective in helping students make smart, safe, and ethical decisions online." My students have 1:1 devices in our classroom. They use their iPads mostly for creating and sharing learning with me and their parents. They don...

Word cloud created on WordClouds.com What is Active Learning? Active learning moves teachers away from being lecturers to passive listeners and more like facilitators of engaging learning experiences. Active learning helps put students in charge of their learning with hands on activities. We know that the days of lecturing passive students are long gone, or at least they should be. Students that are active in meaningful activities will be more engaged, more motivated, and end up learning and retaining more. Here are just some examples of teaching strategies that prioritize active learning: Think Pair Share Partner and group games Debates Roleplaying Self-reflection  Group projects Science labs STEM projects Hands on learning /manipulatives Genius Hour / passion projects Research projects Field trips Whole body learning Multi-sensory learning My Experiences with Active Learning As an early childhood educator, I've been trained to focus on developmental...

What are Digital Spaces? Digital spaces are the online tools, resources, media, and social networks that people use in their daily lives. The author David White came up with the terms digital resident and digital visitor as terms to describe how people interact with digital spaces. A visitor uses an online tool to accomplish a task or gain a piece of information and then goes on their way, not leaving a trace behind. A resident, on the other hand, is online to connect and interact with other people and they are more visible. A resident will leave a "footprint" behind, perhaps a blog post or comments, while visitors do not. People are usually a mix of both resident and visitor, depending on which digital spaces they are using, their preferences, and their habits. Also, the resident and visitor descriptors exist on a continuum, so individuals can exist somewhere in the middle as well. According to David White's website , a visitor and resident (V&R) mapping activit...

What is Triple E? The Triple E Framework was created by Professor Liz Kolb at the University of Michigan in 2011. The goal of the framework was to address the need for research based information about teaching with technology. The focus of the Triple E Framework is on effective teaching practices and learning outcomes, not just using fancy technology. A lot of research went into the development of this framework. For example, the research  explored the importance of active engagement, quality vs. quantity, the social aspect, and the importance of instructional strategies and authentic contexts. You can read more about the research at the Triple E Framework website here . This framework will help teachers assess if technology use is going to help students reach the learning targets. The E's stand for: Engage, Enhance, and Extend. Does the technology engage the students, for example motivate students and allow for active learning opportunities?  Does the technology enhance t...

This week in Edu 776, I learned about Genius Hour. Please check out the Adobe Spark presentation I created below, and then explore the resources that are linked below that! Resources: "What is Genius Hour? - Introduction to Genius Hour in the Classroom" Youtube Video   This is an overview of Genius Hour  Genius Hour  This website has some great resources for teachers, including a list of book recommendations. "You Get to Have Your Own Genius Hour (A Video for Students)"  This is a great video about Genius Hour that you can share with your students to get them excited about having Genius Hour time in their classroom.  THE CULT OF PEDAGOGY PODCAST, EPISODE 55  This episode of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast is titled "Your Top 10 Genius Hour Questions Answered." Follow #geniushour on Twitter  This link will take you to #geniushour on Twitter. There are a lot of creative teachers that share so many ideas and resources on Twitter.  "Wh...