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.