July 15, 2014 by plemmonsa

Reflections on Google Teacher Academy #GTAATL

On June 25 and 26, 2014 I had the honor of attending the Google Teacher Academy in Atlanta. It was a long road to get to GTA. The application process is a test in how well you can boil down your practice into the most concise wording and video that represents your innovation and reach. The application is short with only a handful of questions that limit your response to 800 characters. One of the most challenging parts of the application process is the video. In one minute, you have to introduce yourself and show how you foster innovation in education as well as how you have a global impact. I don’t even know how many hours it took me to craft a one-minute video, but I do know that the process forced me to really think about my practice. I made multiple versions of the video and got feedback from multiple including Cat Flippen, #GTACHI. Here’s how it turned out:

The wait to find out if I got into GTA was agonizing. I won’t lie about that. Even though I had IFTTT recipes setup to notify when the email came, I still stayed glued to my phone and computer because I was in a professional learning session on announcement day. Once the email came, things started happening fast. The 35 were invited to a Google Plus community where we could begin connecting. It didn’t take long for the collaboration to begin. Here are just a few things that happened:

Jennifer Armstrong began making a Youtube playlist of our GTA videos

Jerry Swiatek made a Twitter list
I created a Google doc where we could begin crafting a shared blog post that we each could share in our own networks to introduce the 35 #GTAATL participants
Linda Humes and Corey Holmer started designing a t-shirt for us. Corey’s design was ultimately chosen, but many people in the group contributed ideas. Frank LaBanca ordered our shirts and had them all shipped to me in GA so that I could easily drive them to GTA rather than someone having to bring them on the plane

Renee Nolan organized a meetup for most of us on the night before GTA began to get to hangout together before GTA consumed our brains
Janna Gibson made a guide to Atlanta to introduce everyone to the food and sights to check out in Atlanta
And the list goes on

I loved this because it brought out one of the things that inspires me about collaborating. We all have talents and expertise, and so many people stepped up to share their talents and passions with the group.

Finally meeting everyone face to face was so much fun. We only knew one another from our profile pics, social media posts, and blog stories. We all met at Marlow’s for dinner the night before GTA and spent time just having conversation and sharing the anticipation of what the next two days would bring.

We arrived at the Google office and waited until the exact time to enter. After checking in, we were immediately launched into the Google culture, which of course started with food. We had a great breakfast before moving into our agenda.

I won’t detail the entire agenda, but share some of the things that stood out to me along the way.

First, the planning team revamped the entire agenda, and we were the first GTA cohort to try out this new agenda. This was exciting but also a little risky since it meant that we might not experience what we thought we were going to experience. What I saw was that the agenda focused a lot more on philosophy than on specific tools. The idea behind this is that tools come and go and tools change, but if you have an innovative, risk-taking philosophy of teaching, then you adapt to new tools and environments as well as create entirely new environments for you and your students.

We watched the Moonshot Thinking video, which I had seen at a GAFE Summit. It is always powerful no matter how many times I watch it.

I loved how this framed our entire GTA experience because it set the tone that we as innovators in education we need to be trying things that have never been tried and creating new tools and experiences for our students that stretch far beyond a “next step”. I loved how this moonshot thinking and “solving for x” brought us into our first experience at GTA.

This was probably my favorite “activity” that we did over the 2 days. Prior to GTA, each of us submitted what we felt were our biggest challenges in education. Those challenges were compiled into themes. At our tables, we were randomly assigned one of the challenges. Then, one of our team members had to spin a wheel filled with tech tools. Our goal was to use this tech tool to address the specified challenge, and to make things interesting, we only had 5 minutes to make a decision.

