This Semester In a Nutshell

Well hello there! Welcome to this wonderful collection of projects, activities, thoughts, and experiences that can be found in the multitude of posts that can be found here! I will be presenting the best activities that I have learned or experienced this past semester, as they are some of the ones I find the most useful and impactful in classes.

What is wonderful about all of these posts as well is the fact that there are multitudes of people that also participated in making several projects and activities, so there are several examples of everything we have learned.

Although there were a lot of pieces of technology that can be used in classroom’s, I don’t find them all to be universal or as useful in classrooms, unless in specific cases. But, feel free to prove me wrong! You have access to all of the resources down below, so if it is not helpful for me but it is for you, then thats wonderful!

I will provide a list for all of the lessons and projects that I find most useful to me. Feel free to go through all of them, and welcome to teaching with technology!

1st. Google Forms

Google Forms has been a quite useful app and program to learn that can be utilized in classrooms. There are several different aspects of Forms that I was not aware of at the beginning such as making paths and self graded quizes. Google forms would be quite useful more as participation grades for high schoolers to test what they know so far, and then testing what they have learned afterwards. 

2nd. Google Sites

Google Sites is a program that I was not aware of before. It is quite useful especially when wanting to introduce a new topic that may be taught in classes. Students can return to the site for any information, as it works as a normal website that you as the Educator can use!

3rd. Book Creator

Book Creator is quite a useful tool as it involves story telling into your teaching. Story telling is important for students to create meaning and connect works, phrases, or concepts with images and characters. It is customizable, so it really is you being able to just write a book for class that you would like. 

4th. Sway

Sway was a quite beautiful app to work with. It can definitely work for personal story telling and poems. You can customize it quite a bit, and connect it more personally with yourself. 

Although these are not all of the projects that I had a chance to work on throughout this whole semester, these four are the one’s I have enjoyed learning the most about. There are so many possibilities for students to be able to learn from these, and there are so many functions that educators can use. They are incredibly versatile apps, and at least knowing how to use them would improve one’s teaching.

An honorable mention of technology that I also recently learned about:

Ziplet

Image Credits

A Home on Zelzah Ave

A Home on Zelzah Ave
Diarra Brown Jenkins

Sat in the middle of swaying palm trees and dirt covered mountains lays my home of fading yellow walls and grey painted bricks. She has withstood WWII veterans, the 1994 Northridge earthquake, 3 divorces, and four generations of an emotionally withdrawn family. Though bolted to the foundation for stability and safety, she struggles to emulate that same secuirty within her cracked popcorn walls. A blanket of weeds, plum trees that only blossom for hopeful children, overpowering rosemary and tomato bushes, and a fading yet still present 'I Love Jesus' painted sidewalk adorns the front of the house. At night, forest green carpet weeps with each step taken, as she is reminded of who she once was. 

I decided to use Microsoft Sway because it seemed the easiest to use of the two digital tools. I like how the final product looks but I struggled with the technology a little too much to want to use it again. I did not necessarily have specific difficulties with Sway, rather, it was finicky at times when inserting images and adding slides. However, I do recognize it as a useful source that allows users to create personalized digital stories.

Ms.Parker’s Portfolio

Over the course of this semester, I have created a variety of resources using various technology and online platforms. These resources can now serve as use classrooms and as inspiration for myself and teachers everywhere. I’d like to highlight just a few of my favorite resources that I have put together in this course.

Google sites:

This is an example of using google sites as a way to showcase and teach about a topic. I love how this allows for students to be independent and learn at their own pace, while still receiving accurate and easy to understand information.

Book Creator:

Teachers can use book creator to introduce themselves to their students before the school year even starts! This is an example of a book that could be sent out to families and read with students – and it’s all about their kindergarten teacher!

Proxi is a great tool to use with older students. In this lesson example, students get to explore the geographical location of state and national parks in the Pacific Northwest. Later, they can use this information to write a compare and contrast essay comparing National and State Parks!

Hope you enjoy these resources!

Featured Image: Image by Manfred Steger from Pixabay

Using Interactive Technology in the Classroom

by Maddy Lopez and Garrett Esponda

This lesson is designed as a professional development for K – 12 educators. The goal for this lesson is to introduce fellow teachers to PhET, an interactive website for Math and Science education. In this lesson, we will…

  • See, Think, Wonder about PhET
  • Share ideas for how to use PhET in classrooms
  • Show all the resources PhET has to offer
  • Brainstorm ways of using PhET in your own personal class

In order to create this lesson, we used PhET, Google Slides, and Jamboard. Google Slides is used as a way of presenting information to the class about PhET and Jamboard is used for the class to easily collaborate digitally.

