Tracy's Tuesday Tech Tip: Couldn't Say It Better Myself!

Students teaching other students - just love seeing that in my classroom.

Today, while teaching recorder, a student who is somewhat shy and laid back, took the lead and demonstrated and taught his peers how to play the difficult line of "Yellow Submarine." This normally quiet and shy kid, jumped up and said "listen, listen, listen, I got it" - what an amazing moment for this young man to show his leadership and be PROUD of what he has come to understand and know. Not only did he play the passage, but he taught other students as well, enough that a couple of them were still singing it by class time, 15 minutes later. Gotta love those moments!

As our Student Tech Team is beginning the year, I asked them to create a short easy to follow video for their younger peers within our school to teach them our core apps. One student took on Book Creator as follows: 

Taking the time to go back and review basic skills, formats that you want for your students is a key to success - and part of teaching them the life skills of organization and planning. My hope is to show this to my kindergarten and first grade as a brief introduction to each core app, and to build out our first projects together. 

About Book Creator

A great intuitive CORE App for your students - use it for sharing summaries of reading, new understandings in math w/ actions/TPR videos, vocabulary and spelling word journals as well as writing journals, art portfolios and more!

Allows: Drawing, Text, Pictures/Video Support from within the App and Camera Roll, Sound Files, and true personalized design.

Export as ePub, PDF & Video.

Power of Sharing

The power of sharing, the power of giving students' ownership of the tech specs to SHOW their work and understanding can help to foster self-efficacy, pride, and leadership, as well as build community with mentor classes - allow this power of student voice to take reign in your classroom - whether just between students in class, mentor classes throughout your building, or maybe a Skype activity with another class. The excitement will amaze you and truly enhance your learning community!

Within the next few weeks I will be highlighting our CORE apps with some student perspectives, as well as discussing integral ways to utilize in both literacy and math. Share your ideas with us!