My group ended up with “lack of teacher training” paired with “Panoramio“. Most of us in the group had never used Panoramio, which was perfect! I felt like it put us in the shoes of our teachers who feel insecure when facing a new technology tool. I was reminded of teachers who feel frozen when they face the unknown and want someone to just tell them exactly how a tool works before they will try it. With the clock ticking, we didn’t have that luxury. Instead, those of us that had used the tool began brainstorming how Panoramio could address teacher training. Others, like me, frantically researched the tool to see what it was capable of. At a glance, Panoramio is a collection of photographs uploaded by the community of users and embedded onto Google Maps by location. You can browse the photographs by location or you can specifically search for topics of pictures. For me, I was trying to figure out if you could tag images and search by tag. From my own experience, I’ve seen the lightbulb go on so many times for a teacher when they see something put into practice in a classroom. Sometimes all it takes to help a teacher feel “trained” enough to try something is just seeing what it looks like in a classroom. I thought that if we could create a massive social media campaign for educators to upload images of their classrooms into Panormaio and tag those images by the topics that they showcased, then we could support teachers in “seeing” what that specific topic looked like in a classroom. If we needed specific kinds of pictures uploaded to Panoramio, then we could be specific like pictures of students using social media in the classroom. I added this thinking to my group, but I loved that others in my group had completely different ideas for how this tool could be used. This exercise also reminded me that our focus can’t be on the tools. Our focus should be on our students, teacher, families, and community along with the needs that they have. There’s a whole range of tools that can support those needs. If we push our thinking and try something radical, sometimes a tool that seemed like the most absurd idea for solving the challenge actually leads to something innovative.

Our day was of course surrounded by snacks. We had official breaks, but drinks and snacks were always within reach.

Even breaks to the bathroom kept you learning and surrounded by Google culture.

Throughout the 2 days of GTA, there was time for “inspiring ideas”. These were short presentations from various members of GTAATL. We submitted ideas before GTA and were selected by the planning committee to present. I was the very first one to share, which was a bit intimidating. I shared various ways that I empower student voice through Google forms as well as how Google forms can help you crowdsource information.

Other rockstars included Chris Aviles, who shared how he gamifies his classroom. He has created an entire story line that plays out with his students which even includes getting phone calls from game characters using Google Voice. Amy Burvall shared how she used Google Plus to give her students a space to contribute to the classroom and crowdsource information. She also uses this tool to connect people in her professional development sessions. By doing this, people aren’t sitting passively in her sessions, but are instead, actively contributing during her session and beyond. Genius! Hearing from all of these amazing educators during this session was an energy boost during an exhausting day. I was proud to be a part of this group.

One of the things that I hoped would happen was a preview of Google Classroom. We heard about the process it took to develop Google Classroom. I loved seeing a picture from an elementary teacher’s classroom where she had posted about 7 or 8 steps it took to turn in an assignment to the teacher. This was one of the inspirations for Google Classrooms. We had a chance to try out the interface and were all excited and blown away by the usefulness and simplicity. With 35 innovative educators in one room, it didn’t take long for a range of questions to surface. We definitely surfaced some barriers that people may face in using Classroom, but overall the buzz was one of excitement and eagerness to get this tool in our teachers’ hands.

Our lead learners

The rest of GTA involved 4 rounds of explorations of various Google tools and themes. We grouped ourselves into these rounds by common interests in the kinds of challenges we wanted to tackle in our action plans.

We saw a lot of tools, but didn’t have time to use them very much. Now that I’m away from GTA, I’m starting to look at what I saw and consider how these tools fit into what I may try in the library this year. I’m already thinking about how Google Draw can be used as we connect with other schools via Skype and Google Hangout. I wish that we had spent more time with the various map tools from Google because I think there is a lot of potential with those as well for global collaborations. I’ll have to take time to do this for myself.

At the end of day one, we all became Google Certified Teachers. We had a pinning ceremony and a celebration dinner. It was a great sense of accomplishment, but it was only the beginning of the work and opportunities ahead.

Day two was time for us to explore our own interests through an unconference as well as work on our action plans. After GTA, it is an expectation that you create an action plan to facilitate change in education during the coming school year. My focus is on global collaboration. Seeing what students gain from connecting with authors, experts, libraries, and classrooms beyond our walls has convinced me that I need to develop even more opportunities for students to have these connections. This year, I want connecting to be more than a one time thing. I want to create content with students in other states and countries. I want students to offer one another feedback and ask one another questions. I want students to have an opportunity to create projects that matter to them and share those with a global audience.

Amy Burvall inspired many conversations about hashtags and “showing your work”.

I had many important conversations during GTA about this project. Amy Burvall and I talked a lot about hashtags and how tags are the “soul of the Internet”. She helped me to think about how we track our work so that it continues to inform our next work. We talked about the importance of sharing the whole process of a project and not just the final project. This is the kind of thing that GTA does. You may not get to know every single person at GTA, but you make connections with people that you know are going to continue to push your thinking well beyond the 2 days that you spend together.

