Sometimes It’s the Little Things By Connie Amon, Galileo Scholastic Academy

On Monday I crossed an item off my never-ending, always changing, list of things to do: how to get chatterpix to glog. (It looks like this now: how to get chatterpix to glog; and I’m so happy!) A few months ago, when I suggested to a fifth grade teacher that we add a ChatterPix video to the glogs the students were creating on an explorer they were studying, I had no idea if it would really work or not. Sometimes things don’t work. Preparing the ChatterPix video on the iPad worked fine, for the most part. The question, then, was how to get that video off the iPad and into Glogster (which, by the way, still does not function as well as I would like). The biggest obstacle? simply finding the time to figure it out. I knew I could do it on a computer, but how exactly would it work on a Chromebook?

About a month ago I attended a PD session at the ICE conference called “Chrome-ology: Getting the Most Out of Your Chromebook”, presented by Gregory Regalado and Neil Charlet of Maine West High School. Spending a few hours with my Chromebook was exactly what I needed. Did I embrace and “learn” every detail that was presented? Of course not, but every time I login on a Chromebook now, I see the 1-Click Timer and beautiful spring theme that I added during that session (not critical to learning or teaching, but a sign of my personal accomplishment). And I learned lots of “little things” that make me feel that much smarter. Did you know that the Address Bar that you can search from in the Chrome browser is called the Omnibox? Or that those bars in the upper righthand corner of a Chrome page are called “the Hamburger”? (Where have I been?!) Check out this site: Maine West’s ChromeDepot. Containing tons of information for any user, this site is a great model for other schools.

On Friday, a student using a Chromebook asked how to copy an image into his infographic (we are using Piktochart). I was in a hurry, as usual, since a number of other groups needed help. There is more than one way to copy an image on the Chromebook. Pieces of incomplete information flashed through my brain, students nearby offered suggestions. I took a deep breath and tried two fingers. Success! Maybe I have learned a few things...

So how do you move a ChatterPix video from the iPad to a glog? Here’s what we did:

• from the camera roll, students mailed their videos to me (why not to themselves? we tried that, but then realized that students can’t receive mail from outside the CPS domain, and the generic accounts on the iPads are gmail…);
• from my CPS mail, students forwarded their video to their own email (I set up a station with my email open during class; a bit of a risk, but turned out ok);
• from their mail, they downloaded the video on the Chromebook;
• in Glogster, they uploaded the video from the downloads folder (we had to refresh to get it to be use-able).

Ta-da! The kids were so excited about this “little thing”! See for yourself:

http://cdominguez21.edu.glogster.com/explorer-8578/

http://amartinez404.edu.glogster.com/explorer/

Using Chromebooks and Bitstrips, Janice Wellborn, Hernandez Middle School

Testing time is usually a very trying time for me, as well as for the students. During PARCC testing, I am required to be out of my library but fortunately I have Chromebooks to carry with me as I travel from class to class. Our testing schedule is the entire duration of the four weeks I am seeing the current students. Grateful I am that I have these devices!

This past week we have been doing research and creating comic strips using Chromebooks and Bitstrips.  With most students working in pairs, the students were told to review the Database and Bitstrips assignment found on my wiki and answer the questions on the wiki. The topic of research was Ebola.  I created accounts for all students on Bitstrips.  When the students had completed their research they began creating one comic strip per pair to show the information they had learned.  

For the most part, this project went smoothly.  I have used Bitstrips several times and knew that one advantage of this comic strip project was that students love to create their own avatars and settings and absolutely love to share their creations with each other.  I guessed, correctly, that they would enjoy working together on these creations. I did have a few students that were reluctantly paired together and those very few who were unhappy were able to work alone.

At the end of the project, after all students have shared their work with me, I then allow the entire class to see the work of all the students.  The students are told to review twelve comic strips and give the comic strip creators feedback.  They did this with great respect and sincerity, for the most part.  

One problem I ran into with only one rambunctious class had to do with online feedback and flagging.  I had allowed students to make comments online and to use the flagging option in the settings.  With one class, this turned into a mistake.  A handful of students began to flag everyone’s comics or comments.  Before I knew it, the program started hiding the flagged students’ work.  Our classroom gallery went from 15 to six in a matter of minutes!  I had them resubmit the comics to  me and I then instructed all to stop flagging.  From this point on, I will be turning off that option and the comment option in settings.  It was a little too tempting for a few people.