Google Slides:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/15Lh7QWTPK_xHM67IETKwwcU83nfVja_QhJ_B93mIcUs/edit?usp=sharing

See, Think, Wonder Jamboard:

https://jamboard.google.com/d/1NnEHhW4GhYNanB3sybJvK6Q3i4nciNr-cUOWj2VtTq8/edit?usp=sharing

Implementing PhET in the Classroom Jamboard:

https://jamboard.google.com/d/1IGLVNfyuJvmy8bpOIMy1Clm1NazIYMAcGrSDP_1N75A/edit?usp=sharing

Featured Image: Image by Theo Crazzolara from Pixabay

Resources From the Semester

This semester was filled with a TON of new technology resources that I will be able to use as a future teacher, which is especially helpful. In this post, I am going to highlight some of my favorites as well as what I think might come in most handy when I am student teaching next year and beyond. Using technology in education is especially powerful because it allows for multimodal learning and creates space for more of a growth mindset environment that doesn’t only look at right/wrong answers, but also weighs the creativity of the students.

This one I love, because it is so easy to use and very student friendly! It can be super quick and informal, or super formal, it has a ton of potential!
I liked doing this project because of how much we were able to embed on the slide, and how easy it was to include.
This project worked on book creator, which was also very easy to use and navigate. It is also very manageable to share with students for them to interact with, which is especially great.
I thought this one was especially fun because of how interactive it can be for students to use, and I had fun making this one. Even though there are a ton of details and places pinned on MyMap, it was super quick to create, which is also great when teacher’s already have such little time.
This last one is from the Chat GPT lesson and I just had a ton of fun with this lesson when looking at the AI’s capabilities and what it can do, especially for students. I thought I would include this one so I can remember it as a resource to use in the future!

Miss. Sarah’s Resources

Over the course of the semester, I have been able to utilize the different technologies we have learned about over the course to create some awesome resources that could be used in my classroom in the future! This post will highlight some of my favorite resources that I have made.

This resource has two different google forms that could be useful in the classroom. The first form is a short ELA quiz for 5th grade students to practice conjunctions and verbs. The second form takes students on a choose your own adventure, where they get to explore a new city and learn about some things that make that city unique.
Using book creator, I created a parts of speech book that helps teach 2nd grade students and beyond about the different parts of speech, while incorporating some social studies concepts around the government.
Using Google My Maps I created a map that allows students, specifically 4th graders, to explore the state capitals of the West region of the US. This allows students to learn the capitals while interacting with a map and visualizing where each capital is located.
Finally, this adobe express presentation shares some information about me! This can be shared in the first week of school to help students and parents get to know their teacher better.

Featured Image: Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Fun Fun Forms

Google Forms are really helpful for tasks that can be automated; like math tests. This is something that can also allow students to explore things they are interested in with the branching forms. I would use it when I want students to do a report on a specific country. I would allow them to choose a county and they could learn about it from the forms as it would have all the choices for them in one place. Overall, Google Forms is really cool and can be very helpful in the classroom.

Spring Showcase

Hi! My name is Lydia Wanner. I’ve spent this past semester increasing my knowledge of different technological tools that can be incorporated into the classroom. This post highlights some of my favorite projects that I completed this spring.

For this post, we worked in partners to create a lesson using Google Sites. This was my first introduction to the program. For our site, Sophia and I compiled a series of weather-related activities that could be used for teaching science in the primary grades. Google Sites is easy to use and is helpful for keeping information organized.
In this post, I experimented with Google Forms. Although I was already familiar with the program, it has made additions since the last time I used it. In this project, I created a self-assessing form as well as a branching form. I had a lot of fun creating my branching Google Form, which I set up as a “Choose Your Own” adventure to introduce students to new book series. Google Forms is a great tool for the classroom. From simply sending out class surveys to creating an online escape room, it is a versatile tool that is user-friendly.
I had never heard of Book Creator until this semester. In this post, I used Book Creator to make a book about different defensive adaptations that animals used. While making the book, I went a little overboard with how much information I included. One of my favorite things about Book Creator is that you can embed audio onto the pages. For beginning readers or students who need extra support while reading, they can choose to read along with the author. This program is great for making a classroom resource, as a presentation tool for students, and many more possibilities.
Like Google Forms, I was familiar with Google Maps before this course. However, I had never explored the realm of Google MyMaps, nor had I considered incorporating it into a lesson. In this post, I used MyMaps to show the modern-day stops from the Oregon Trail. When it comes to history classes, MyMaps is a great tool for engaging students in stories that happened years ago. Additionally, MyMaps can be used for introducing students to the neighborhood around their school or showing parents the itinerary for a class trip.