Now my attention turns to GlobalTL, a Google Plus community that was started by Joyce Valenza. Now, I’m working along with Joyce and many other librarians to develop this community that will facilitate global connections. I know that by connecting and collaborating with librarians, I am connecting my students and teachers with students and teachers around the world. Librarians work with every student, teacher, and family member in the school. I think it makes sense to think about how to create a community that connects people. We don’t know exactly what will happen in the group, but we are going to shoot for the moon to foster global collaboration.

Google Teacher Academy has connected me with 34 other amazing educators, and I know I can call on them for any questions or roadblocks I face. I’m also now connected to a global community of Google Certified Teachers who are actively supporting one another in their educational spaces. I’m sure that GTA is only the beginning of a long collaborative relationship with some amazing global educators.

Photo Credits: Danny Silva (@iteachag)

March 25, 2014 by plemmonsa

More University of Georgia #GeniusCon Research Partners

Last week a group from Gretchen Thomas’s EDIT 2000 class at the University of Georgia partnered with Caitlin Ramseyer’s 2nd grade class to work on research for the students’ GeniusCon projects. Students are answering the question: If you could change one thing about your school, what would it be?

Students topics range from improving the lunch menu to healthier options to adding additional playground equipment to eliminating homework to starting school later in the day. Even students who share the same topic are taking different approaches to what they would change and how they would do it.

Today, a new group of Gretchen’s students came to work with the 2nd graders. Last time, most 2nd graders went through their lists of questions and answered them with their own thinking. Today’s focus was to move to researching online and in books as well as developing next steps.

I loved walking around and seeing some of the online reading that students were doing with their partners.

I also loved seeing how the UGA students interacted with the 2nd graders and how they helped to keep our students focused and thinking. Of course, the UGA students learned a lot too about how much our students know about using technology.

Some of those next steps involved created Google form surveys that could be emailed out. Some students crafted emails to send out to the lunchroom or the principal. We asked students to wait before sending anything out. The main reason in doing this was to spend a little more time thinking through the content of the email or the survey. For example, one student had one question in her Google form asking students if they would like more access to the 3D printer. She was ready to send it out, but after talking with me, she realized that if students wanted access to the 3D printer, we would have no idea what they wanted to do with it. Our conversation pushed her to think more about her survey before sending it out. Similar conversations were taking place all over the library.

At the end, Caitlin pulled her class together to debrief what they had accomplished.

Catilin’s students will continue working on this project and our UGA partners will return again.

January 6, 2014 by plemmonsa

Our 2nd Student-designed 3D Print on Our Makerbot Replicator

Today, the second student who designed a gem using Sketchup was able to print his gem our our Makerbot replicator. In case you missed the 1st print, you can read about Grant’s history-making print here.

Danny’s gem was quite different from Grant’s. Danny figured out how to make a square hole right through the middle of his gem. It was something we had wondered how to do, and he figured it out. This again brings to my mind the importance of letting go of the feeling of being an expert in everything before we allow our students to explore. Because Danny was given the freedom to explore Sketchup, he figured out how to do so much more than his teacher and I could have ever figured out on our own. Now his expertise can support others who want to try a similar design.

Before Danny pressed the bright red M to start the print, we made sure he got to choose the filament color that he wanted. We now have a selection of filament to choose from: blue, red, white, clear, black, yellow, orange, green, purple, and black. Danny’s gem took about 24 minutes to print. Now that we have an approximate time frame for printing these gems, we are going to try to get 2 printed during each class period over the next few days. Once again, students flocked around the printer and begged for their gem to be next.

You can watch is gem print process here:

I’ve also been experimenting with a couple of tools that will hopefully inspire some new projects with several classrooms. One tool is Tinkercad. I recently used Tinkercad to make a words with wings keychain. In her new book, Words with Wings, Nikki Grimes has some incredible poems that detail how a single word can help us take flight through its meaning in our lives. I hope that I can share this poetry with students, have them select their own “words with wings”, and create backpack pulls using Tinkercad.

Another new tool is Blokify. With this easy-to-use iPad app, students use a series of blocks to make pretty much anything they want. While the blocks are designed to look like a castle, space ship, or pirate ship, they can really be stacked into anything in a Minecraft-like style. The files can be emailed from the iPad to be imported into Makerware. I hope to do storytelling projects with teachers around student-designed settings and/or characters. With the blocks all being the same size, there is also great potential to use this for perimeter and area in math.

