Report Cards and Conferences Are Here!

The trimester has come to an end and report cards are completed! Now it's time to give myself a grade on the start of fourth grade. I have to say that things are going pretty well! I give myself an A-. The minus comes from the unknown of the year; not knowing the trajectory of the year but that will be fixed next year. As for technology, I think we have done pretty well as a class! We have produced one Voicethread project, five writing assignments (three of them have been shared on our blog), many math days where we explored ipods, a research project using tech, conference sign ups online, a very successful Twitter exploration, and parents have commented on our student's work! I think my favorite technology success is the independence my students have gained using Twitter. Each day, one student is the iPad Twitter person. They are in charge of tweeting our learning and adventures. They are allowed to look at our followers (60+ other classrooms) and see what they are doing and they are allowed to comment (if approved by me). We probably average about five tweets a day from students. I didn't expect this success but the children are loving it. I know it sounds like small successes but with being in a new classroom and new grade this year, we are doing well! I am excited what the new trimester will bring for us.

Feeling the Stress of the School Year

My school year in in full force and I realized that I have posted on my blog in a few weeks. That is sad to me. I told myself I would try to keep this going weekly, but life has a way of slipping by you, especially when you are teaching! My class has molded itself into a great group. They are kind, funny, and excited about learning! They love technology and get excited when I give them options to use technology in their learning. We have gathered quite a group of followers and followees on Twitter. We are following 35 or more classrooms. We are playing geography games with a couple, which the children are enjoying! I have used Twitter to help us learn latitude and longitude in our lessons, by plotting our followers on Google Earth. It's all about keeping things authentic!

I have our iPad floating through the classroom each day to allow each child to post tweets. Each day the child changes and the child is our "researcher and tweeter" for the day. This works better than remembering to tweet as a class at the end of the day!

We are diving into the world of blogging. Of course, our blog is having some technical difficulties currently, so we are working with our tech guys to sort things out. I'm hopeful this will be a great place for publishing in the future! I'll blog more about that soon! More to come...

Voicethreads and Wikis

We finished our iPod project and I am in the process of final edits on the Voicethread. I sat to listen to the children's interviews and was blown away by their excitement, engagement, and entertainment. It was great to see the children show their personalities through their questions and delivery of the answers. I could tell how much the children enjoyed this project. So, my next adventure to discuss is another collaborative idea by my colleague, Chris. Here is my advertisement for his great idea and my support by passing it on.

Chris has started a wiki page for educators interested in tweeting on Twitter with their classrooms. He has made different areas where educators can contribute to different "hashtag" conversations. It also allows people to leave their Twitter names if they are interested in collaborating with other classrooms through Twitter or other means. It is a great idea. I am excited to see this take off. Feel free to share and contribute!

http://twitterclassrooms.wikispaces.com/

Twitter in the Classroom

So, I have started Tweeting with my students this week. I used our closing circle time to reflect on things the class learned or are excited about. I am still trying to figure out the best way to use this time effectively. My hopes are that after a couple weeks, I can have a couple kids tweet on their own about what we are doing in class. I will be monitoring this, of course. So far we have 4 followers, including 3 teachers and 1 parent. I invited the parents, but am hoping to get a bigger following after Parent Night.

I am struggling with how public this account should be. I am still inspired by Will Richardson, who encourages teachers to be public on the internet, with their students, as a way to build their PLN. I am hearing his argument, but realize I am dealing with children that are still learning the ways around the internet. This is why I have chosen to do this project as a class. I am keeping a close eye on everyone that asks to follow us and am not using any children's names or pictures on our account. We are pretty secure, at this point.

I am excited to see how this evolves. With another teacher tweeting across the hall, it has been nice to bounce off ideas and concerns. My hope for this project is not only to communicate with parents, but to allow their children to see how we can share opinions and learning safely with others on the internet. The children are so excited every time they see me reach for the iPad to tweet their thoughts. It has definitely gotten them motivated to share their opinions. I am going to find a place for each of them to go to share their thoughts individually, but that is another project for the future! Happy Tweeting!