Always Ask an Expert!

After dabbling with iFlipr for an hour or so on Thursday, I gave up on figuring a way to add sounds to the flashcards I had created. I had thought it was as simple as plugging in the microphone and an application popping up for me to record the word. Not so easy for the novice that I am! Fortunately, our techno guru Karen Justl came to the rescue during our Friday meeting and in less than 2 minutes solved my frustrating problem! She showed me how to access the application "Sound Recorder" on my PC and get files with wav extension that were easily uploadable to iFlipr. (start>programs>accessories>entertainment>sound recorder).

I am so thrilled to have that additional feature to the flashcards, so students can hear the correct pronunciation of the word in both French and English (for my ELLs). The sounds on my first prototype is a little garbled --be sure to speak LOUDLY when you record for best effect. :) [efm]

iPod Touch, en Francais, s'il vous plait!

This morning, I jumped off the cliff and decided to the iPod Touches with 2 of my French classes for the first time. They used the app "French Lite" to review the vocabulary we had previously studied (numbers, months, days of the week ) and were so enthralled one could barely hear a pin drop. I like the fact that the flashcards on this app have an audio component and allow students to review the words by hearing them said aloud; the app also allows them to quiz themselves by answering multiple choice answers of the translations. French Lite's listening and spelling part were a hit with my students and I had never seen students more eager and more focused in their learning. Everyone was ready to share something they had reviewed as their "ticket out!" [efm]

Successful Technology Parent Meeting

What a TEAM! The meeting last night couldn’t have been better…
Laurie was greeting everyone and making sure everyone signed the roster!
Serrano…( not Martinez J) was greeting and explaining to parents in Spanish and English…
Maya interpreted everything in Spanish and, of course, kept the audience mesmerized.
Estelle was running the Activboard and reminding me what to say keeping the meeting ON POINT! Good job!
…Angela kept an eye on all of us as she practiced being an administrator…
Stapley came to set us all up…What an amazing Activboard advocate and teacher he is!…without which we would have had nothing!
The custodians set up the room perfectly and did it twice because the mentors came before our meeting…Thank you Carlotta and your crew!
Mrs. Chai…thank you for always being an advocate and an inspiration! To me that’s a great leader!
Without Bill’s advice and guidance yesterday, we couldn’t have pulled the whole thing off! Thanks for the advice to make decisions in person and get information online! That was advice to be used in all negotiations, I think…Technology is good, but never replaces face to face humans!
I am so proud and happy and content to work with so many inspired advocates for kids. It is truly a pleasure!
AND…we had 86 families…with both parents attending in many cases…and with their kids! There was standing room only! Karen Justl, our district coordinator for the grant, was very impressed. It was so good to have her there with her smiling face and helpful ways.

WAY TO GO TEAM!!!! HURRAH!!!! We are ON OUR WAY!!! (cw)

Baby Steps with iPod Touches

I am so thrilled! I took the plunge and had my 7th period ESL Support students experiment with the iPod Touches. It was nothing fancy --just learning to handle the equipment and the vocabulary that goes with it (i.e., "slide" & "apps.") I had students go to the iFlipr app and they search for the flashcards that I had created previously and they downloaded them onto their individual iTouch. They then each went eagerly through all of the flashcards and tried to guess the word that the picture was representing. It was really exciting to hear them say the words aloud to themselves before checking the answer... and that without any instruction from me to do so. I really think that using the iTouch as a manipulative helped them internalize the 17 words because they were all anxious to scream them out and share when we identified them later on the ActivBoard. A very engaging first iPod Touch lesson, indeed! [efm]

iFlipr

Based on everyone's positive feedback at the PTL meeting this week, I went ahead & downloaded the regular version of iFlipr (cost $4.99) to play with making flashcards. The process to create them was more labor-intensive than I expected, since I had to use the computer to download from the Internet the illustrations of the vocabulary words that I wanted to use with iFlipr first. What made it difficult too is that I had to download these pix from home as www.veer.com is not on the district's list of acceptable websites, although it offers the best graphics for abstract concepts and categorized so easily --hence so popular with graphic designers!

Once the pix were downloaded, it was fairly easy to create the deck of flashcards that I plan for my students to use tomorrow on the iPod touches to review the vocabulary they have studied last week. However, because of my spotty wi-fi connection, I had to retype my words and uploaded the pix several times, which was a tad frustrating. One thing that I wasn't particularly fond of was that I wasn't able to find a "preference" setting for the font and its size, so I had to manually change each word to Helvetica and the identical font size. I think in the future I will just leave the font to the default, particularly when I will have my students create their own flashcards. I can't wait till Thursday's meeting to collect all the parent signatures and get that show going! [efm]

Our new jobs...