I love how ideas keep naturally surfacing within our standards and explorations. It’s not about what we can 3D print. It’s about what we are learning about, what we want to create, and how 3D printing might support that.

December 29, 2013 by plemmonsa

Expecting the Miraculous Now and in the New Year

Over the summer of 2013, I was fortunate enough to receive an advance reader copy of Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures by Kate DiCamillo. She is by far one of favorite authors because her words always seem to speak to me in some way beyond just the story. On p. 130, I came across a quote that I have honestly carried with me in my heart and mind since reading it. In fact, it has become a motto that I embrace in our school library because it exemplifies the brand that our library represents.

“All things are possible,” said Dr. Meescham. “When I was a girl in Blundermeecen, the miraculous happened every day. Or every third day. Actually, sometimes it did not happen at all, even on the third day. But still, we expected it. You see what I’m saying? Even when it didn’t happen, we were expecting it. We knew the miraculous would come.” ~Kate DiCamillo

Expect the miraculous. It’s the phrase that I cheezily say to myself as I enter school each day. It’s what I remind myself of when I sit down to plan with teachers. It’s what I whisper to myself in the midst of a technology fail. It’s what came out of my mouth in a recent interview with School Library Journal:

For wary school librarians, Plemmons adds, “My philosophy is, if we don’t expect miraculous things to happen in our libraries, then we’re just limiting ourselves. Why totally shut a door when we don’t know where it leads to?”

I don’t want to put limits on what kids are allowed to do just because I might not be an expert in a particular tool or concept. I’m willing to try anything new with any age of students and expect that something great will happen even if it’s not what I imagined happening in my head. In Invent to Learn, Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager say,

“It is unacceptable and unnecessary to deny children the opportunity to work on something they are passionate about because the teacher is not an expert in that particular field.”

Looking back through my posts of 2013, I see so many incredible things that happened in our library because we (myself, students, teachers, families, connected educators, and special guests) expected the miraculous. Here are just a few:

5th graders working together to design, plan, persuade, collect, paint, and dedicate during the Little Free Library project. We now have 2 Little Free Libraries thanks to their hard work. We went into the project with so many unknowns, but we always expected that the libraries would exist in our community. Check out the posts!
2nd graders developing their writing skills through blogging and connecting with students in Van Meter, Iowa. This project included a miraculous connection with author/illustrator Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw. Check out the posts! Post 1 Post 2 Post 3

3rd graders engaging in action research to solve a real-world problem at our school. Their investigations included webcam observations, indoor and outdoor observation, skyping with Cornell University and a former Barrow Buddy via Skype, and email communication with other experts. Their work resulted in many attempts at saving birds from crashing into our school windows. Post 1 Post 2
1st graders using Twitter to write persuasive messages about our environment. Check out the post!
Multiple connections for special events like World Read Aloud Day, World Book Night, Dia de los Ninos, Read for the Record, and Talk Like a Pirate Day.
Students purchasing books for our library with their very own student book budgets. Check out the post!

Students from throughout the school crowd-sourcing a poem using Google Forms for Poem In Your Pocket Day. Check out the post!
Our annual Poem In Your Pocket Days live on Adobe Connect with viewers in multiple states and countries. Post 1 Post 2
Kindergarten students becoming experts inTux Paint and making an informational video to teach others to use the program. They even connected with students in Van Meter, Iowa to share their expertise. Post 1 Post 2

Moving into a brand new library and working together to learn how to use it. Check out the post!
The entire 4th grade working together in the library over several days to research explorers and Native Americans as well as challenge their thinking about heroes and villains. Check out the post!
2nd graders using Thinglink to publish monster stories. Check out the post!
A Picture Book Month Smackdown with 2 authors and schools in 5 different states. Check out the post!

After our district decided not to buy a 3D printer, we continued expecting the miraculous. Miraculously, Donors Choose and Makerbot created a partnership and overnight a 3D printer was funded for our library! Check out the post!
Classes in every grade level committed to exploring computer programming during the Hour of Code. I’m expecting more miraculous things to come out of this one hour experience. Post 1 Post 2
Our very first student-made design was printed on our 3D printer. Grant and I expected the miraculous (even though we were prepared for failure). Check out the post!

