Brochure Making on Pages

I was approached by one of the fourth grade teachers to find another brochure making tool that will allow students to create their own brochure and print out the brochure they made for a research project. Last year, the fourth grade class used an old Microsoft program called "Publisher." We no longer use the MS Office Suite with students and instead have iPads available for students to use. What better way to get the fourth graders ready to use pages in MS then to have the students learn how to make brochures on the iPad! I created a lesson to have the students explore brochure making on the iPad, changing the backgrounds, adding images, editing fonts, and organizing their columns and sections for their content. It 's great to allow the students to explore making the brochure on their own before I provide a little more details or specific ways to do something.

Prior to working on pages, I did some extensive work with Keynote on the iPads with the fourth grade class, and many of the menu options and functions transfer pretty well when students switch from Keynote to Pages because of the Apple Work suite.

Toontastic for First Grade

I just started a Toontastic story telling project with the first grade students at Westside. In first grade students spend a lot of time working on their writers workshops and writing stories in both of their classes. I decided that it would be fun for the students to see story-telling through using a new app and applying some technology skills.

Toontastic: School Edition is an application that is loaded with tons of characters and settings for students to choose from. Students are also able to draw their own characters and settings for their stories! Students organize their stories and use the characters to help them tell their story. They will also record their voices into the app so the story is being read out loud to the viewer as the characters move and get acted out by the students. I'm really looking forward to trying this out with the First Grade class! I also used a great resource through the website "Teachers Pay Teachers" on how to organize and plan the activity.

Stephen Colbert Twitter

Twitter Account managed by Stephen Colbert 

Twitter Account managed by the network Comedy Central 

"The Tweet" 

The Context

Video from the Colbert show

Start at 4:50

The Reactions

For the record @ColbertReport is not controlled by Stephen Colbert or his show. He is @StephenAtHome Sorry for the confusion #CancelColbert

— The Colbert Report (@ColbertReport) March 28, 2014

This is a Comedy Central account, with no oversight from Stephen/show. Here is quoted line in contexthttp://t.co/UFnaFfOSpn #cancelcolbert

— The Colbert Report (@ColbertReport) March 28, 2014

My Response

First let me say that I did not know about this event, I was informed by a colleague about Colbert's foundation and was told to check it out. I first saw the clip, read the tweet, saw the reactions.

I presented this lesson with all of the attributes and skills that I have taught my students. To understand the context. First to think about the two separate Twitter accounts. One, managed by Comedy Central acting as the twitter user for the Stephen Colbert Show and the other managed by Stephen Colbert (the character) himself. At first, reading the tweet from The Stephen Colbert show, I couldn't believe what he wrote (not knowing that it was actually ran by Comedy Central). I immediately thought that the "Ching-Chong Ding-Dong" joke was over and definitely over-played, especially after the UCLA girl's YouTube video went viral for what she said about Asian students in the library. Then to see that the tweet had "#Asian" in it to be even worse because anyone who can search on Twitter for Asian, would stumble on this tweet. However, I wanted to learn more about what he was talking about. Why would Stephen Colbert want to show the Asian community he cared? Cared about what?

So here we go...

I watched the episode and I saw what Colbert was discussing. He was discussing Dan Snyder's brand new fund. Snyder is the owner of a billion dollar football team known as the Washington Redskins. The mascot name has racist connotations. Snyder wrote a letter to the fans of the Redskins football team letting them know that he is not actually going to change the name of the Redskins because as he toured and visited Native Americans, he found out that "some" did not have any issues with the Redskins name. However, Snyder found out that many Native Americans are living in poverty. So in order to continue using the Redskins name, while still maintaining honor and a strong relationship with Native Americans, Snyder developed "The Washing Redskins Original Americans Foundation" to help raise awareness and money for Native Americans. A great idea! With a rather silly name, the problem for most people was the term "Redskins" being used as a derogatory or racist label for Native Americans and by using it in his foundation, he pulls out the dichotomy of how he wants people to know that The Washington Redskins care, but they really are Original Americans and this is the Foundation for them... silly enough for satire in my opinion.

Colbert than takes it to the next level, by trying to make fun of racism, by using racism. He plays an old clip of a character he used before named Ching Chong Ding Dong, that was considered offensive, and decides to create his own fund using the derogatory, racial term and adding "for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever." I think Colbert played it wrong by saying Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever, because that takes it away from being a joke about Dan Snyder, which is what I really believe he was trying to prove. Maybe by changing it to The Ching-Chong....Foundation for Sensitivity to Asian-Americans would've made a difference. I'm not sure, regardless I got the joke, but it was distasteful.

