Uncategorized

Storymap

melindacaudill

This is a cool resource that helps you create resources for your students or you can flip the script and have students create using this tool. I recently used this tool to curate a resource for my 4th grade students while we are studying energy sources. This tool allows you to incorporate pictures, coordinates, text, and more to create a visually stunning presentation. Its format would be easy for students to use.

After inputting the data you choose and with the press of a button you get something like this!

Some ideas for using this tool in your classroom.

  • Have students create a map of a journey a character in a book.
  • Have students create their own story (fiction or nonfiction) using real life locations.
  • Have students document their real life journeys.
  • Have students research a location of a text before reading a book to get a better understanding of where the story takes place and build prior knowledge.
  • Have students create a map of real journeys that historical figures took across the US.

What other ways could you see using this tool in your classroom?

Uncategorized

Dear Teaching Tiny Techies…

melindacaudill

Dear Teaching Tiny Techies, 

We no longer have a computer lab or a librarian in our building. My students need help with digital citizenship! They have been given devices but no guidance on how to use them. Can you give me resources or a roadmap to helping my students be safe and independent computer users? 

This is a situation that is happening more and more often in our buildings as budget cuts leave administrators making hard decisions.While academics are important, we also need to keep the safety and well being of students in mind. Due to the increase of one to one computing, students have a device in reach at all times. We often forget that there needs to be formal training on how to use these devices responsibly. In the places I work there are only two people that have been responsible for teaching digital citizenship. The librarian and the computer teacher have always shared that responsibility. Now that you have neither, that responsibility will fall on parents and teachers. Here are some suggestions to help you help your students. 

  1. Call to action

Digital citizenship is not only a school issue. There are many times that parents have come to us as a school for help with unsafe technology situations that have nothing to do with school. Together we can help keep our kids safe by first teaching the parents how to guide their families at home. Use one of your first family nights to focus on digital citizenship. Ask families what their concerns are. You can also send tips home in school newsletters throughout the year to keep digital citizenship at the forefront of their minds all year long. (Wilkey, 2019)

  1. Spend the first weeks building digital citizenship into your classroom structures. 

At the beginning of the year, academic content is being slowly introduced. The first month of the school year our teachers are required to work on building structures in the classroom from lining up for the hallway or how to “do” arrival and dismissal. If you do not have a staff member in your building that is explicitly teaching digital citizenship, using a computer safely should be part of your classroom structures being taught in those first weeks. Topics should include not only what is acceptable use in your classroom but what safe computing looks like. Consider using premade lessons for students to work through when you are practicing center structures or maybe even during your SEL time. I will have some resources below to help you. 

  1. Use a monitoring system like GoGuardian

GoGuardian isn’t a gotcha monitoring system. It is intended to be used to help kids learn to be independent and responsible users. You can scaffold access for students so those that need more structure online can have that support in place but also give more freedom to students who are already making good choices online. With GoGuardian you can block websites for some students or put up “guard rails” by creating a “scene” that can be applied to all or just some of your students depending on their need for structure.  (GoGuardian, 2024)

  1. Here are some fun resources to teach digital citizenship. 

https://www.commonsense.org/education  For Grades K-12 This website has a plethora of resources for both parents and teachers in regards to digital citizenship as well as reviews on the best apps and programs available. If you were wanting to get parents involved as mentioned in this blog, they have many resources you could use for a parent night. 

https://sos.fbi.gov/en/biomes/city   For Grades 3-5 This website gets digital citizenship to kids in a gamified way. Students pick their grade level and play as a character navigating through several worlds where they collect coins and interact with characters by answering digital citizenship questions. This could easily be a center for students to do during a center rotation or as a free choice activity when they complete work.

https://beinternetawesome.withgoogle.com For Grades (2-5) This is also a gamified way to teach digital citizenship. Students explore various worlds like “Kindness Kingdom” where they learn to spread kindness on the internet or “Reality River” where they have to discern real materials from fake materials. Some of these lessons could be adapted for K-2 and taught on an IFP to foster whole group discussion. The big issue is that while there are some tasks where students are read to, there are also parts that students would need to be readers to participate. 

References

Common Sense Education. (2024). Best Student-Collaboration Tools. Common Sense. Retrieved March 10, 2024, from https://www.commonsense.org/education/lists/best-student-collaboration-tools

GoGuardian. (2024). Digital Citizenship – Glossary. GoGuardian. Retrieved March 10, 2024, from https://www.goguardian.com/glossary/digital-citizenship

Wilkey, E. (2019, October 9). 7 Easy Ways to Get Families on Board with Digital Citizenship. Common Sense. Retrieved March 10, 2024, from https://www.commonsense.org/education/articles/7-easy-ways-to-get-families-on-board-with-digital-citizenship

Safe Online Surfing. (2024). Retrieved 10 March 2024, from 

https://sos.fbi.gov/en?fbclid=IwAR1P3DsPYX1GoIvwB_Ae4EYfDgr_E3XwCmgYaj

zvF1VPX7hIkH3nwIYfpd8

Play Interland – Be Internet Awesome. (2024). Retrieved 10 March 2024, from 

https://beinternetawesome.withgoogle.com/en_us/interland/landing/reality-river

GoGuardian, tutorial, YouTube

Teaching Tiny Techies YouTube Channel

melindacaudill

I love YouTube because you can learn anything there! From learning a new hobby to figuring out to work your new gadget. I want to use that space to share projects with you as well as tutorials on how to navigate various tech ed tools. If you have requests for content you would like to see, please submit them below!

Leave a comment

Uncategorized

Summer PD Opportunity with Pear Deck

melindacaudill

Hey teacher friends!

If you are looking for summer PD that is fun and engaging check out Pear Deck’s summer academy! Yours truly is presenting a self paced deck! Click here to find a link! Decks will be available starting July 5! If you attended one of my sessions at IFL 2022 this is a combination of the PBL (Project Based Learning) session and the voice and choice session!

https://www.peardeck.com/coaches-summer-academy-2022

Uncategorized

Animal Research Projects: Day 1 and 2

melindacaudill

Animal research projects are one of my favorite things to do in Kindergarten. The kids are really invested and they get so excited learning about the animals. This project also goes along with the Wonders unit 7 as well as completing our informational writing expectation.

DAY 1:

I start with modeling how to use Pebblego.com with my students. If you are unfamiliar with PebbleGo it is an aweseome resource for primary students. It works well with Kindergarten because we have some non readers still and the program has audio ques and read alouds for the text.

I always give students time to explore when introducing a new app because it helps them become more independent on the device.

Day 2:

Day 2 we do a whole class writing project. There are several steps to this day. We focus on creating…

This year we chose turtles because we loved the turtle we learned how to draw on www.artforkidshub.com This is an amazing tool to help your students learn to draw. Don’t forget that expressing your thoughts with PICTURES and words is a Kindergarten standard!!!

I like to use this writing paper from The Moffatt Girls so students can self check their writing with the rubric.

After students draw the animal, we research it on the screen together. This serves two purposes. Students get to see me model the steps of how to use PebbleGo another time and it ensures everyone can get exposure to one fact about turtles to write about in our next step.