When we give kids the space to explore, the tools to create, the connections to expertise and collaboration, and a global audience to share with, miraculous things will happen. I know that not everyone believes this. Recently, an article was published in the Athens Banner Herald highlighting out Hour of Code activities. In the article, I was quoted saying:

“I encourage them to think about how coders aren’t afraid to make mistakes,” Plemmons said. And when they do make a mistake, they work with their peers to fix it.

Even though I try to avoid reading online comments (and I wish I had used the word failure instead of mistake), I was disturbed by one commenter’s post. She said:

Such a lax attitude is not acceptable in my book. I am afraid to make mistakes in my work so I make sure all possibilities are considered and all details are addressed and included. I also make great effort to anticipate any questions my clients may have and am ready with an answer before I sit down at a meeting. I don’t need to ask others to help me fix any problems; I’ve already fixed them.

It’s good to tell kids to relax and not worry about making a mistake as they learn, but that real work for hire must be near perfect without wasting a lot of people’s time or your own.

The most disturbing part of this comment to me was the notion that giving kids space to fail, step back, re-evaluate, and try again is having a lax attitude. Many major companies encourage their employees to fail early and fail often. This allows their employees the freedom to be innovative and take risks knowing that those risks are what unveil the latest great ideas. By failing early, learning from failure, and fine tuning their products, companies are able to release the best quality product that they can. In the digital world, companies continue to listen to the consumer and push out updates to improve any mistakes or ideas that they missed. This is the same kind of situation with students. They aren’t publishing final products online that are full of mistakes. Rather, they are attempting to make the computer do what they want it to do, trying some code, seeing what works and what doesn’t, and fine tuning their work. No one sits down and makes a perfect product without first failing. Expecting the miraculous certainly doesn’t mean that you are expecting things to be perfect on the first try.

I was reminded of the importance of failure when I was recently reading Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds. Reynolds says:

“The fear of making a mistake, risking an error, or being told you are wrong is constantly with us. And that’s a shame. Making mistakes is not the same thing as being creative, but if you are not willing to make mistakes, then it is impossible to be truly creative. If your state of mind is coming from a place of fear and risk avoidance, then you will always settle for the safe solutions–the solutions already applied many times before.”

“Children are naturally creative, playful, and experimental. If you ask me, we were the most human when we were young kids. We worked on our art, sometimes for hours without a break, because it was in us, although we didn’t intellectualize it. As we got older, fears crept in along with doubts, self censoring, and overthinking.”

In 2014, I am going to continue expecting the miraculous with my students, my collaborators, my families, and my peers. We will embrace our failures, learn from them, and continue to create innovative work together.

I am going to start 2014 by asking my students, “What miraculous things do you expect in 2014?” They will record their responses on a Flipgrid. I invite you to add your own expectations to the same Flipgrid. Go ahead. Give it a try. Expect the miraculous.

December 13, 2013 by plemmonsa

Hour of Code Days 3-5

This week has just been incredible. It’s hard to believe that just a couple of weeks ago the planning for this week began.

Even with lots of benchmark tests and wrapping up the end of the quarter, our Barrow teachers found time to bring students to the library to participate in Hour of Code.

No matter which class came, I saw similar results: engaged students, problem solving, collaboration, suspension of time, perseverance. Exposing students to coding has opened up a new world for them. I loved having a conversation with students during every session about the importance of coding knowledge in their future. Who knows what jobs will be out there when these students join the workforce, but coding is very likely going to be a part of it.

During the week, our internet has been extremely slow, which has given us lots of problems. It hasn’t stopped us though. We did have to abandon some of the computer programs like Tynker because they just wouldn’t load on our machines.

Kindergarten and 1st grade continued to explore Kodable. Second grade started exploring Light-bot on the iPad instead of Tynker. An interesting thing started to happen with these students because they got up out of their seats and acted out the moves that their robot needed to make in order to visualize the code they needed to put in. I loved watching the strategies that students developed to figure out the code they needed.

Students have recorded some of their thinking using a Fligrid this week, which was yet another new tool to many students. They loved making these short videos about their learning.