If Colbert decided to continue to poke fun at the idea of Dan Snyder's Foundation name being a double edged sword than people would've seen the bigger picture which I believe is that Snyder is using money to continue using the Redskins name by saying "its okay now, because I am giving money to actual Native Americans." By using Asians to help tell his joke doesn't do much to the idea but to perpetuate racism. Which is what happened to a lot of Asian Americans and other activists who called for the #CancelColbert tweet which started to trend.

To wrap up, I didn't like how Colbert used his foundation to Asians as a joke to support Dan Snyder's name for his foundation. Snyder thinks the foundation will help him sleep better at night when he goes home to the fat checks because of the "Redskins" name still being his team's mascot. I am amazed by the power of social media and how movements and actions can change and affect people. How a tweet can be taken out of complete context and turned into a trend to cancel a popular TV show by one person. I think we should all take a step back, Colbert isn't the enemy, I believe he was honestly trying to be funny, without realizing what it is to be a target of racism, as a white man. He struck the wrong nerves in people when he was actually making a good point. Using a term considered racist, to show your "sensitivity" still isn't showing much sensitivity, take note Snyder.

Third Grade Spanish Videos

The third grade class has already learned how to use iMovie, adding pictures, recording their voices, adding text, and background music are all skills that the third grade class has learned. Our Lower School Spanish teacher had taught the students about the weather and clothing with a song, and she thought it would be a fun idea for the students to sing a song in Spanish they knew about a drawing they each made of the clothing and weather, she approached me to think of how to incorporate technology into the project.

Together, we decided that the students would draw a scene of the weather and what they would wear and the student would write down the lyric of the song. Using the iPad, students took a picture of their drawing, and using the app iMovie, compiled their groups pictures and recorded a song. One iPad was used per group of four students. It was a great exhibition of teamwork and using their tech skills to make these movies. I was very impressed!

Here are several examples made by third graders:

Usernames and Passwords... in Kindergarten!

I was recently approached by a Kindergarten teacher asking for some math help for her students. One girl in her class mentioned "IXL" an app her brother in 2nd grade was using to learn more math. If you recall, I have introduced IXL to students in grades 2-4, because of the idea of typing usernames and passwords. Well this Kindergarten student brought the point to her teacher about how her brother uses it, and she and her family would like to use it too. The Kindergarten teacher thought we should teach all the Kindergartners how to sign into IXL. Of course I am up for the challenge!

I have a plan ready, its just a matter of making sure the young Kindergarten students do not get too lost or struggle when we learn our usernames and passwords! I will update this story soon.

"Instagram" Classroom

The power of social media and Instagram has changed the way our students see the world. Social Media sites like Instagram allow people to connect with other people from all over the world. These connections are shared through images and comments. My "Instagram" classroom project idea came from when I posted a picture of nature on my Instagram account. Most of my pictures were usually images of Century Link field, sporting events, friends, or food. The picture I posted though was of a tree that I hugged in the woods. This picture reached out to other nature enthusiasts that liked my photograph and wrote comments to me, people I have never met before.

This reaction reminded me of the phrase "A picture is worth a thousand words." As I browsed the popular page on Instagram, I saw an endless amount of selfies, food photos, and pictures of celebrities with thousands of likes. These images are reaching out to millions of people, and the ones that are the most popular are of people that are already famous? It made me think about how a picture can reach out to so many people and how it can mean so much more with a good comment or story.

I challenged the students in middle school to think of a photograph that had meaning to them, we then used the app "SnapSeed" to edit and filter the photograph, similar to Instagram's filters. Once the photograph was ready, the students were to write a story about the photograph and how it was important to them and I asked them a question, "if you posted this photograph in social media, how would you try to explain it to connect to other people?"

The following week, students partnered up and I provided a worksheet. The classroom setup was designed to have students quietly look at each others photograph and have a quiet "reaction" time, where they would write down feelings, thoughts, and ideas about the photo. Then they would hear the story behind the photograph and then react to the story with any connections or write why they didn't share a connection.

4th Grade Keynotes

Prior to leaving to IslandWood, I had the 4th Graders learn how to use the app Keynote. Keynote is an Apple presentation tool and a great Presentation making app on the iPad. Keynote is used heavily in our Middle School grades and it was my idea to expose the 4th graders to some Keynote making skills prior to entering 5th grade. I had students make Keynote presentations about their excitements, wonders, and fear's about being at IslandWood for four days and three nights.

Students learned to add photos, edit and add text, and animate. My approach to teaching a brand new app is to allow the students to explore and investigate the app on their own. I gave them the goal, learn how to use Keynote and make a presentation of your feelings about leaving to IslandWood. From there, students saved photo's from Safari, added animations, added slides, and edited fonts. When student's learned a cool skill or something I didn't know about yet, I would stop the class and share the idea. If the same question was being asked by a number of students, I would stop the class, address the issue as a whole class, and then allow the students to continue working on their own pace. I found this to be a much better method than having a 30 minute session of me explaining all the aspects of the app.

