From time to time we continue our focus on sharing practices in SD41 that create community and build connected stories using our blogs. On the Cariboo side of the city, resides Armstrong teacher, Jude Comeau. Her blog called Division 11’s Class Blog-Learning One Byte At A Time, is a hive of connected learning. Her purposes are…
Tag: boys literacy
iPad Apps that Enhance your Language Arts Program
Joined by a group of enthusiastic K-12 teachers and principals, we explored a number of apps at our District Pro-D session on February 21st. The feature story was Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes by Eric Litwin. After listening to the story and the oh-so catchy song, we used a strategy called Milling…
Digital Learning Day – Feb 5
The days of January have been whizzing by, partly due to the start of another term and partly due to our wonderful west coast weather. Having some sun certainly invites a bit more energy in the steps as well as some hopeful signs of spring just around the corner. We are hearing about so many…
App #9 of “10 Apps to Countdown Season”
App #9: In our effort to highlight the SAMR Model of integration of technology, we’ve been considering what activities might fit into Redefinition (technology that allows creation of new tasks, previously inconceivable). What activities might have significant impact to student outcomes? The “tell your story” concept remains one of the powerful ways we have to teach others, to increase audience,…
App #5 of “10 Apps to Countdown Season”
App #5: Many of us have our students write stories and then illustrate the text. While the artists in the bunch do flips and cartwheels (and I’ve had those students), what happens to those who struggle with drawing the simplest shapes. You know what I mean… somehow my tree just doesn’t quite look like a…
App #3 of “10 Apps to Countdown Season”
App #3: What happens when you bring together an ipad, an app, words, thoughts, and sound? Why Book Creator of course. This app for the ipad is a thing of beauty when it comes to creating ebooks. Images can be drawn or photographed and inserted along with text. As well, audio can enhance both the background environment…
Nov-Dec Newsletter Out in the World
Our November-December newsletter is now published. Read what’s new and exciting in our district. As well, you might not have been aware that you can take advantage of purchasing MS Office at home (for only $11). Or select the tab > News to find all issues. [gview file=”http://blogs.sd41.bc.ca/learningtech/files/2012/11/news_2013_11.pdf”] To find all previous NEWS,…
Book Love
Book Love by Penny Kittle shares stories on how readers develop depth, stamina and passion. Though written with adolescents in mind, the message is absolutely appropriate for elementary age. She states that the path to difficult reading begins with books that students enjoy. To build capacity for reading requires practice and lots of it…
Reading The Impossible
Many of you have asked me if there is support for those who struggle with reading digital content especially when it is written above instructional reading levels. Every time a class attempts research out on the web, students are faced with information they cannot comfortably read. For the brain to have enough neuronal resources to…
Access Raz-Kids Through iPad
Some news that I’ve been waiting for from Learning A-Z, which will offer increased flexibility – Raz-Kids has launched their app for ipad! Students can now access our Raz-Kids accounts from the ipad. You should use a headset [the speaker jack from your headset goes into the jack on the top of the ipad]. The recordings…
A Year of Discovery
It’s June and I’m really not sure what happened to this year. The ten months prior have whizzed by and here we are again. I wanted to take this moment to share some reflections of the year and try to put things into perspective. Our Writers Workshop folks grappled with ideas related not only…
Spring News
Spring is definitely in the air – the buds are on the trees and the daffodils have poked their heads above the ground. This also means that the latest newsletter is out. Check it out here!
Lightbulb Moment – Conversation in the Round
Recently an email landed in my box with a link to a voicethread. For those of you who haven’t seen VoiceThread, it’s a handy tool for collaborative communication out on the web. But let’s start at the beginning. I was involved in a planning project with a school envisioning a whole flip of their library. Aaahh, “Martha…
To Blog Or Not To Blog
Why blog? Your current process of emailing parents or sending written notices home works just fine! Why change you ask. What makes blogging so unique? Blogging accomplishes many goals that cannot be accomplished as well as email, paper notices or student planner comments. Yes, blogging is an easy way to share homework and expectations for projects…
Power of the Many – Writers Writing
Thinking extends to greater possibilities when we’re together supporting and learning from each other. Our second session of dynamic writers took us through a series of activities to explore ideas of “writing, what it means to write in the digital age, identified the principles of writing workshop, … We had a bit of time to…
The Writing Workshop Series – (Session #1)
Here we go – another exciting ride through the intricacies of Writers Workshop. And you knew this was coming – with a twist. As we navigate the environment of web2, we come to understand just how complex the writing process has become. I like to think of this as opportunities to offer more “choice…
Sharing Books…Modeling Strategies…
Sometimes locating just the right book to share or use as a piece of mentor text appears impossible to find. Or have you ever wanted to expand opportunities for your students to read at home? We now have access to TumbleBooks and TumbleBookCloud. [See links under District Links.] These online resources provide a fabulous array of e-texts…
Welcome back September
Welcome back September. And what a spectacular summer it has been – Olympics energy, warm sunny weather, family and friends laughter. Though it’s always great to get away and get recharged, I look forward to the start of each new year. A new year to test out some crazy ideas (yes I’ve read and reread…
Research and the Power of Google Docs
If you dropped by recently, you’ll notice that we’ve been using Google Docs (Google Apps for Education) to enhance the writing process. (For more, select the category – Literacy – Writing Process.) And we’ve had amazing results. Now Google Docs has “upped the bar” and added an integrated research feature. HOW IT WORKS In Docs, let’s say you wrote your beginning…
Celebrating Writers and Learners
Our final learning session of Writers Workshop using Google Docs turned out better than I could have ever imagined. We have such a wonderful group of imaginative and fearless educators! Here’s how the session unfolded. We started with a video from Ted that I discovered on spoken word poetry by Sarah Kay. This spoke to me about how important it is to offer…