INTEGRATING TECHNOLOGY IN ELEMENTARY LITERACY



MARIE CLAY’S LONG LOST TWEETS ON TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION February 2, 2014





Robert Pronovost

Ravenswood City School District

East Palo Alto, California

Good afternoon, welcome to your first concurrent session of the conference and thank you for choosing to come to this session. First of all, I want you to know that I am well aware of the wide variety of knowledge and needs in this room and that there are two other presentations on technology in the literacy classrooms this week

OTHER TECH SESSIONS Digital Literacy in the K-6 Classroom - Monday 1:00PM
 


Debbie Dodson, Shirley Labus, Natalie Ringeis: Summit County ESC, Cuyahoga Falls, OH

Technology in the Literacy Classroom - Grades 3-6 - Monday 8:30AM
 


Robert Kelly: The Ohio State University

Debbie, Natalie, and Shirley have a great collection of online texts and digital story writing tools, so rather than go through those myself, I’ll refer you to their session (tomorrow, today, now). They have their handout up online too, so you can get to it even if you aren’t attending their session.

I know that we only have a short amount of time together and I can’t share all the tools I know and I may not get to your particular question, but I am easily accessible via Twitter and email.

[email protected]

Please contact me after the session with any additional questions you have. I also have a session or two I’m not convinced I have to go to, so I’d even be available for one-on-one tech talks this week as well.



Introduce myself

MARIE CLAY’S LONG LOST TWEETS

Now onto our topic: “Marie Clay’s long lost tweets on Technology Integration”. There is a reason these are long lost tweets, rather than a published book, as many of the key points contradict each other and obviously that could be rather confusing if published in a Marie Clay book. Also, a book on this topic would be outdated before it was published, which is why I won’t even try to share all the amazing tools out there with you today. Partly because I don’t know them all, but mostly because the tools that work for me are not going to be the ones that work for you and I don’t want to pretend that these tools are the be-all-end-all.

Marie Clay

@ReadingRecovery

Start where the pain is. #PainPoints

This is where some of the most successful technology startups come from… tackling the big struggle in a way that you couldn’t before.



For me, the biggest pain point was classroom flow and management. Lucky for me, I’m not the only one out there who had these issues. In fact, when the web app ClassDojo came out, Twitter lit up.

TWITTER CHATS BIT.LY/OFFICIALCHATLIST

#ohedchat - Mondays @ 9-10pm EST

#tcrwp - Wednesdays @ 7:30-8:30 EST

#titletalk - Sundays @ 8-9pm EST

#1stchat - Sundays @ 8-9pm EST

Yes, you’re going to hear me mention Twitter a lot. If you’re not signed up, that’s the ONE thing I recommend you take from this session.

MY BLENDSPACE SITE:

goo.gl/kawnZD Anyway, ClassDojo allowed me to track behavior in my classroom without anything but my mobile device. A device where I also have portable equity sticks, even a way to remind my students to clean up for recess without interrupting my small group.



Maybe you have general classroom management down - bravo to you and your students - but it’s the actual use of technology devices that is your class’s handicap. A couple places to start: 



Symbaloo/Blendspace: Ways to organize all the webtools you have for your students to access. 

Google Forms w/ QR code: In order to keep track of the tools my students used each day, I asked them to fill out a Google Form with a few questions, which kept them accountable for their work and kept me accountable to keep their work fresh.

Marie Clay

@ReadingRecovery

Start where you are comfortable. #BabySteps

Like I said, contradicting messages. While pain points are definitely a good place to start, the easiest place to start is somewhere where you are already very comfortable and fluid in your practice. Think about it. If I try to start integrating technology in a place where I’m still trying to understand the content, that’s two variables in my teaching and probably will lead to some disastrous results. It’s also what leads to many teachers abandoning technology and many administrators staying skeptical about it as well.

For me, where I was comfortable in my literacy instruction was my small group instruction and conferring. Okay, I wasn’t 100% comfortable with my conferring (I think I heard ___ say that no one is ever going to be fully comfortable with conferring), but I felt I had the framework down and having multiple sessions a day allowed me to make minor tweaks to the technology use that would make the integration more fluid.

I’m not talking about technology for technology’s sake. I’m talking about technology making these tasks easier. Instead of carrying a notebook with tabs or a clipboard with post-it notes, I started to use an iPad to take notes and references inside. There are many note taking apps out there, but the ones I’ve heard used the most are Confer and Evernote (CC Bates is a good person to look toward to learn about Evernote). Confer was designed by a school teacher from Seattle, but even Peyton Manning agrees that it’s an amazing app for conferring. (slide w/ Peyton Manning)

Marie Clay

@ReadingRecovery

Use what you have. #LiveResourcefully

Every time I talk about using technology in the classroom, the availability of materials comes up. For good reason, too.

When I started teaching, my classroom had two old desktops in the back of the room and an overhead projector. I also had a brand-new iPhone, since my old phone happened to join me in the pool about a week before the first iPhone came out. But I swear, it was an accident.



The two old desktops weren’t capable of much, so I used my iPhone for whatever I could. It wasn’t much at first, but now there is a wide variety of apps available for iPhones and Androids alike. And while I will be sharing iOS apps for the most part, you can bet there is at least one Android equivalent for most apps I’ll discuss.

In addition to the classroom management tools I mentioned before, your mobile phone is capable of so much. Simple use that has been shown to increase students’ reading ability? Recording themselves reading and listening to it. iOS has an app called Voice Memos that you can have students use and record themselves reading. And I know your next concern… that phone in your students’ hands is a dangerous thing, not because of the photos from happy hour still sitting on there, but because they could literally call anyone or look up anything.