Back from Islandwood

Well I just spent the past week on Bainbridge Island with the Fourth Grade class at an outdoor ed camp called IslandWood. It was a beautiful experience in the outdoors and away from all the daily technology work and maintenance that I do on a regular basis at Westside. It felt great for me to be outdoors, in the forest and woods, connecting with the nature around me. I took moments to capture these memories with technology to remind me of the power and beauty that is being outside with the Earth.

I really appreciated the time away from the daily routines at work. I hope that the time I spent reflecting and thinking will make my lessons at Westside more powerful and meaningful. How better to use technology, than just entertainment and convenience? To use technology as a tool to expand our thinking as learners...

Here are some of those moments I captured:

  

Common Sense Media Curriculum

A while ago I stumbled across Common Sense Media's and their Digital Citizenship curriculum. I have taken this open and free curriculum and modified it specifically to my student demographics. I thought that many lessons Common Sense Media provides are great and useful and if tailored the right way they can really make an impact with your students. I am working with both the 3-5 and 6-8 curriculum for my 5-8th grade middle school students.

The 7th and 8th graders do a great job being mature and having strong discussions while the 6th grade class does a great job participating. It's still an odd age for 5th graders to be in Middle School so I had to modify the lessons to work in their favor. In general it has been a great experience for them and me and I will continue using this curriculum for the rest of March. I would definitely recommend it to anyone thinking about teaching digital citizenship and online safety.

Understanding Usernames for IXL

IXL - Free
Image courtesy of Apple

IXL is a math program that provides practice for math users from grades PK all the way up to those taking Algebra and Geometry. It does cost money to receive an amount of licensed user accounts for the students to access the math practice pages.

The app itself is free, and as long as you have an account you can have students sign in and start practicing different math skills.

Having students in grades 4-8 sign in with a username and password has become pretty straightforward. Second and third graders are still understanding that concept and I have just introduced the idea of a username to my first grade classes.

I had the students break down the word username into words that they were familiar with (use, user, and name). From there I explained how a user is the student and the name is the students name the computer will recognize. All of our usernames include our first names so it was an easy tie in. From there breaking down the @ and the domain took a little more thinking. I explained how the @ symbol is used by computers to explain where the user is coming from, and the domain is where the user is from. So @westsideschool became the user who is at Westside School.

For many of the students, this made sense! It was good to see them practice writing their username with paper and pencil before I placed the iPad in front of them.

Halftone Success

Well, I had much greater success doing the Valentine Selfies on the app Halftone with students in 3rd and 4th grade. It was great to let them filter their own photos and to personalize the valentine even more. This will probably be something I wont do in the younger grades, but will do in 3rd grade.

Valentine's Day Selfies

Halftone - $0.99

Here is an app I used in my Kindergarten class with a lot of support and patience. Halftone is a great app that turns your photograph into a comic like page.

What I did with the Kindergarten class was I introduced the students the concept of taking a selfie! It's a skill that many of us are unaware that we have. Staring into the camera lens and taking a picture, not staring at our face as we take the picture. It's about the eye-contact.

After we all successfully took selfies (a word in the Oxford Dictionary), I guided the students through skipping the photo editing page and jumping right into a finished product. Some students had trouble following along, which made the lesson a bit challenging. However students were able to successfully change the date to say "February 14" as well as type "I love you" and add a Heart stamp. It was a lesson that required a lot of focus and attention out of Kindergarten students and it might be something I would try in first grade instead.

Here is how some of them turned out!

Animate Salmon Eggs

Animator - $0.99

The second grade students are currently studying a unit about Salmon. We even have 200 Coho Salmon Eggs at Westside School to observe hatch for the next few weeks!

In my technology class with the second graders I had the students practice using the app, Animator. Students were expected to learn how to change colors, erase, and make something animate such as a wave or a ball moving and rolling. As the students skills of animation improved we began a conversation about salmon eggs and the correct color. Students found the correct color they wanted to use for a salmon egg and once that color was found students were to draw an animation of their salmon egg "rolling" around on their slide page. This animation had to be at least 10 slides long of just a salmon egg rolling. Once completed we discussed the importance of saving our work every 10 or so slides to make sure we are being careful just in case the iPad "crashes."

Note: Animator Free is the free version of this app, it allows almost all functions EXCEPT it is limited to only 30 slides. The full version I believe no longer gets support, but it does very well. The only problem I have ran into so far is that if you have more than 100 slides of animations, the app crashes and no longer lets you work or view your animation. A HUGE drawback.

Follow up to Richard Sherman Tweets

With the Middle School students I had a great opportunity to discuss a hot topic buzzing in our city. The Seattle Seahawks defeated the San Francisco 49ers and made their way to the Super Bowl! The whole city and the school were excited and overwhelmed with Seattle Seahawk pride. However, the game was over-shadowed with a post game interview by Richard Sherman. Many of you are aware of what he said, but some may be surprised with the fallout afterwards.