A group of third graders along with the whole 4th and 5th grade explored Scratch to make an interactive holiday card. The 4th and 5th grade groups were huge because the entire grade level came together. I kept our whole group time very short. I stressed the importance of not giving up, messing around to see how things work, using tutorials, and collaborating. It was amazing to watch a group of 75+ students disperse, find their own work spaces, and get to work. When they figured things out, they shared. For the 4th grade group, we did a Google Hangout on Air with Sherry Gick (@LibraryFanatic) and her students who were using Blockly. During the hangout, we each setup a computer and headset and students were able to talk to one another about what they were doing. I picked up our laptop and walked around our library to show her students what my students were doing. Sherry got on the microphone several times and helped some of my students with their questions too. It was a great experiment that I definitely want to try again because it opened up our walls to student-to-student collaboration across states. I wanted to try the idea of coders on call, and this was a step toward that for the future. You can see how the conversations turned out in this video:

Next week, we hope to connect students again with Sherry Gick’s students in Indiana and Shannon Miller’s students in Iowa to share some of their learning and creations. This week has sparked interest in coding, and I’m sure that coding will make its way into many of the collaborative projects during the year. Thank you Code.org and Computer Science Education Week for putting together such a great program, inspiring videos, and helpful tutorials. The word is out that coding is a critical skill needed by our students.

Here’s a glimpse of what happened at Barrow this week:

December 5, 2013 by plemmonsa

Flipgrid Book Talks with 5th Grade

A few weeks ago 5th grade reading teacher, Melissa Freeman, asked if her students could have some time in the library reading picture books and informational books related to the Civil War and Civil Rights Movement. I quickly began pulling a big stack of books for them to read. We wanted some way of capturing this experience to refer back to during Social Studies time, so I’m so glad that I discovered Flipgrid!

Each 5th grade class came to the library today. I had the books spread out on tables. We started in the floor for an overview. I shared our purpose of reading books connected with our social studies content. The teacher and I both stressed that our main goal was to spend quality time reading the books and preparing to do a book talk. Flipgrid was going to be our tool to capture these book talks, but Flipgrid was not our focus. We also talked about why Flipgrid was the chosen tool. We brainstormed ideas such as the ability to go back to these book talks during social studies to find books that matched standards. Students also thought that others in the school could visit the grid to learn about some books that they might not check out on their on.

With our purpose established, I showed students an example of what a book talk video might look like. I also quickly walked through the Flipgrid screens to show what each one looked like in order to record a video. This overview took us about 15-20 minutes.

Students each went to the tables, chose their book, and found a cozy spot to read. As students finished their reading, they got index cards and pencils to write down a few notes to help them with their book talks. Finally, they got an iPad, typed in the flipgrid code, and found a quiet spot to record.

The student response to this tool in 5th grade was very positive, but they did have some suggestions for improvement:

When they held the books up to show them on the video, the words on the books were flipped backward. We did not figure out how to fix this in the recording screens.
When students submitted their video, sometimes it put the video up to 8 times on the grid. I had to manually go in and delete the extras. We are not sure why this happened to some students and not others.
Some students received a timeout error message when uploading their videos. They had to repeatedly submit the video until they got the successful upload message.

I typed all of these comments in an email and sent it to Flipgrid support. We hope that we hear some answers to these issues or see Flipgrid continue to improve. Even with the technical problems, the students all hope that their teacher and I will continue to use this tool.

Listen to their book talks here. Students will continue to add videos to grid during their reading class with Mrs. Freeman.

December 4, 2013 by plemmonsa

Flipgrid Book Reviews with 2nd Grade

I have a new favorite tool: Flipgrid. This tools allows you to setup a grid with multiple questions and students can use webcams on computers or a free iPad app to record up to 90 second responses to the questions.

Our 2nd grade is currently working on response to literature writing. They want to create book reviews to post onto their KidBlogs. To kickoff the writing of book reviews, we looked at a book review written a few years ago by Kindergarten teacher, Kelly Hocking. We decided after reading the review that it was made up of 4 parts: A hook, a short & sweet summary, connections & opinions, and recommendations.

Next, I read the book Carnivores by Aaron Reynolds and illustrated by Dan Santat. I wanted students to have a chance to practice writing the parts of a book review, but rather than do it whole group, we used FlipGrid. I created a grid with 3 questions:

What would be a good hook for your book?
What connections do you have for your book?
What are your recommendations for your book?

