VVE Educational Technology
  • Cardinal Community
  • TeacherLinks
  • VVE Home
  • StudentLinks
  • Tech How-To
    • Ignite Teaching App
    • Apple ID
    • Google
    • iOS7 Updates
    • iPad Help
    • Juno Sound System
    • Khan Academy
    • Nearpod
    • Notability
    • Reading Street/Stemscopes/Everyday Math
    • Socrative/infuseLearning
    • ThingLink
    • Weebly

ARCHIVE OF VVE BLOG 2013 - 2016

8/1/2016

0 Comments

 
Our previous educational technologist, Ms. Brown, documented many great lessons, student projects, and teacher resources throughout her years of working alongside VVE teachers, students, and families. We felt it was important to keep track of that thinking and learning. Read below to learn more about some of the amazing things VVE teachers and students have learned and shared over the past several years.  We will miss you, Ms. Brown, but hope you will come visit us often!
0 Comments

All The News That Fits...and More

1/22/2016

3 Comments

 
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Valley View Counselor, Leslie Eriwin, and Instructional Partner, Heather Petruzinni, have teamed up this year to provide some wonderful opportunities for students to learn from each other.

The idea of students creating, producing and editing their own video newscasts and Morning Announcements originated several years ago when Joan Prinz thought it would be great for students to participate in this type of activity.

She and Mrs. Erwin collaborated on this for the last two years. This year Mrs. Erwin and Mrs. Petruzzini have added Cannon the Science Man and Word in the Hall to the video productions.

Students use iPads and an iMac to  create a variety of weekly and monthly videos that entertain, inform; and build community, creativity and leadership in the Valley View Community.

The students do the script planning, writing, and filming. They also do some of the video editing.

The videos are posted on our District Media Core site for easy viewing.
Picture


The News Team

The News Team is a leadership opportunity for 5th grade students.  The inspiration behind this is to provide an outlet for creativity, leadership and a sense of giving back to their school community and leaving a legacy behind for others.  

5th graders apply and interview for 8 different positions (anchors, news reporters, director/editor, camera operator). 

A broadcast is prepared each month - students write stories about school events (book fair, bingo night, etc), or school staff, or the VVE community.  While there are 8 main News team members, any 5th grader can submit a story idea and we incorporate it into the broadcast or make a special segment - for example, 2 students like to do commercials - they did one about the school store and will be doing one for Bingo night. 

Also, 2 other 5th grade students do Fun Fact Friday where they talk about a fun fact (what a teacher did over the break) or a fun fact about Valley View as a special segment.




Morning Announcements


Morning Announcements are an opportunity for all students (1st-5th) to practice being on camera or in front of others, being recognized in the school, having a moment to shine, practice public speaking, and practice being a role model.  Morning Announcements videos play every Friday.


Cannon the Science Man

Cannon the Science Man - Was something that a 4th grade teacher was inspired to do...She wanted to encourage all students to be scientists at home and find science to be more accessible.  This is our first year trying it, but the idea is that other classes could watch in during their Science time to see what other students are doing and get excited about doing Science at home.  A 5th grader hosts this show and 4th graders are featured in this segment.

​Word in the Hall


Word in the Hall - Inspired by Word on the Street from Sesame Street,  introduces new vocabulary words to students, to promote social emotional learning ideas, to spur conversations in all settings, and for fun.

Two  5th graders interview students and staff all around the school about these words and what they mean to them. 

Words that have been done so far are determination, hope and responsibility.










3 Comments

Teachers Come Alive with Aurasma!

1/4/2016

3 Comments

 
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture

Valley View Students saw teachers and staff in a new light as they watched them transform into well known storybook characters in front of their eyes!

In support of our Balanced Literacy Initiative, teachers and staff used the ChatterPix Kids app to capture their favorite storybook character and record a special message to the students,
Julie Cimino, art teacher at Valley View, initiated and facilitated this delightful experience for all of the students and staff. Her organization and support, helped all of us, staff and students, feel successful using technology for fun and learning.
 

She made herself available before and after school to help teachers and staff create their storybook character video using the ChatterPix Kids App.

She spent many hours linking every staff member's photo to their ChatterPix Kids video that they had emailed to her..and creating the gallery.

We had 100% participation, including custodians, secretaries, and cafeteria personnel!

Students used the Aurasma app to view the transformation of all of their special people here at Valley view.

She taught her third fourth and fifth grade students, during their art classes, how to use the Aurasma App to view the videos; and then she read a poem to them to set the stage ( see the video below)

As they they went on the gallery walk they were delighted to see the new character their teachers changed into.

The following week, the third, fourth and fifth graders took  their primary grade buddies through the gallery showing them how to use the Aurasma app and helping them discover the storybook characters their teachers transformed into.


This was an amazing project that had 100% buy in from every single staff member on the campus; which demonstrated how committed everyone is to student success and enjoyment of reading.



