Elevate Your Teaching With QR Codes

I'm sure you have seen a QR code. They are everywhere. A QR code is a scannable bar-code that takes you to a specific digital location.

Scan this code to find lots of resources curated by Kathy Schrock for using QR codes in the classroom

QR codes make it easy transform your classroom content with supporting digital content. Anyone with a QR scanner can access a QR code.With QR codes, there is no need for students to type in long web addresses or to search the web for content. The QR code will take them directly to where they need to go. QR codes also make it easy for teachers to deliver supporting or differentiated content to students. There are many free QR readers available for both mobile and web-based devices. In our elementary building, the student devices have all been equipped with the free Qrafter app.There are also many tools available for generating a QR code. My favorite QR generating tool is the free web-based QR Code Generator. It takes seconds to create a code. These codes can be printed out or embedded into digital space such as a website, fusion page or blog. Ideas for using QR codes in your classroom are limitless. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• work exemplars can be provided for students as a qr code on their assignments
• students can design a 21st century resume and link it to an online portfolio
• rubrics can be attached to assignments via qr codes
• instructions for learning centers can be posted in the classroom and scanned as necessary by students
• audio recordings can be attached to artwork to provide context and explanation
• student created book reviews can be attached to the inside of book covers
• student created videos can be attached to written assignments
• differentiated scaffolds can be easily delivered to students using qr codes
• extension activities can be attached to assignments
• QR scavenger hunts are fun in any content area
• maps can become interactive by linking them to additional supporting material
• QR codes are a great way to share student digital work with others
• labs become interactive when QR codes containing links to important facts and content are  attached to models, equipment and artifacts

Do you use QR codes already? Please share your ideas with us in the comments below.

Support For Digital Photos

Recently, I have had several requests for assistance concerning photos taken on our school iPads:

• "How can we share photos? Our iPads don't have airdrop. The files get stuck in my outbox when I attempt to send them to someone."
• "Photos take up so much storage space on my iPad. How can I manage my storage space?"
• "How can I easily transfer photos from my iPad to my PC?"

There are many viable options available, but I am going to share one that works well for me. Enter Google Photos, a relatively new cloud-based storage vault for your photos. This app will back up and sync photos and videos on all devices where it has been installed. It works multi-platform (android, web and ios).

image via Google Play

A great feature of this app is the unlimited, free storage if you agree to a compressed file size. Paid options are also available.

image via Sean Captain from www.tomsguide.com

Once you install the app on all of your devices and select the quality of your uploads and the app will begin to do its work. Photos, images and videos are by default set to private unless otherwise noted by you. These images are automatically sorted and organized which makes them easy to search, share and even edit. Linked here is Google Photos support to get you started. Please contact me if you need some help.

How do you manage and share your digital photos? Please share with us in the comments below.

Add Some Energy to Classroom Assignments

Our elementary librarian recently invited me to collaborate with her and our fifth grade classes to create readers theater productions. This was just the opportunity I needed. I have been looking for a chance to introduce the Toontastic app to our elementary students and thought that this might be an   fitting way to do it.

Photo Credit: launchpadtoys.com

Have you ever heard of this app? It was created by Launchpad Toys.  Last year, Google and Launchpad Toys joined forces and decided to release this app along with Telestory (an equally fantastic creation tool) free!  This tool has so many amazing features.  It is still hard for me to believe that it is a free resource. At first glance, it appears to be extremely primary.  It is in fact very engaging for even our youngest kiddos and easy to navigate as well (I am currently teaching it to our kindergartners too). The learning curve for using this tool is virtually nonexistent due to the  tutorials that are built right into the design process. But please don't be fooled.  Even teenagers and adults will find this tool useful and captivating. Try it yourself to see!

Toontastic is a digital storytelling and animation tool, but if you are willing to think outside the box, it can be used in SO. MANY. WAYS.