Each question has a code for flipgrid. I downloaded the app onto all of our iPads. For the app, students just have to type in the code to access the question. I printed each question with its corresponding code on paper to give to groups. Students divided into groups of 4 and were assigned one of the 3 questions. After doing this lesson with 2 different groups, I learned that for 2nd grade it was really important to write down what they were going to say, so students first wrote out their response to their question on an index card. Then, they practiced reading the card and deciding who would say each part on the recording. To record, students:

opened the app
typed in their code.
touched the plus sign
accepted terms
took a photo
recorded their response
uploaded their video by typing a name and email

The videos were all sent to our grid. We gathered back on the floor to listen to some examples of hooks, connections, and recommendations. I also sent the link to the teachers so that they can refer back to the hooks, connections, and recommendations that were made as they begin to write their own book reviews. I imagine that these videos could become parts of mini-lessons about what makes a strong hook or how to write a stronger recommendation.

You can listen to their responses by visiting the grid.

I’m proud of these 2nd graders and their teachers for diving into an unknown tool. They learned about writing book reviews, but they also learned from their failures in using a new tool and passed on their learning to the groups that come after them. We had some great discussions about what we will remember the next time we use Flipgrid, and I know that the process will get smoother each time. I think Flipgrid will be a tool I will come back to again and again. In fact, I’m using it tomorrow with 4th graders to create a grid of book talks about civil rights leaders.

December 2, 2013 by plemmonsa

Our Makerbot Replicator 3D Printer is Here!

It’s here! A lot has happened since our project was funded through Donors Choose. I attended the American Association of School Librarians Conference in Hartford, CT. While there, I attended several sessions on Makerspaces. During one of my conversations, I had the pleasure of connecting with Shelley Diaz at School Library Journal. She was very interested in our 3D Printer project and wanted to interview me about it. You can read the article here.

Our local newspaper, the Athens Banner Herald is also in the process of writing an article about our 3D printer adventure. In addition, Stroud Elementary and Hilsman Middle here in Clarke County are both getting 3D printers thanks to Donors Choose projects posted by their school library media specialists, Shannon Thompson and Leslie Gonzalez.

When the boxes arrived today, I was extremely excited but extremely nervous to leap into something new. I reminded myself of how I always tell the kids to take risks, so I modeled my own philosophy. However, I carefully read the instructions along the way. The instructions were fairly easy to follow with photographs, clear descriptions, and on-screen instructions.

I loaded our first spool of clear filament and used the SD card to print a stretchy bracelet. With each pass of the extruder, the bracelet magically appeared on the print plate. The hardest part was getting the bracelet off of the build plate. With some carefully prying and pulling, we were able to break it loose. My second print, a comb, broke when we tried to remove it. Later, I learned that it really is helpful if you use blue painters tape on the build plate. I reprinted the comb and removed it fairly easily from the plate. I’m sure there are some other tips and tricks that I will learn, but getting the print off the plate is definitely tricky.

Excitement was in the air as students and teachers came into the library to watch the printer go. Even though it was printing pre-loaded items, it was extremely cool to watch and imagine possibilities. A group of third graders is eagerly awaiting their chance to print their gems that they are designing.

I could see the wheels turning for several students and teachers, and I’m sure we will be printing all sorts of things before the year is over.

November 21, 2013 by plemmonsa

Picture Book Smackdown: Celebrating and Learning

Before the hangout started, over 200 people had viewed our Smore page.

Today was our Picture Book Smackdown Google Hangout On Air. We had an amazing lineup of schools and authors to share their favorite picture books and talk about why picture books matter in our world. This event grew from a seed of an idea on a Google Doc into a collaborative event. Each participant and school brought their own talents, expertise, and connections to the table to make this event successful. This was my first leap into Google Hangouts to do an event such as this. I always tell students, teachers, and families that we have to be willing to take risks. If we don’t put ourselves in a place of risk, then we’ll never learn. We don’t do our best learning in places of comfort. I certainly learned a lot today by taking that risk. I want to thank each of these schools for preparing their students and taking time out of their day to connect and share with the world a love of reading and picture books.

Jenny Lussier, school librarian in Durham, Connecticut
Cathy Potter, school librarian in Falmouth, Maine
Kathy Kaldenberg, school librarian in Solon, Iowa
Shawna Ford, school librarian in Weatherford, Texas

I also want to thank authors Laurel Snyder and Ame Dyckman for joining us and sharing their own favorite picture books and why picture books matter. They both have busy schedules and it meant so much to have them take the time to join us. My adrenaline is finally coming down from the morning and I’m pausing to reflect on the experience.

