Pimp My Lesson

Mrs. Artzi and I met together to Pimp a Lesson for each other!  My class was studying habitats and I knew I wanted to integrate more technology into an otherwise basic lesson of reading information about the habitat and then taking notes on a graphic organizer.  Mrs. Artzi suggested a great idea that I ended up first modeling to the class and then letting them try on their own for centers.  Using the worldwildlife.org website, my students worked in small groups to research one of the habitats.  They were able to look at pictures, learn facts, and see different plans and animals.  Then, they used the Tellagami App to create a Gami to share their facts.  Mrs. Artzi definitely helped me pimp my lesson to the next level and make otherwise basic facts come more to life with the use of technology.  Thanks again, Mrs. Artzi!

January 5th PD strand meeting

I enjoyed meeting with the other tech scouts to try out some cool technology ideas from Stacy! Michelle and I used an electronics kit called Littlebits where you can put them together to help create inventions and super cool things that are still slightly over my head.  I don't even know how this happened, but Michelle and I was able to use the Little Bits to connect them so that we could turn on lights and move things around with our separate controller. Our vision was to make the University of Alabama "A" and have it light up inside of a stadium (a cardboard box) but we didn't make it that far.  Super excited though that it worked and would love to work with it more during some of our top secret ideas we have moving forward. PS Seeing some of the things the kids at the school do with this technology and the inventions they come up with is amazing!

GaETC Conference

On Wednesday, November 4 I went to the GaETC conference.  I LOVED the keynote speaker Angela Maiers and her #youmatter message.  It really got me thinking about how to make all the children in my class feel important and worth it and I love following her feed on twitter now to get more ideas.  At the conference I attended a session about Genius Hour.  I am still trying to figure out if there is a way I could implement this into my classroom at a second grade level, but I love the concept and idea of letting the kids come up with their own idea or thing they want to learn about and conducting the research and resources independently.  I also attended an App Smashing session.  I can't wait till the 100th day of school so I can use the aging app with the chatter pix app so they can take their picture of themselves "aging" and then record a message and have it look like they are talking!  I also attended a session on where schools will be in 25 years and how schools need to prepare to get there.  It is both scary and exciting to think about how much education, teaching and learning will change over that course of time.  Overall, I enjoyed the conference and came away with some new technology ideas to try.

Grow Your Tool Box

For the Global Read Aloud I used Padlet to share our thoughts on two books. 


The first one we posted if we thought the it was a duck or rabbit in the book Duck! Rabbit! and why.


For the second book, It's Not Fair!, we first created an avatar using Tellegami and recorded ourselves talking about a time that wasn't fair.  Then, we posted our links on one class Padlet and then Tweeted them to our partner class!  I even included the link in our weekly electronic email to the parents using Smore. I have no idea if or how many apps I smashed here :)


Here is the link: http://padlet.com/mrslondon/kyx0hayfeymi

Collaborate to Innovate

I met with Stacy Brown, 21 century learning coordinator, to talk about how she would lead a Mystery Skype with my class.  We also brainstormed ways to integrate technology into the Global Read Aloud with the class we were partnered with.  I also learned how to set up a Skype Account.

Smore Newsletter

I have helped many of my colleagues this year set up their newsletter with Smore.  It is just a great tool to use and it seems like lots of teachers/teams at school are getting on board to use it for their classroom as well!

Green Screen for Class Mayor Speeches

I used the Green Screen App to create backgrounds for my class mayor speeches that I recorded on the Ipad.  I then created a YouTube link and shared it with the class parents.  Although I have already used the green screen app last year, I did share the tool with my colleague to help her use it for her video.


Watch the cute class speeches here:

https://youtu.be/IpoigPoC8Qk