1. Grant director --Laurie


2. Sign-in notebook for district people to sign --Laurie


3. Blogger --everyone's responsibilities


4. Minute taker --each team member will take turn, based on who is in attendance


5. Sign up sheet for equipment --Mary


6. Inventory/master list of equipment (with SBISD digits) & engraving --Estelle


7. Creation of calendar on blog --Estelle


8. Cart sync’er –Estelle


9. Parent meeting presentation & Activboard flipchart --Christa


10. Digital citizenship lesson plan + Activboard flipchart --Laurie & Maya


11. Making invitation to meeting & translating into Spanish --Laurie & Maya


12. Xeroxing copies for parents + invitations --Mary

Meeting Parents Soon...

At last, we have set up a date to meet with the parents of our lucky students who will get to use the exciting new technology that the Power 2 Learn Grant has allowed us to purchase! The date is October 22, 2009 from 6:00 to 7:30 in the Spring Woods Middle School MPR. Laurie has designed a friendly invitation for parents that Maya is translating into Spanish; Mary is in charge of the 400 copies of the documents that parents will have to sign before their children get full access to the technology (particularly, gmail accounts). We are also thinking about having the phone system do a call-out to invite the parents and ensure that as many as possible attend the meeting. Our team is working assiduously in planning a successful meeting: Christa is designing an informative and engaging Activboard flipchart to let parents know about the opportunities and responsibilities technology involves; Laurie is creating a flipchart on Digital Citizenship that uses Brain Pop that we plan to use daily to as mini-lessons and stepping stones for meaningful discussions on appropriate technology use. [efm]

the Spanish Missions connected to our Mission!

Ms. Wolfe's ELL Newcomers recently studied the trail and purposes of the Spanish Missions in their Social Studies class. In the culmination of this study, the class wrote and word processed a short story giving details of the purpose and architecture. Their writing was recreated into a visual presentation by using the flipcamera. Everyone enjoyed watching this first filmed "speaking lesson" so we watched each one's presentation about 4 times! The students have increased their spoken vocabulary by this activity and are eager to write another story to be read on film. CAW

Flipping on Friday!

My Spanish 3 Pre Ap classes will be using Flip Cameras on Friday! They will present a poster they have been working on in groups. The words are: CIVILIZATION, MYSTERY, LEGEND, MYTH and BELIEF. They created a poster with the definition and a picture or symbol that describes the word. Before we started "Flipping", my lesson will be about how to talk in front of a camera, what do to with hands eyes, voice, etc. Hopefully the weather will be nice enough that we can find a good spot outside and get the cameras rolling! The kids are super excited. I will post a video and my comments next week. :)

MW

Flip Cameras and Formal Presentations

In Spanish IV, the students have taken 75 videos to practice formal presentations in Spanish. At the beginning of the lesson they had to research a famous Hispanic, since we were learning about Hispanic Heritage, and write about that person. Then they had to present it to the class as a formal speech.

They were able to see themselves and their classmates , evaluate and improve their speaking skills on a formal setting, for our next topic.

They loved being in contact with technology and I loved that they met the objective!!!.

MS

Lesson: Net book Mini's and the Periodic table

Objective: The learner will apply research skills to research and create a poster about one element of the periodic table.

Activity: Hand out and explain the project and the research needed.

Hand out the mini's and have the students log on.

Show them how to get to library resources. Look at several sites in library resources. Check out #8 Encyclopedia Brittanica in Spanish and English. Also look at # 9 Discovery Streaming and show them how to get movies on their topics of interest. Brain Pop #11 is another good resource.

Go to google and type in Table of periodic elements. find the DOE.gov energy site and find the periodic table in that. Show students how to click on the element and find out information about that.

Demonstrate and practice log off and shut down.

Finally, return the mini's to their docking places.



The lessons went well. the kids really liked the mini's. Our biggest problem was logging on. since all of our kids are new their passwords and log on stuff is in a variety of different situations.

The 7 and 8th newcomers did really well and enjoyed the exploring and the new sites a lot.

The 6th graders had trouble logging on and using different user names and passwords at the different sites. To fix this for next time. I will print out a sheet with the name of the website, the user name and the password for each site. http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/kids/energy.cfm?page=periodic_table is a good site for kids to poke around in for information about energy and the periodic table.