I asked our kindergarten students to help me think about some ways this tool might help us learn our classroom skills and concepts.  Here are a few of their ideas, along with several of mine:

• animate and solve a math story
• recreate a historical event
• summarize a chapter/concept/story
• work on character dialogue
• practice foreign languages
• create math symbols that explain their own purpose
• creatively recite your ABC's, multiplication facts or state capitals
• narrate poetry
• animate the steps of a science project or experiment
• this blogger shares how she uses the app to conduct test prep

If you are looking for engaging ways to have students learn required content and skills, you may want to give this tool a serious look.  It is available for ios at this time.  Students can use their personal devices or even share devices to create. Finished work can then be uploaded and shared with the teacher via Google Drive or Dropbox. 

 Do you feel that asking students to create encourages engagement? How do your students create in the classroom?

Please share your comments and thoughts below.

A Classroom Learning To Blog

Over the past two weeks, I worked with one of our third grade classrooms to set up a classroom blog. This was an exciting project and one that I hope will gain a lot of traction here in our elementary school. It has been a worthwhile venture, but there were definitely some bumps in the road to be worked out. I would like to share our process for getting started for anybody out there thinking about taking this on themselves.  The initial time investment was absolutely worth it.

Photo Credit:Langwitches

Mrs. Lucas was looking for authentic reading and writing experiences for her students as well as a way to share what they are learning in their classroom.

up and coming bloggers from room 202

Mrs. Lucas and I initially met to discuss her goals for this project and her desire to have the blog authored primarily by her students.We set up a free blogspot through Google's Blogger because we have a district GAFE  account. Another place to host a classroom friendly blog space might be Seesaw.  This is a free resource aimed at younger children that I have had my eye on  lately. They have recently added a blog feature.

With the students, we began by discussing what a blog is, what it can be used for and then we explored some blogs created by others. The kids especially liked looking at the blog authored by our own Mrs.Rosak.  Mrs.Rosak is an avid reader. She created her blog to share her love of reading with others. See her blog here.  We also explored classroom blogs that featured young student writers. Mrs.Yollis from California has been blogging with elementary students for years.  Her blog had great examples for adding multimedia to a post. This was an excellent post for us to learn from. Mrs. Yollis provides a wealth of blogging resources for teachers linked to her blog.

Next, we had some practical blog management discussions:

• how to add photos and images to our blog- applicable photos and images make a blog post more interesting and engaging
• adding links with additional, related information
• the importance of using our own photos and images whenever possible and giving proper credit for images that are not ours
• ending our post with specific questions to try to engage the reader to participate in a discussion with us
• how to write quality comments for a blog post

Creating our first two blog posts as a group was a lot of fun.  This time allowed us to not only continue learning the basics of blog creation, but we also were able to add in a few grammar mini-lessons as well. Thank you Mrs.Rosak for your input in that area!  The kids were so excited when we posted live and got several comments back.  Thank you to our supportive South Side staff who took the time to write something.  It meant so much to these budding authors!

The students in room 202 are now working hard to write their own posts.  They will have something new to share soon.  Please take a look at their blog and share a comment to help keep them  motivated and writing.  

As I worked on this project, I was able to collect some helpful lesson plans, checklists and rubrics from others who have gone before us. No need to reinvent the wheel. Let's share.  Please contact me if I can help.

Have you created a blog?  Would you like to?  Share some of your thoughts and questions in the comments below.  Thanks for reading! 

Internet Resources: What Is Legal Use?

As our building has progressed further into our 1:1 iPad initiative and technology is now being used extensively in our learning spaces, students have almost unlimited access to images, audio and video from the web.  I have become increasingly aware that even with the Fair Use Copyright Law (1976), students and educators do not have free rein to use these resources as they wish.  Educational leaders have a responsibility to use these resources correctly and to teach our students to do the same.

Creative Commons is an organization that attempts to maximize legal, digital sharing and innovation.  They have created six licenses designed for this purpose.  The video below gives a brief, easy to understand explanation of the process.



There are several ways that educational leaders can direct students toward internet resources that authors and artists want to be shared and reused.  Some tools and strategies that I am currently trying...