ENABLING GUIDED ACCESS

For you, Guided Access is about to become your new best friend. This is the one thing that I show kindergarten teachers in our district that has instantly changed their view on student iPad use. (Explain how Guided Access works.)

And what about that new new app that teaches your students the parts of speech, but you only have one iPad or iPod and want all your students to see it? Reflector is another awesome tool. You install it on your computer (Mac or PC), turn it on, and wirelessly you are able to display your iOS device for all to see and hear. An awesome way to demo an app before you ask students to use it in a center as well.

Another awesome teacher I know, Lisa Highfill, who is from California but is actually in Columbus right now for a lacrosse tournament, uses her phone as a digital camera, allowing students to take photos of the learning occurring in their classroom. The students then generate engaging statements to share what they’re doing with their followers on Instagram. They used to do this on Twitter rather than Instagram, which also added the need to choose write a very concise statement with each word carefully selected. 

Marie Clay

@ReadingRecovery

Find what you need. #EveryoneCanHelp

Two old computers and my own personal iPhone wasn’t doing it for me either if I was going to truly reach all of the 6th graders in my class, especially when they ranged from a 2nd grade to an 8th grade reading level.

I turned to Donorschoose.org, which is available for all public school classroom teachers in the United States. You select what you want and it magically appears in your classroom. Once it’s been funded by some really amazing people, who might be friends and family, random strangers, or a generous company. Through Donorschoose, I received a couple iPod nanos, audiobooks, and later a few iPads.

I also looked to Craigslist for cheap laptops. And I mean cheap. I found a couple for 50 dollars, which did mean they no longer had an sort of battery allowing them to be portable, but they were significantly faster than the computers we had in our classroom. I wish Chromebooks had been around, as now for $250 you can purchase a computer that can do pretty much anything you want on the web. And I’m pretty sure you can get them through Donorschoose as well.

IPEVO Document Camera

There is a document camera now, produced by IPEVO, that actually can be used with only an LCD projector (no computer needed!) for less than $150. And if you have a computer? There is one that costs only $69 dollars.



Eventually, through donations from Donorschoose and local companies, I was able to have a 1:1 macbook classroom, which definitely allowed me to move beyond the single device classroom or a single tech center which I’d had in the past.

Marie Clay

@ReadingRecovery

It’s all about collaboration. #AllForOne #OneForAll

When you get to having multiple devices in your classroom, it’s all about the collaboration you can bring into the classroom.

Imagine, you go from having one editor in your classroom to several. And yes, I know that another second grader is not going to be as effecient at revising or editing as you would be. But not only will the editee take the advice more to heart because it came from a peer, but the editor will be learning as well. And what better tool to use for this collaborative work but Google Docs!

Google Docs allows students to even work on the same document in real time. Even better? You can go back and see the revision history, including which student typed (or erased) what. So not only can you support the student who wrote the paper, you can help the editor become better at their craft as well. Yes, Google Docs is part of the Google ecosystem, which requires a child to be 13 or older. But that is not the case if you (or ideally your whole school or district) sign up for a Google Apps for Education domain. Students then have individual logins and can be restricted to only emailing and sharing within the domain, or even not allowed to email at all. No ads within the GAFE domain either, so you don’t have to worry about students somehow seeing inappropriate things or having their data sold.

VanMeter Google Hangout with Loren Long

via @ShannonMMiller

Right now, I’m out of the classroom, but fighting my way back in. I’m starting a collaborative of Makerspaces throughout our district for all TK through 8th grade students. These students will be working on similar projects, but won’t be in the same place, so I’m planning to introduce Google Hangouts or Skype for the classes to interact.

I prefer Google Hangouts, because not only can students discuss, but they can also think through their ideas visually using Scoot & Doodle.

Marie Clay

@ReadingRecovery

It’s all about an authentic audience. #Comments4Kids

I shared about how Lisa Highfill (and now my former student teacher, Trevor Mattea) uses Instagram in her classroom to share their learning beyond the classroom walls.

via @ChartChums

Now when the Common Core standards came out and emphasized persuasive writing, one thing that jumped out in the TCRWP Units of Study was persuasive reviews. I know I rely on persuasive reviews every day in determining what restaurant to go to, what book to purchase, or what TV show to watch.

Traditionally when our students write their persuasive reviews, it’s just for the teacher or the class. Maybe if they’re lucky, they get to write to the principal about why the lunch or school uniform needs to change. With the Internet, students can write a review that could actually impact someone else’s life outside the classroom.

When I told my 2nd graders that their reviews would actually be going up alongside other people’s reviews on Yelp, Amazon, and other sites, their engagement shot up. Their motivation to write well shot up. Even students who traditionally weren’t interested in writing were sure onboard to get their Gears of War game review up on Gamestop’s site. In order to protect student privacy and uphold the 13 & over laws of most social sites, I posted all of these to the sites with my own name, but mentioned that it was written by a student.

If you’re not ready to go that far, there are great sites like KidBlog that allow you to have your students share their writing with other students inside your classroom (and outside if you choose to). Either way, you are embedding some digital literacy and social responsibility instruction into your writing instruction, which is definitely going to benefit those students when they go off and write online at home, which they will all eventually do.

Marie Clay

@ReadingRecovery

It’s not about the tool, it’s about how you use it. #OneToolToRuleThemAll

Doceri



Infuse Learning



Stationery Studio



Educreations

Marie Clay

@ReadingRecovery

Even teachers need a support team. #TwitterForLifeLongLearning

Q&A

[email protected]

Thank you!