Social media should be social. Sign-ups, Project Description & FAQ. Hello, friends! (This page was updated October 13th, 2013, and contains important, new information. Please read it in its entirety before signing up.)First, an apology from Amy: Unfortunately, due to changes to Google forms, I have had to create entirely new sign up forms for this year. If you have already signed up, I must ask you to do so again, using the links found at the end of this page.
I apologise for this inconvenience. I promise that the new forms are quicker, easier, and should result in faster matches! Whether you are new to the project, or have participated before (I know some of you are coming up on your 4th year of participation), please take the time to read through this page, top to botttom. Kindergarten Around The World 2013-14 Kindergarten Around the World is a twitter-based virtual exchange project, allowing young students to experience and explore a way of life different from their own, by building a relationship with a class of similarly-aged children. No problem! What’s Your Aura? A project using the Aurasma app with second grade music class. A couple of months ago, I read about Aurasma, and to be honest, every time I went to their website, I did not quite understand what it was. I was curious to see how it could be used in education and had heard that it could replace QR codes, however, I could not figure it out at that place and time.
I decided to place it in my memory as something to research again in the future. A couple of days ago, the Spanish teacher in my school, an amazing educator and techie, brought up Aurasma. I jumped at the chance for her to explain it further to me because if anyone can explain it to me in terms that I could understand, it is her. And she did just that. She told me in basic terms, Aurasma can make your pictures come to life. The next day, the second graders came to class and we sang a song about the Rev. Once finished, I can click on the person at the bottom right-hand side of the page to open my private channel. What if I want to post the aura on the website? Ten Ideas for Using Instagram in the Classroom. I didn't understand the pull of Instagram the first time I heard about it. To me, it sounded like a fancy app that would take regular pictures and make them look like they were crappy, old photographs.
Eventually, though, I changed my mind. I saw the artistic side of the app and eventually began to see the social interaction. Instagram became another layer of sharing our world and telling our stories. After spending a few months using it, I see a powerful element that I had failed to understand before. Instagram reminds me to pay attention. And yet, for me, Instagram has done the opposite. So, with that in mind, I'm thinking of ten ways I might use Instagram with my students next year: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.Just Let Them Take Pictures: I'm thinking of letting kids take pictures for the sake of taking pictures. How To Use Instagram In The Classroom. We’ve shared a lot of different ideas here on how to integrate different forms of social media in the classroom.
From Facebook to Twitter and Pinterest, there are a ton of educators out there who are harnessing their students’ existing interest and knowledge of these social media tools to engage them in learning activities in the classroom. The handy infographic below (Via: librariansonthefly.blogspot.com) shows a number of different ways to employ another popular social media tool in the classroom and library: Instagram. It does offer you more than just fun filters for your photos! Keep reading to learn more. Katie was a teacher, graduate student, and is now the lady who makes sure Edudemic is as useful as possible. Monsters on Twitter. I apologize if you were looking for real Monsters. You won't find them here! What you will find is an awesome project that we did with our 3rd graders that deals with writing about Monsters.
And it all came about because of a connection I made on Twitter. This summer I created a sign-up site for Mystery Skypes and was interested in giving credit to the original "founder" of the Mystery Skype idea. I did a little digging and eventually found that person. Her name is Caren MacConnell and she is an awesome Tech Coach in New Jersey. Well, long story short, we exchanged a couple of emails and she told me about an awesome project that she had done in the past called the "Monster Project" and asked if I would be interested in participating.
Well, we had one major problem while trying to complete our project. The students were excited to see how well their partners followed their descriptive writings while drawing their Monsters. Making Learning Authentic. I witnessed something the other night that I think ought to happen more often. I witnessed students and teachers from all over the United States (and two from Honduras), using Twitter to practice and learn. Yes, I said Twitter. The students and teachers were participating in #spanstuchat that was founded by our two Spanish teachers Rebecca Huls and Kara McNeese. I can't walk by their rooms without having a big smile on my face. What are they doing that makes it so special? Are you making learning authentic in your classroom? Trusting a Student With the District Twitter Account. What if you gave a student in your school access to the district Twitter account? Scary thought isn't it? Or is it? I got the idea from Lincoln Public Schools here in Nebraska.