• At the elementary level, sharing a google folder with a variety of teacher-selected images for students to choose from can often be effective.
• Whenever possible, have students take and use their own photos and videos.
• Pixabay and  Pics4Learning provide free images for students that require no attribution.  Here are some other useful links:
• http://www.redjumper.net/blog/2015/12/the-top-5-sources-for-images-and-photos-on-your-ipad/
• http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2013/08/5-good-places-for-students-to-find.html#.Vo6F8cYrLIU
• http://eduscapes.com/tap/topic98.htm
• https://edublogs.org/2010/09/17/edublogs-weekly-review-top-5-sites-to-find-images-for-student-use/
• Creative Commons provides their own search engine. 
• Flickr:Creative Commons  and Wikipedia Commons provide usable media files for student use.

I still have so much to learn in this area.  Please share in the comments below if you have found useful strategies or tools to use with your students.

Using IXL to Drive Student Achievement

I  attended a webinar this morning given by Bobbi Bear of IXL.  After spending an hour with Bobbi, I felt inspired to share some of my biggest take-aways with those of you who are currently using this tool:

• Analytics is a new IXL feature.  It has several tabs that encourage the teacher to drive the instruction. The Skills tab allows you to see at a glance what question level your students are working on and what their current SmartScore is.  The Real Time Center tab makes it easy for the teacher to monitor on one screen what skills, questions, and time-on-task behaviors students are exhibiting.  The Trouble Spots and Question Log tabs give valuable insight about where students are struggling.  

• Instructors can now use a highlighting tool to visually mark a skill they want students to practice.

• SmartScore is just a measure of progress and should not be used in the grade book.

• Grade levels can be turned off to provide differentiated instruction.

• Audio can be turned on in the teacher settings for students in second grade and above. Pre-k through first grades have audio by default.

AND MY FAVORITE TAKEAWAY...

• The new Social Studies and Science component of IXL features comprehension tasks perfect for the ELA classroom (i.e. inferencing, drawing conclusions)

How do you use IXL in your classroom?  What features are especially helpful to you?  Please share in the comments section below.

Integrating Technology and Study Skills

image via Pixabay

In her recent blog post, Christina Karmecy, our elementary guidance counselor writes about Sean Covey's habit of synergy and the importance of staff collaboration in the school environment.  See Christina's post here.  Christina and I recently worked together to teach study skills to some of our upper elementary students.  This was a great opportunity for me.  Christina is extremely organized and has some inspiring, well-researched ideas.

Christina prepared a lesson to allow students to analyze the learning style or styles that would complement them personally.  Together with the students, we discussed each of these styles and some important study tips that would work for each one.  Throughout this discussion, I was able to suggest some technology tools that could be integrated for each style.  Here were a few of my suggestions:

Visual Learners-these learners learn best by seeing:

• Use applications such as Notability or Skitch to highlight or annotate your notes and photos.
• Create your own flashcards using Quizlet.
• Flowcharts or diagrams can be created using Google Drawings, Lucidchart and Popplet. 
• Pic Collage is a great tool to build visual timelines.  There are many great web applications as well.  
• Loupe Collage or the Word Clouds app will allow learners to turn words into a picture.  Matt Bergman of the Learn, Lead, Grow blog shares some inspiration here.

Auditory Learners-learn best by hearing:

• Use the voice to text feature available in many ios apps and now available in Google Docs as well.  Dragon Dictation is another useful tool for this.
• QuickVoice Recorder is a great tool for recording your reading or thoughts.
• Sweet Midi Player will allow the learner to put notes to music.  Here are some ideas for incorporating the Garage Band tool.

Kinesthetic Learners-learn best by moving and doing:

• Use Quizlet to build your own flashcards
• Many technology tools encourage creation.  Create your own study guide or tutorials using Educreations, Pic Collage, Popplet, Book Creator, Explain Everything or iMovie.
• Applications such as Fluidity, Kids Doodle, Writing Wizard, Doodle Buddy and  My Blackboard give learners various tactile experiences.
• Use built in smartphone timers to build in study breaks.

Our students use and learn via technology everyday. We need to meet them where they live.  Let's encourage them to try some of these technology integrated tips to study our classroom content. If you have additional suggestions, please add them using the comments section below so that we might all benefit. Please contact me if I can help you implement a tool or strategy.  Thank you for reading!