The librarian set up a table containing the books in the library that the teachers characterized in there chatter pics video.
​
The conversation about books and characters, and the delight in the students faces as they watched their teachers transform, was priceless!


Check out the slide show below...
Everyone was so very creative in expressing their character with the ChatterPix App.
In the video below the slide show there are 2 characters singing to the students.
Several more sang also..some yelled...some growled...there was even pirate talk!


2nd Grade Teacher, Christine Stueve, Created her own video of her students enjoying the AR (augmented Reality) experience. Click The Storybook Character Project, scroll down to find it, enjoy!!

3 Comments

The Mobile Teacher

11/16/2015

4 Comments

 
Picture
Picture
Picture

     Do you believe that standing while you work is good for your health, engagement and concentration?
     Do you move around to several classrooms over the course of a day?
     Do you have a laptop, phone, notebooks, cups, tape, pens, pencils, folders, jackets, lunch, etc. that you have to take from room to room every day?
     Do you dislike carrying all of this in bags over your shoulder?
     Then this Mobile Laptop Cart is for you!!

Brook Ehlinger, 5th grade Collaborative teacher found this on Amazon and she loves it!

Ask her about her mobile work station in the comments below.

Picture
Picture
4 Comments

The Power of Video Creation: Sharks

11/10/2015

1 Comment

 
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Sharing new learning through video creation is not only fun, but it helps make the new learning more meaningful.
Valley View 3rd Grade students in Mrs. Abell's class and Forest Trail 3rd Grade students in Mrs. Johnson's class used video to enhance their learning about sharks.
They chose unusual ones and researched them, took notes on the information they found, filled in very large sharks with shark facts, and then were tasked with using poetry as a way to teach others about their shark.
To share their poems they used the Green Screen App by Do Ink to mesh a video of them sharing their original poem with a picture of their shark in the background.

The slides below show some of the steps. Then check out a few of the finished products.
Also, try out the Can You Find the Shark Challenge using student's drawings.


Two student videos

Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
1 Comment

Memes for the Common Good

10/15/2015

1 Comment

 
In an effort to help her students understand memes, and to contribute to SOARing behavior on campus, Mrs. Abell tasked her 5th graders with creating memes that promoted SOARing behavior.

SOAR is our campus behavior plan, students are:
Safe
On Task
have an Awesome Attitude
and are
Respectful to themselves and others every day.



Picture
Our Principal was all in and composed a phone message to Mrs. Abell, asking her to brainstorm ideas to help all of our students remember their SOARing behavior.

After listening to the phone message, Mrs. Abell's students were excited to accept the challenge.
Mrs. Abell knew she wanted to have her students work with memes to better understand them, and to help them understand  humor;  sarcasm; and the use of appropriate images and text. So she guided them into the idea of using memes as posters around campus by showing them examples of memes.

Because it is not a good idea for students to do google searches for memes on the World Wild Web, she found a selection of appropriate meme photos and placed them on Google Drive.

They worked in groups, which are set up as companies, to create and present 6 memes to the class for consideration for posting around campus.

Working on their iPads, the groups brainstormed clever sayings to promote SOARing behavior and that matched the assortment of meme photos they selected from Google Drive. They created their memes in Keynote, then presented their selection of 6 to the class.

Click here for the Rubric, which was for each group presentation. (rubric courtesy of Nancy Abell)


Here is a sample of the delightful SOARing reminders our students see around campus.
Nancy was inspired by this blog post from the Lessons from a Laughing Librarian Post- Technology Tuesday: Library Memes
@laffinglibrary

1 Comment

EcoColumns, Videolicious and Book Creator

5/26/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture


5th Graders in Miss Douglas and Mrs. Darling's Science classes learned about ecosystems with the real thing.
They worked in groups to create, observe, and record the ecosystem in an Eco-Column.  (this is an older article, but it gives a good idea of what an Eco-Column is all about)

They used the Book Creator app to record their observations. They labeled the photos to explain what they were putting in each part of the ecosystem. They recorded what they were doing in each step.  This such a perfect app for almost every writing, recording, labeling, and video activity. It's intuitive, and it exports as an ePub, a PDF, or a video.

Picture
Picture
At the end they put their still photos into a Videolicious video and included that in their book.
Videolicious is a great, easy to use FREE app. It is limited to 30 seconds, which is about all that is needed for most elementary projects.  The students import still photos and talk about each photo, saving their finished product to their camera roll as a video.

The slide show below shows the process.


Check out some of the student's Video-books



Check out these Book Creator Resources:

From RedJumper, the creators of Book Creator, a link to their tutorial page.

This Book Creator Blog is full of great ideas.

Book Creator Project Resources from Mathy Cathy

Made in Book Creator: a Pinterest Board


0 Comments

Tellagami Book Reports

5/22/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
When Heather Chapman, 1st Grade Teacher, came acrossShannon Miller's Blog about using Tellagami Avatars for book reports, she was inspired.