Coding with Kids, Stacie Bell, Pirie Elementary School

This winter has marked the second year my students have participated in the Hour of Code. This program is a great way to introduce students to computer science and demystify coding. Last year, I worked with students in grades 3 and up. This year, code.org introduced a new curriculum that allowed even my Kindergarten students to participate.

Previously, I had students working on iPads to complete lessons. I found that while it worked, there were a few glitches that prevented the entire screen from being in view and, on some pages, the navigation and log out buttons were not visible. This year proved much easier using the Chromebooks giving me the confidence to try this program with a Kindergarten and Second grade class.

After completing an “Unplugged” lesson (which are paper based and meant to teach the entire class the concepts and thought processes they will need to solve problems online), I taught students how to log on. The Kindergarteners and Second graders were given a special class site to go to which had their names listed. After finding their name, they clicked on a special secret picture as their password. This was the hardest part for the Kindergarteners because most had never typed in a web address themselves before. The precision necessary along with brand new keyboarding skills (combined with a few students that had not even mastered letter identification yet) made this login process difficult, but we persevered (and I resisted typing in the addresses myself).

Once logged on, the students were able to complete several activities which taught them basic computer skills such as clicking and dragging. All of my students were then able to move onto solving puzzles and writing simple code to navigate an angry bird through a maze to get those evil pigs. The kids loved learning coding and were enthralled by the Angry Bird theme. My second graders started off working in partners and the site we used, Code.org, had a tutorial video on how two people could work together as a team. The video helped the students understand and accept their roles, which was a big help in preventing someone being too controlling.

Coding with my students proved to be a very successful activity which I hope to continue in the future, well beyond the Hour of Code that takes place in December.

Students Enjoying Chromebooks, Rosalie Buenrostro, Taylor Elementary School

Having success using the Chromebooks in different areas of student learning is not challenging at all.  Student’s are eager to participate in Chromebook projects.  I appreciate this as I have found student’s are more than willing to share their knowledge.  

This is a benefit for me as my knowledge is not very advanced.  I find it is a learning process shared with my student’s help.

I use the Chromebooks with my MTSS student’s as we venture through The Learning Odyssey program.  This is great as I can have several student’s reading, learning and listening at their personal pace.  I like this program because not only is it individualized, it helps them with basic computer skills such as dragging, keyboarding and using sound/headphones.  

At the present time I am working on African American poetry with my 6th through 8th grades.  I like the integration of the Chromebooks and books.  This project is worked on in a group setting.  They study a poem, research the writer in the CPS database and have a discussion about the poem and the poet.  Next they work together to reinterpret the poem in a way their peers can relate and understand the poem.  They create a slideshow using imagery and words.  in the end they will present their work to their classmates.  

This may not be super high tech to some of you reading this but for my student’s who have no access to a computer except in our library, this is a milestone.  I am proud of their progress and I must admit the Chromebooks have created a bond between my student’s and myself.  We are learning together.  They have ideas they are now sharing with me and I will take some of them and create lessons that they will learn from because they participated in how they will learn.

Fun with Chromebooks, Amy Chiu, Corkery Elementary

This has been a fun season in the Corkery Library.  Here is an overview of how we have been implementing our iPads and Chromebooks during our library periods.

With the First and Second grade students, we have been doing stations.  

1. In the listening center, students will listen to an audiobook or a episode from Brainpop jr on Chromebooks that correlates to what they are learning about in their classrooms or  the events on the calendar.
2. In the reading center, students can sit on the carpet or little stools and read pre-selected books I have put aside for them to read.
3. In the check out book center, students will check out their book or write about something they had read that week.
4. In the iPad center, students will work with an app that I assign them to do. Either Write About or DoodleBuddies.
5. Finally, they do puzzle center where they complete educational floor puzzles connected to what they are learning about in the classrooms such as the continent and state maps, the presidents, and the solar system.

I set up stations for the 3rd and 4th graders too.  We don’t do stations every week, but when we do, this is the format we generally follow.

1. Checking out books/Reading center is when students use the time to quietly read on the rug or check out a book.
2. Writing Center is where students write a paragraph about what they have learned and when they are done they can work on an educational puzzle.
3. In the iPad center, students will work with  an app that I assign them to do.
4. Then on the Chromebook station, they have been working with the Corkery library OPAC.  They have been working on finding books on specific subjects and doing research from e-books.

With my older students, we have enjoyed using the Chromebooks to do research and projects on the Presidents (8th Grade) and an African American Sports figure (7th Grade).  The students are getting accustomed to using GAFE and are enjoying the ease and flexibility of the Chromebooks.  

I’m including a “write about” done by one of my second grade students during her iPad center after Christmas break.  May it endear your heart to dream and believe in yourself as it did mine.