Here is the interview:

After this interview, the reaction on social media was absurd. It provided a great opportunity for Middle school students to see and discuss how social media is allowing us to communicate and react to information instantly. I wanted to raise students awareness to how social media works and how it can affect people.

The twitter reactions can be seen on my post here.

After looking at those tweets and having a conversation about how things you say can make people perceive who you are, even if its on Twitter, we watched a video about Richard Sherman's reaction to people on Twitter. 

I want students to be aware of the effects social media has on our lives. It is a forward thinking technology, but does it allow for people to continue thinking backwards?

Twitter Reaction to Richard Sherman

Richard Sherman majored in communications at Stanford. A monkey could get a 4.0 majoring in communications.

— Rusty Rim Jim (@Jamespryatel) January 23, 2014

Richard Sherman is a great player. But that was classless. #Seahawks #Niners

— Mike Greenberg (@Espngreeny) January 20, 2014

Richard Sherman, you sir, are a thug. #clASSy

— Caitlin Hunnicutt (@cait_hunn) January 20, 2014

Great play. Congrats to the Seahawks. I can't stand Richard Sherman though #Idiot

— Brandon Crawford (@bcraw35) January 20, 2014

Richard Sherman is one humble monkey #gobroncos

— Mike Hudner (@MikeHudner3) January 20, 2014

Richard Sherman is an embarrassment to the NFL, Seattle, football and, alas, his family. No class.

— Ron Mott (@RonMott) January 20, 2014

Richard Sherman deserved to be caged like a monkey.

— Kris Bartlett (@bartlett_kris09) January 20, 2014

Richard Sherman is just another classless thug though. #Seahawks

— TheRealJMang0 (@JMang0) January 20, 2014

Richard Sherman is an angry monkey.

— Munson™ (@mikemunson21) January 20, 2014

W2 - Experts with Doodle Buddy

I wanted to make sure the students became experts with using the app Doodle Buddy in Kindergarten. I am starting to get ambitious with this group of K's because I want them to create a book on the iPad. But before all of that we need to take those "baby steps." A couple of things we had to overview was how to change colors, brush types, brush sizes, and adding text. The students are getting better at all of these skills. One last thing I made sure was they understood the difference between holding an iPad like a "portrait" vs holding the iPad like a "landscape." These skills will come in handy when I ask them to draw and save in image as portrait. Oh yeah! They learned how to save an image to their camera roll.... It might be too difficult for them to do all of these steps, but we will see!

W1 - Fourth Grade

Students in fourth grade have been Computer Programming since November of 2013. We have used apps such as Daisy the Dino, Cargobot, and Light Bot.

I introduced a more creative programming app called Hopscotch. This app allows the users to control objects or characters and command them to do something. The previous programming apps that I listed already had goals and objectives, but Hopscotch allows the programmer to put in commands to make your character do whatever you wanted!

In this lesson I showed students how to make a character move and rotate 30 degrees. I then had the students figure out how to make their character move in the shape as a square. After students were able to do that on their own, I showed students how to make their character draw lines, soon students were exploring their own shapes and drawings! It was great to see how excited they all were to just get in and program. It was extremely important for me to show them simple tasks, and allow them to explore and learn on their own!

W1 - Third Grade

Teaming up with the third grade team I was informed they wanted to do a project involving saving pictures from the internet onto the student's iPads and using those pictures in an iMovie.

It's great to have the big picture, but with third graders I had to make sure the students knew how to do simple things like opening the app Safari and typing in a web address.


I used direct instruction to show the students how to open Safari, type in the website kidrex.org, search for pictures of wolves, select a website link, select an image, and save that image to their photos. This process of instruction and then letting the students practice took about 15 minutes. Once the students saved one photo of wolves I had them save photos of biome animals and plants that they researched.

After the 15 minutes was up, I showed students how to find the photos they just saved in the Photos app and create a photo album of their photos to separate their photos from everything else in their Camera Roll.

W1 - Kindergarten

As a start for the new year, I wanted to introduce the "Doodle Buddy" app to my Kindergarten classes.

First the app was introduced to the students and I wanted to find out how many students knew about this app already. Surprisingly, not many students have used this app before. I set 7 minutes on the timer and told the students to explore what every single button on the app does and their functions. I also told the students that they needed to figure out how to draw, change colors, erase, and change the backgrounds of their drawings.

After the timer was up, I reviewed and asked the students what they found out how to do. They showed me and the rest of the class which buttons did what. It was a great way for 5 year olds to learn how to use an app as well as teach me and others what the buttons do! Their final task was to draw a memory they had from Holiday break and use the text function to label what their memory was!