She shared the idea with her team and they all agreed that this was a great learning activity for their students.


Shannon's blog describes the steps that our 1st Graders followed. 

Here's a slideshow of our steps.


Check out some of our 1st Grader's  Tellagami Book Reports below




The Tellagami App was so easy to use and so versatile that 1st Grade Teacher,Teri Gill, decided to have her students create another Tellagami about their favorite memory from the school year
0 Comments

Inventions and App Smashing

5/13/2015

0 Comments

 
3rd Graders in Mrs. Abell's class have invented some very useful tools, and were quite creative with their apps when developing their advertising for their inventions.
Picture
Students created flyers to advertise their inventions using Photos from the camera and the internet.
They brought them into in Pages, PicCollage and Videolicious.

Some used their camera, and created their graphic in Pic Collage.
Picture
Some students created video advertisements.


Each student handed out a copy of their flyer to parents and guests as they visited their booth at the 3rd Grade Invention Convention.
0 Comments

Bee Bots: Hands on Coding Fun!

4/7/2015

0 Comments

 
Our First Graders are having a great time with coding this year!

We started in December with the Kodable app in order to provide a fun and engaging experience with sequence, planning, problem solving and perseverance.   Coding is great for all of these thinking skills. We also noticed that kids really need a lot of opportunities to try, try again, then try multiple times, to work through problems. They seem to think that if they don't get it right the first time, that they are not capable of figuring it out on their own. Coding helps build a positive attitude towards failure, retrying, and perseverance.


Then, we moved on to the Bee Bot App, but not before they had worked with our real Bee Bots. Our First Grade purchased sets of Bee Bots and blank mats from Terrapin Tools for Learning. These are the small robots that are programmed to move forward, backward, left or right by pressing a button on top. Here are some video clips of students in Mrs. Alden's and Mr. Sokness's 1st Grade class using their Bee Bots on mats that have been customized to concepts they are working on.
Programming the Bee Bot
"Let's see if it goes backward..."
Sometimes there's a bug in the program.

After that we downloaded the free Bee Bot App on their iPads. First graders just needed a little overview of the programming panel, mostly to understand how to click the pulsing X to have the Bee Bot stop in the program and not go back to start. Then they were off and coding to get that Bee Bot to the flower.

When asked to comment about their student's experiences with Bee Bots, Joel Sokness summed up the perseverance and cooperative benefits by describing the building up of an attitude of patience, a can do attitude: "I didn’t get it but I’ll figure this out"

He has noticed that students are developing a sense of communication,  "If they didn’t get something, rather than getting frustrated they’ll ask a friend, so they’re working on being cooperative with one another and working as a team.It’s amazing.
"

Pam Alden talked about the importance of programming the actual Bee Bot, and then transferring that understanding to controlling the Bee Bot on the iPad, "It’s important for them to have the hands on, actually controlling the buttons on the little bugs; then it’s important for them to control the buttons on the ipads."

"It’s great that they can compare the difference between the two... because they have worked with the actual Bee Bots it brings a whole new meaning and better understanding to the app."



0 Comments
<<Previous
    PictureMs. Brown, Retired VVE Ed Tech

    Picture
    Picture

    Picture
    Check out my Falcon Blog, too!


    Hi, I'm Margie Brown, an Educational Technologist at Valley View Elementary School in Eanes ISD. I love working with students and teachers and discovering new digital tips and tricks everyday!

    As the  Educational Technologist on this campus, I am responsible for facilitating the integration of technology into the instructional program by supporting teachers, librarians, and Instructional Partners. Our district believes that this position is essential in establishing a digital age learning culture by supporting, training, coaching and mentoring staff. In addition, I am also involved in program planning and implementation of all district initiatives that pertain to technology integration. 

    Archives

    August 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013

    Picture

    Check these out:
    The Single iPad Classroom Part 1
    The Single iPad Classroom Part 2
    MBrown: Elementary Ed


    Tips for Sharing iPads

    My Elementary Ed Tech Blog, all previous posts



    Hooked on
    Innovation


    Techno Logical: The Ponderings of Ed Tech Debbie
    Smith

    Technology at Eanes Elementary
    Techchef4u

    BPE Bobcat Blog
    FTE Technology
    CCE Technology

    All
    Daily 5
    Ebackpack
    Hour Of Code
    #ipaded
    Math
    @storykit

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Cardinal Community
  • TeacherLinks
  • VVE Home
  • StudentLinks
  • Tech How-To
    • Ignite Teaching App
    • Apple ID
    • Google
    • iOS7 Updates
    • iPad Help
    • Juno Sound System
    • Khan Academy
    • Nearpod
    • Notability
    • Reading Street/Stemscopes/Everyday Math
    • Socrative/infuseLearning
    • ThingLink
    • Weebly