I hope you’ve had as much fun looking at my posts as I did making them! As I continue my college journey and beyond, I hope to incorporate the tools that I have experimented with this semester into my teaching practice.

Parts of Speech Showcase Lesson

Molly Cartwright and Sarah Beth Leach

This lesson is for 4th grade students and covers parts of speech. The goal of this lesson is for students to be able to label parts of speech in a sentence. Students will listen to/read the book that outlines each part of speech and then will work in groups to stamp different parts of a sentence for each part of speech. This lesson would be best used at the end of a unit on parts of speech in order for students to show how much they learned. The technology used is book creator and Figma. The book helps students review the parts of speech, and Figma is a great tool for collaboration on one document.

Book:

https://read.bookcreator.com/xgkpTbMfdNU9OseI1hOkcUBcTZr2/qIwT5ZuFQNqnP4zyUhGcIA

Worksheet:

You may need to create an account to access.

https://www.figma.com/file/lvJIqmIqQDKS2IRxFs2ntc/Parts-of-Speech-Lesson?node-id=0%3A1&t=hsKlreNiOjYuoJXB-1

Iliana’s Technology Guide in The Classroom

Throughout this semester I have learned all the fun and engaging ways to integrate technology into lessons to help facilitate students learning. Below are some of my favorite Word Press posts I’ve created this year and how I incorporated technology into them.

This was one of my first posts using Word Press. It was a Kindergarten/ First-grade science lesson on what plants need to grow. It combined letter recognition with a science lesson. In this Word Press post, I practiced using some of their features like the picture comparisons to help scaffold the students in solving for the missing words.
In this lesson, I showed the powerful tool that AI can bring to the classroom and created a lesson solely by promoting Chat GTP with questions. Although we shouldn’t rely on AI for planning an entire lesson from this post I learned ways it can help brainstorm new ideas and come up with test questions that can be used in an end-of-the-unit or lesson formal assessment.
If you are ever looking for a fun way for a student to bring their poetry or writing alive with images. Microsoft SAwy is your tool! It is easy to navigate the signs and can install transform your student’s writing into a slide show of images either using their own personal pictures or pictures provided through their database.
If you are looking for a fun way to make your one book or to showcase student writing Book Creator is the site for you. You and your students have endless opportunities how to decorate the pages of your books by adding colors, words, stickers, and fun images. As a teacher, you can create a library of all your students’ books and can easily send the link to parents to showcase the work that their students have put in to see other students’ work.
This Word Press post highlights different technology sites like google sites, My Maps, Google Slides Presentation, and Google Forms all in conjunction with a lesson on butterfly migration. It shows different ways you could easily incorporate technology to help further your student’s learning. In this post, you can find a My Maps link to different butterfly sanctuaries, a pre-assessment before the lesson, and instructions for a hands-on butterfly stop activity.

Prior to this semester, I was only aware of a handful of technology tools that can be used in the classroom but now after a semester’s worth of activities I can confidently say that I now have knowledge of so many different sites I can now use in the classroom.

Features Image:

Image by Paul from Pixabay

Class 14: Course Wrap Up

Featured image by Pixabay / farmama

Today class will include the final group of our student-taught lessons.
Lessons will be taught by:

Ashley Eala, Justin Matsuura and Chandler Marelich
Maddy Lopez and Garrett Esponda
Molly Cartwright and Sarah Beth Leach


END OF SEMESTER CHECKLIST
  1. Course assessment at SmartEvals
  2. Posts completed – see Calendar here
    You should have completed 11 posts – plus this final (11th) intro post.
  3. TaskSteam – upload the URL of your final “portfolio showcase” post

Using Book Creator as a “Get to Know You” Tool

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash

The book I chose to create was an example “All About Me” book for a second grade class. The book contains several facts about me, things I like to do for fun, my favorite subject in school, and what I am most excited to learn about this school year. My book would serve as an example for students to create their own. Then, students would get a chance to read their classmates’ so that they can get to know each other. Using Book Creator for this type of assignment instead of having students fill out a worksheet allows students to put their own personal touch on the assignment and get creative with their designs. Also, students will likely take a lot of pride in creating their own book.

https://read.bookcreator.com/2wRs0r5zN4fpk7jxnQNpkvnYc753/kI-R-RWmRTSxml5z_gJORw