What I loved:

Student voices from 5 different states were united.
Students were passionate about the picture books they were talking about.
Students had an opportunity to take a stance on talking about something that mattered to them.
Students were able to create an archived video that can be referenced for many purposes like inspiring readers of picture books or even showing a district’s technology department the power of Google Hangouts.
Authors and students had the chance to speak together on a level playing field discussing a common interest.
Students from multiple grade levels, backgrounds, and experiences made a connection to one another.
Students were engaged. Each student had a role and purpose and were so eager to share even when technical difficulties happened. My students stayed for a whole hour and were happy to wait and watch.
Even though only 10 people can participate in the hangout, we knew that many others were tuning in live or watching later, which connected us all with a very large authentic audience.

What I learned as the host:

Using a Smore page to advertise the event was a great choice. We could all advertise the Smore, and then the actual hangout could be embedded right before we went live. The page also gave analytics after a certain amount of views which allowed us to see where people were viewing the Smore and how they were sharing it.
In advance, communicate with all participants about what is expected during the hangout: order of speaking, microphone rules, etc. Make sure that all participants are added to your circles in Google Plus.
Prepare students in advance and practice. As the host, there was no time to check-in with students today to see how they were. They had to be ready to walk in the door and go live.
Have someone available to either facilitate students sharing or running the keyboard. It was hard to do both. Someone needs to click on each person in the hangout when it is their turn to speak if you are the host.
If you are broadcasting your hangout over speakers, then you should mute your microphone when you aren’t speaking. If people are unmuted, there is feedback.
I’m considering having my control center be in a separate space so that I can click on who is next in the hangout and have students speak in a less noisy environment. Then, I can have viewing of the hangout in another space.
If you have multiple modes of communication with your participants: twitter, email, hangout chat, etc., it is difficult to manage and host. Perhaps over time I might be able to juggle all of those roles, but I just ignored email and twitter during the hangout today.

What stressed me out!:

Feeling like everything had to be perfect and forgetting my own mantra that we have to be willing to fail in order to learn.
Having moments of panic when the connection was slow, the microphone wouldn’t mute, the main video wouldn’t switch to the right person, or when the audio had a lot of feedback.
Trying to host the event on air by verbally calling on each school. Sometimes my microphone wouldn’t mute/unmute in time. It was great when we got in a rhythm of our order and self-facilitated our speakers.

Take a look at how our event turned out, and please share your own learning about using Google Hangouts On Air in the comments below.

November 11, 2013 by plemmonsa

Observing the Day & Night Sky with Kindergarten

Kindergarten is working on observing the day and night sky in science, and they want to use technology to document their observations. They are working on the following standards:

ELACCKW6 digital tools help writers write and share their stories.

ELACCKW7 writers work in groups.

SKE1 Students describe time pattterns (such as day to night and night to day) and objects in the day and night sky.

Classes came for 2 separate lessons. During our 1st session, we used Capstone’s Pebble Go to read about day and night.

Then, we read the book Sun Up, Sun Down: The Story of Day and Night by Jacqui Bailey. During our reading of both Pebble Go and the book, students discussed the scientific reasons we have day and night. We setup the idea of starting to “notice” things about the sky and how it changes during the day and night.

For our 2nd session, I opened up the blinds on our massive library windows and setup observation areas for students. We started our time together on the floor and shared some observations we had already made at recess or at home. We practiced saying aloud what we would write on our clipboards at the windows. Next, the teacher paired the students together, gave them a clipboard with paper and pencil, and I placed groups in front our our windows. The teacher, parapro, and I walked around and talked with kids about what they saw. We encouraged them to write and sketch. We also helped them make connections to the information that we had learned from Pebble Go and our book. For example, the sun was blinding us in the windows on he left side of the media center but on the right side of the media center it was shady. We remembered that the sun is at different positions in the sky throughout the day due to the Earth rotating.

At the end, we split the class in half at our 2 projection areas. Student groups shared what they observed and we used Padlet to capture the observations. I tweeted the link to our padlet and later in the day Margaret Powers, Mrs. Keating, and Mrs. Bolster and their students added to the wall from Pennsylvania. It was interesting to hear about the cloud-filled sky there compared to our cloudless sky in Georgia.

Now, the Kindergarten teachers will share this link with families and encourage them to add notes to the Padlet from home. This will allow students to make some observations of the night sky. Please feel free to leave some comments on the Padlet about what the sky looks like where you are!