I was perusing my Twitter stream and this tweet caught my attention: I was immediately intrigued. What a brilliant idea! I think we ought to do a better job of TEACHING students how to effectively use social media. Although we spend a considerable amount of time in our district discussing and modeling how to effectively use social media, I struggle to get students to see the value of using social media to share information that is valuable, to collaborate, or how to build a solid PLN that could be of great value to them down the road. I thought to myself that doing something similar to what @LPSorg did would be a great way to teach our students how to share valuable information using social media. How did he do? Music Education – The Concert for Music In Our Schools Month. Teach the Concert songs using the sheet music and audio tracks provided by our sponsor, Hal Leonard to prepare your own MIOSM celebration – classroom lesson, singalong, or school concert!
So, start watching and supporting your favorite school performances! 2014 Concert repertoire provided by Hal Leonard Corporation America, Of Thee I Sing Explore, Dream, Discover Shake Them ‘Simmons Down The Best In Me The Star-Spangled Banner Una Sola Voz The World’s Largest Concert is now the Concert for Music In Our Schools Month! All teachers are encouraged to get creative and teach and sing with their students any number of the Concert songs at any time during March — whenever it fits into their school and community schedules! Thank you to for its continued support of The Concert for Music In Our Schools Month by providing the sheet music and audio tracks for the 2014 program. Playing 20 Questions Live Via Google Docs. Yesterday my class got to collaborate, or in their eyes play, with twitter friends from Montana. I talked with @JonFines about our classes playing twenty questions together and found out they play that game in their class so it was a perfect match.
We used this template to play the game and everything worked perfect. We played one game with Jon’s class asking the questions and then later in the day played again with my class asking the questions. Since we both teach Kindergarten the teachers did all the typing but for upper grades I think the kids could do that part. The game took about 15-20 minutes to complete and my kids were engaged both times. This activity is great for young kids as they learn how to ask questions and really promotes higher order thinking. If you look at the image below you can see that these “games” do in fact lead to learning. Like this: Like Loading... Our Mission in Kindergarten: Video with Educreations. As I have mentioned before, Educreations is a wonderful app (and web based tool) for creating videos that we are able to share with our parents and other classes.
This week my class created their Kindergarten Mission using the app. After we decided on our mission statements I found images that worked for each one and then I recorded the kids saying the mission. The best part about Educreations is how easy the app makes it to share the finished product (you do need a free account to save and share.) The first option is to simply share the link to the video. This is easy to do within the app itself (see image at bottom of post) or from your Educreations account. The second option is to embed the video directly on your class website or blog, which is what I prefer to do.
Sharing options from the app Like this: Like Loading... The Year of Skype | Day in the Life of a Backwards Musical Mind. With the new year almost upon me I have been thinking in over drive about how to make the year over the top amazing. I reflected on my sucesses over the past few years and realized Skyping with other classes across the country was something I needed to bring back this year in full force. It allows my students to connect with other students and music professionals across the globe to gain insight as to who else and what else is out there beyond the limits of our city that not many of them have ever crossed. During a Skype connection, students practice proper audience etiquette while listening to the other line. They listen to other students sing or play songs we might necessarily learn in our class and learn about different parts of the world from another students perspective.
They also get to perform for someone other than myself or their school and families in an informal setting. Like this: Like Loading... How to Create a YouTube Playlist for Class | Day in the Life of a Backwards Musical Mind. So I’ve been thinking of new things to incoorporate into this blog every once in a while and after recieving technical questions after my NHMEA workshop I decided I would do a little mini series on short and helpful tech tips to do all the things I describe about in this blog. (I was also inspired by the Quavermusic Blog’s monday tip series, Thanks Abby!) So over the next few weeks I will be posting helpful and technical tips on how to make technology easy and work for you so you can use it without hesitation in your classroom. As I’ve learned over the past few years, YouTube videos have become more and more useful when showing them in class.
They are great visuals for students to actually see what you are talking about and are easy ways to get music performers into your classroom without the big bucks and all the time. To Make A Playlist: To make a new playlist can be quite easy once you get going. There! That should be it! Like this: Like Loading... Teaching with Twitter. Why do we tweet? I began using Twitter in the classroom after attending and presenting at the ICE (Illinois Computing Educators) conference last year. I learned about the impact it can have in many areas of the classroom. Those areas include communication with families, communication with other schools and communication with the world. I started tweeting with my students about a year ago. I started small.
We just made tweets about our day for our families. We started making connections with other classrooms, but nothing too big. My tweeting with students has grown from that beginning.