These links were provided as examples of K-1 voice thread projects during our K-1 job-alike.

http://kinderkidsdraw.wikispaces.com/

http://lesliedavison.wikispaces.com/Voicethread+Examples

http://voicethread.com/library/40/

The ubiquitous cell phone has become the bane of many teachers and administrators.  You know the scenario– students with their hands hidden in their laps or pockets, staring straight ahead, while still managing to send and receive text messages from friends in the classroom, or a classroom down the hall, or even beyond the confines of the building.  In some districts, this usually leads to seizure of the offending phones or at least a few admonitions.

Maybe it’s time for teachers to look for ways to embrace the cell phone and turn it from a distraction into a tool to enhance instruction. A simple way to start exploring this possibility might be to use those cell phones as a type of classroom response system. A classroom response system allows students to respond to a teacher’s question by electronic means such as a “clicker“.

Poll Everywhere is a website that helps you accomplish the same task, but with student cell phones instead of clickers. Polleverywhere allows you to create a multiple choice poll question along with the possible choices. Students then select one of the choices and text that choice with their phones.

A good way to see the possibilities of using this would be to watch the video of a 9th grade history teacher (Greg Kulowiec) using Polleverywhere with his class. Notice how the graph changes as students text in their votes. The video is found on the blog Teaching With Classroom Response Systems. Also read the pedagogical observations found below the video.

You can set up a free PollEverywhere account for an audience of 30 students. This means that up to 30 people could respond to the poll at a time. For $15 a month, you can set up an account for an audience of 50.

For additional information, refer to the PollEverywhere FAQ at http://www.polleverywhere.com/faq

Those of you who check my blog on a regular basis have probably noticed I haven’t posted for a couple of weeks.  Conferences and other professional development opportunities seemed to congregate within a two week period in April.  Well now I’m back to begin sharing some of the things I’ve learned over the last couple of weeks.

The most recent conference I attended was the Nebraska Educational Technology Association (NETA) conference.  This is a premier conference attended by over 2000 Nebraska educators each year.  The NETA folks pulled off another great conference this year.

As many of you know, there is a lot of trash on YouTube, but there are also a lot of great resources for school.  YouTube is blocked in many of our schools, but what if you are searching YouTube from home and find a great video you want to use in your classroom.  At NETA I learned one method of saving a video to your computer or to a flash drive so that you can then show it in school.  Here are the steps:

1

You are searching YouTube and you come to a great video you’d like to download and save.  The URL might look something like what you see below:

2

Type the word kick between the www. and the word youtube and press Enter on your keyboard.  This will take you to the site KickYouTube where you will be able to start the process of downloading the video you just found.

3

At KickYouTube you will need to select a file format to save your video.  MP4 works with Quicktime players, FLV works with Adobe Flash Player or Real Player, AVI and MPG both work with Quicktime and Windows Media Player.  3GP works with Quicktime and Real Player.  If you’re not sure which format to choose, just experiment.  If one doesn’t work, delete the file and try a different format.

4

Next, click on the green Go button.

5

Next you will see a blue Down button.  This stands for download.  You will need to right click on the blue Down. You will get a drop down menu.  Choose “Save Link As” and then navigate to the place on your computer where you would like to save this file.

6

Now you can navigate to where you saved the file, open it and play it on whatever player you have installed on your computer.  If you saved it to a USB flash drive, you can take the file to school and play it on a computer there.  I hope this helps a few of you resolve your YouTube issues.

Early in my teaching career I had the problem of several students wanting help at the same time.  Students would  sit at their desks with raised hands or stand in line at my desk.  Students wasted a lot of time waiting for help.  To address this problem, I used a “Take A Number” strategy.  I made a set of laminated cards individually numbered from 1-20.  The cards rested in a little box on my desk in numerical order with the number 1 card on top. Rather than standing in line or raising a hand, students took a number and then went back to their seats.  Once they returned to their seats they were expected to work on any other tasks they understood until their numbers were called for help.  It worked great for me!  Do any of you have other strategies for this type of problem?

I came across a video of a teacher using a handshake strategy at Edutopia.  I used to do a similar Question and Answer Handshake with my students as they left the classroom at the end of the day.  The strategy provides another way to informally assess students, reinforce learnings, and nurture student/teacher relationships.

I tried embedding the video into this post, but didn’t have any luck.  You can find the video at http://www.edutopia.org/teacher-tips-classroom-management-handshake-video