ThingLink

www.thinglink.com  - Touch and Discover
Probably the coolest tool I have found in a long time!  It allows you to add text, links, videos, sounds, etc to any picture.  Imagine creating an interactive image using a map, to tell a story, to engage your students, or just for fun!

This is a fantastic tool for both teachers and students.   Students can create a thinglink to show their understanding of content in a visual manner.

Here are a few links to other teacher-created resources:

• http://www.thinglink.com/education
• http://thinglinktoolkit.wikispaces.com/Starry+Night
• http://thinglinktoolkit.wikispaces.com/Social+Justice+-+Civil+Rights+Movement

Here is an example of a ThingLink about the Wright Brothers first flight.

Bivariate Data Day 3

Today was another exciting day in Meagan's class!  Now that students have been introduced to the unit, they began their self-guided/flipped classroom journey.  Meagan showed them how to access, open, and navigate the Numbers file....how to follow the steps on their own and how to check in with the teacher.  Then it was their turn to start!  Class was very quiet today, but this allowed Meagan to move around and check on student note-taking and answer any questions.

*Note:  Some students had a difficult time watching the video because they did not bring their headphones....

Meagan explaining how to navigate through the Numbers file.

The form Meagan and I created to keep track of student progress throughout the self-guided unit.

A student watching the first video and taking notes.

A student taking notes on the video.

Bivariate Data Day 2

This is what teaching should be like everyday!

I arrived at Freedom early today to make sure Meagan and Colleen had enough hawaiian leis for their students.  They both have so much energy and are excited to start this unit!  Who knew math could be so much fun :)

Class began with the Limbo Song was playing loudly and teachers giving leis to each student as they walked in....students were immediately engaged when walking into class!

Meagan handing out leis

A few quotes from students...."Ooh, I feel like I'm in Hawaii!".... "I love this class right now"...."Are we having a party?"....

Some of the more surprising were, "Are we doing math?" and "Why are we doing this?".....students were surprised we could learn AND have fun.....we need to change this mentality!

Meagan told her students that "although we are going to play a game today, this is still Math class, so you need to keep track of one number: the number of times you can successfully make it under the Limbo bar.  She told them to record this on the chart that was up on the SMARTBoard screen.  I then demonstrated how to Limbo and then students lined up and began to Limbo.  After lots of giggles and smiles, students were encouraging their classmates who still hadn't gotten out.  EVERY SINGLE STUDENT WAS ENGAGED.

Students began to understand the concept immediately.....shouts of "The short people have it easier!", "This isn't fair cuz I'm so tall," and "You are lucky you are short, girl!" were quite common.

Once all students had limboed, Meagan asked "Why do you think some students did better than others?"  Immediately students said because some were shorter or more flexible.  Meagan led the discussion of which of these two things we could measure today....and students then proceeded to measure their heights and enter in their data on the data table.

Meagan had students predict what a graph of their information would look like, and then revealed the actual graph.  Students spent the next 10 minutes analyzing the graph and learning how to read a trendline.

They made predictions, identified outliers, and concluded that their hypothesis was correct.  Homework was to come up with an idea of two other things that could be measured and compared to see if a relationship existed and to post this idea on the eChalk discussion.

This all happened in 45 minutes, by the way.

A very insightful observation from one student...."WAIT!  So each of those dots on the graph is a person?  Ohh!  I would have done so much better on the pre-test if I knew that!"  Learning has already taken place....and in a very meaningful an memorable way.

Best part of the day was watching Meagan be such a leader.....so confident and excited to allow her classroom to be a bit chaotic for the sake of learning.  Not many teachers are willing to do this!

Click here to read Meagan's own post about this day in her blog.



Here are some more pictures from the day....including this one of the principal testing his limbo skills in Colleen's class!

Students entering in their data

Institute/Election Day

Today was crazy!  Institute day was done "in-house" at each school, with the iCoaches traveling to different buildings to support teachers.  I spent the morning at Hiawatha working on some eChalk basics with a few teachers, then made my way over to Heritage.

I spent an hour working and planning with all of the middle school PE and Health teachers for the Fitness Gram application.  THEY ARE FANTASTIC!  They cannot wait to have some data to help support their student's health and wellness.....knowing full well that they will held accountable for these scores in the coming years.  They want to jump right in and get this program implemented district-wide.  They have so many great ideas!  John has been a great leader of this group.  He is really pushing to make this happen and make it happen soon. Cannot wait to see where this goes!

I then spent some time training Piper teachers to use eChalk Lesson Planner and wrapped up the day at Emerson helping some teachers with some ideas for how to implement iPads more efficiently.  I showed them one of my favorite apps, Sight Words (FREE!).  It has sets of sight words that included recordings of the words so kids can listen to the words.  They can also create their own lists and add their own recordings.  It now has a new feature that allows you to share lists across a Dropbox account.  This will make it easy for teachers to create their own custom sets of words for a class!

Bivariate Data Day 1

So excited to help Meagan and Colleen start today!  They are excited as well.  We have been working on this unit for at least a month and they are finally ready to start.

Today they are giving the pre-test (as a discovery ed probe).   We still have some things to finalize and they are working on getting all of the lessons into eChalk tomorrow.  They already posted the intro activity in eChalk and you can see from the picture below that it has students curious for math class Wednesday!

Picture of the eChalk Class Page

Student taking the Discovery Education Pre-Test

Site Visit

Today I helped host a site visit for 2 districts - one from Oak Park and one from Iowa.  I had the privilege of escorting a group to visit classes at Heritage.  They were incredibly impressed with Charlie, of course!

Charlie speaking with visitors

It was exciting to listen to their comments about our district....here are a few

• "Surprised to see how engaged students are"
• "Technology is being use to amplify teaching" (from Charlie)
• "Engagement allows for differentiation"
• "Students are learning tech skills at the same time as content"
• "Students want to share their learning"
• "Learning is continual when kids take device home"

Some teachers came to answer questions as well.....Al spoke about giving kids choices in projects (and that he didn't need to be an expert in using the applications!), Kerry spoke about finding the instructional balance as a new teacher, and Megan spoke about how technology has given some kids a "voice" that they didn't have before.