Getting Set up with Chromebooks, Peggy Rux, Pasteur Elementary

While it has been almost three months since my last post, I have not been able to make much progress with my fifth grade students on our healthy living publications.  The holidays, testing,  and a variety of surveys to complete are just a few of the obstacles our project has faced.  However, I think we are ready to begin again on our projects starting next week.

One thing that time has allowed is for the students to become much more comfortable using the Chromebooks.  Students really enjoy perfecting their keyboarding skills using typing.com! They have also had an opportunity to “play” in google docs and are familiar with many of its features.  We have not worked on collaborating yet, so I’m not sure how that will go, but we are all excited to get started.

So once again, students will begin working on a project using Google Docs. Since I am now teaching health class in addition to my other responsibilities, I decided to blend research with health. Students will create a publication on healthy living. Items students could include in the publication are articles, charts, graphs, checklist, editorials, interviews and comics.

The first step will be for each group to come up with a theme for their publication. Students are divided into groups of 5-6 members. Each member of the group will need to each contribute something to the publication. The task manager for each group will set-up the publication by giving it a tittle and recording the contributors. They will then share the publication with all the members of the group so they can collaborate online! I have created and collaborated with other teachers on documents online, so I am hoping that experience will help the students through any challenges they may face.

Once the publication is completed it will be shared with me for a final grade. I think this project can really be the start of new way of collaborating for our students. Many of them are not able to get together after school to work on projects and there is never enough time in the day for this type of collaboration, so I am hoping this has a positive impact on all the participants!

One final note, my husband brought these “dividers” home for me from his office and they are a great way for me to store, charge and distribute the Chromebooks. They are just simple file dividers, but hold six Chromebooks very nicely!

Infographics: Creating with the Collection, Analysis, and Interpretation of Data, by Katherine Hlousek, Librarian, Emiliano Zapata Academy

It is essential to continue to introduce new technologies and programs to our students and further develop their information literacy, visual literacy, and technology skills as 21st century learners and creators. I recognize the importance of introducing new technologies and an emerging platform for creating and sharing information: infographics. During the third quarter seventh grade students are investigating, collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and producing an infographic final product using student-created and collected data from a Google Form survey. An infographic is a visual representation of information, data, or knowledge. The purpose of this project is to further develop students’ technological skills, their ability to collect, analyze, and synthesize data and information, and their visual literacy skills to create a visually appealing and accurate product. The infographic unit incorporates many disciplines, including math, English, technology, and art, in addition to library science.  

During this unit, students are completing the steps of the inquiry-based learning model – planning, gathering information, processing information, creating a product, sharing new information, and evaluating learning. This unit was designed with achievable weekly goals for students to reach and complete. Instead of preselecting topics for students to research, I designed this unit to be student driven.  Students selected a topic of their choice that they are already familiar with, for example: general interests of seventh graders, sports, hobbies, etc.  The data students are collecting and analyzing will come from their peers, thus making this research and technology project authentic and meaningful.

I began the unit with an introduction to infographics and an analysis of several examples of infographics. Students worked in teams to determine the purpose and message of the example infographics. The visual and high-interest infographics were appealing and students were eager to begin their infographic project. After selecting a topic, students created a Google Form with ten or more questions. As a mini lesson, I reviewed the various question and answer options in Forms as well as the importance of providing a “none of the above” and an “other” answer option in order to gather accurate data. Once students completed their Form, students shared the link to their Form in Google Classroom. I compiled a class list of all the Google Forms to ensure students had access to and answered all of the surveys. After answering all of the Google Forms for their classmates, students spent time analyzing their data. Students can analyze their data by reviewing the responses of their Form in the Sheets spreadsheet format as well as in a more visual format.  After opening the Sheets response for the student-created Form, click on “Form” at the top navigation, and then click on “Show summary of responses” to view the data in a visual format.  Students will look for relationships or trends in the student-collected data. Students then transferred interesting data points and relationships observed from the Form into an infographic created with Google Drawings.

Additionally, this lesson presents the perfect opportunity to review copyright, creative commons, and citations when students are selecting images and graphics to use for their infographic.

Last year I taught an infographic unit to seventh and eighth grade students. Perhaps the greatest success from the prior unit was the transferable skills students developed. The eighth grade team of teachers was shocked when one of the students created an infographic for a social studies project instead of a traditional written response. I was extremely proud that not only the work students were creating while in the library was receiving notice but students were also utilizing the new tools and skills they learned outside of the library and other classes.