Using the FlipCamera for Vocabulary Presentations

Here is one of the videos that I have taken while my students were giving their presentations about a vocabulary word they had to explain for ELL Support class. I think they did rather well in spite of having the camera lens focused on them and for it being the first time. My intend was to download each of the presentations onto the iTouches but somehow it didn't work out. I will have to play with the sync cart some more. Regardless, within this week, we'll be viewing the presentations and students will be sharing some feedback on what they liked and what they feel should be improved. **The students appearing in this film have parent authorization to be in it** [efm]

Enlightening Morning Meeting

This morning Maya, Marie & Estelle learned how to import movies into iTune to play on the iPod touches. Karen suggested that we upload one of the ESL students' vocabulary presentation on our blog to show at the meeting on 10/15/09. Of course, we'll need to check in SASI first for parental authorization. There is an update as far as Google Apps on the netbooks are concerned. The Google app shortcut/icon that is currently on netbooks will need to be updated as the student URL has changed to www.students.mysbisd.com and teachers logon through www.educators.mysbisd.com. All previous issues about the site have been resolved and it is now kid-friendly and clean. Students will be able to use the Google apps and send an invite to their teacher via email to share the document they have created. Yeah, we are on our way to becoming greener! :)

To be ready for the meeting on 10/15/09, Karen suggested that we download the iTalk apps to the iPod Touches and also iTalk Sync onto our teacher Dell computers (choose .zip file --it downloads really quickly). This will allow us to compare it with VoiceMemo and choose which app we prefer to use with our students for their oral language portfolio. iTalk Sync will allow us to review and wirelessly save the recordings students make on their iPod Touches to our teacher computer. efm

Productive iPod Touch Day

At last, I've gone ahead and set up the restrictions on the individual iPod Touches so that everything downloaded is "clean." I also did my first solo sync'ing of the cart and thought I had downloaded a bunch of free educational apps onto the Touches... But I guess I counted the eggs before they were hatched!! The apps were nowhere to be found. Regardless, it was really exciting to get things going... Once I get everything sync'ed, I am planning on playing around with the flashcard app to get more familiar with it and see how I can use it with my ESL Support class. Following Mary & Christa's footsteps, I filmed my ESL Support's vocabulary presentations today and will use the movie as a vocabulary review session. efm

Google Aps Meeting October 2nd 2009

Karen came by to our weekly Friday meeting and helped us to learn about google aps. I of course feel like the student at the back of the class with the dunce cap. Karen's patience won out and after a weekend of playing around with a large variety of passwords I found my way in and set up some of my widgets. We need to be a little careful about this part with the kids.. They can gain access to some pretty inappropriate widgets. so we might hold for awhile on this until Spring Branch can find a way around it. i tried to add a couple like beach scenes- I love the beach but, it was blocked by Spring Branch so I assume it might have a problem.
Karen gave us this address. http://partnerpage.google.com/springbranch.com for staff members and showed us some really cool things we can do to get the kids communicating with us on line.
She also showed us the kids site. She had sent us the kids passwords last week also.
Kid site for google aps. http://partnerpage.google.com/mysbisd.com
Karen also sent a good article for us to check out. It is a sort of training for google aps. You can find it here, http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/collaboration.html
So I hope my links work for you. Have fun exploring.
LEP

September 18, 2009 Technology Meeting

Thanks to Karen Justl, Laurie and Maya learned how to sync the iPod touches.
The rest of the team is very grateful to Laurie & Maya for sync'ing things throughout the whole day and Laurie thinks they are all done. Karen says the netbooks will be in next week.

Next meeting possibilities.
1. Parent meeting?? When, Where, What issues do you see?
2. Student introduction to the technology? Big meeting in auditorium or done in classes. What issues do you see???
3. How do we want to divide it all up for use. By interest first or monthly, weekly?
4. Is anyone interested in setting up a 23 things for kids with netbooks with me for the kids?
5. Student permission for usage .
6. Lessons for teaching the equipment??? I think it would be great to work in teams and write them up so we can share them. Is there anything already done?

Christa and Mary use flip cameras in class

Christa and Mary used flip cameras to the students' great joy in class this week.

Mary noticed that the kids were participating without complaint and were comfortable talking in small groups. They taped each other speaking about Hispanic heritage and famous Hispanics. The kids were practicing their formal presentations and were happy to be able to go back and correct themselves with the cameras.


Christa's group loved making speeches about their Spanish missions. They heard that their voices were too quiet the first time so they redid their speeches with louder voices. Watching the presentations was a great joy.


We know that their portfolios are going to be wondrous.


We are still working on our parent meeting date and time. We have the materials that we need thanks to Karen Justl.


Karen has spent a lot of time training us on google apps, blogging on Word Press and basic skills like that.


Laurie was super excited to get the netbooks in this week. They are awesome. [lp]