Our next live session of TLP-C is this Thursday, January 23rd from 4-5pm EST (Click here to find out when the event is in your timezone!) on using Digital Storytelling with English Language Learners. Anyone is welcome to join the session. Just click on this link to join us:

Click Here: TLP-C Sessions #5 – Digital Storytelling with ELL

Sandra Rojas is a English Language Learner teacher who works in a juvenile detention facility. She has had great success with using digital stories to get her students practicing their English language skills while gaining valuable technology skills. While her experience is primarily with English Language Learners, her ideas and experience translate well to work with all students.

In this session we will:

•  learn how to help students generate ideas for writing.
•  discuss the writing process for digital stories.
•  learn about the available tools that can be used for digital storytelling.
•  get helpful tips for increasing student enthusiasm for writing.

Digital storytelling opens a whole new world on how your students write.

If you have already done some digital storytelling in your classes, please join us and share your experiences! Digital stories can be so rich and diverse, everyone’s ideas make the conversation stronger!

http://www.flipsnack.com/7EBCDD97C6F/fdp5echz

Huge thank yous to LaGina Gross for her fantastic presentation about Skyping with Authors. LaGina gave us so many good ideas about ways educators can connect with authors and bring authors into their classrooms.

We are very sorry to report that we did not record the session. We would like to blame this on our worries about getting everyone in the session with recent Java updates but it was just a huge mistake on our part. We are so disappointed we don’t have the recording to capture the enthusiasm that LaGina brought to her presentation or all the great questions that were asked by participants or the wonderful student that came and shared his perspective on skyping with authors (the BEST part!).

What we do have is this. First, a link to LaGina’s presentation in Google Drive. This will give you access to her slides and all the great links she supplied.  Here is the link: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1iX4GMXUFxtgTYL1Coykjg_3Qpvead_nA0j_21qcH7w8/edit?usp=sharing

We also have embedded the presentation as a slide show, so if you are just interested in getting a feeling for what LaGina presented on, use this slideshow below to check out all the great tips and ideas she shared.

One of the best things LaGina shared were links to resources for connecting with authors. She highly recommended Kate Messner’s Authors Who Skype with Classes and Book Clubs for Free!, Skype in Educations Book Clubs site, and a LiveBinder hosted by Kate Messner and Marjorie Light called Author Skype Tour.

In addition, if you are a teacher in Northern Virginia, LaGina highly recommended connecting with local resources including Hooray for Books Children’s bookstore, the Alexandria City Public Library and the children’s literacy organization Wright to Read. LaGina also suggested that you contact authors and publishers directly either by emailing them or using social media to contact them. Having students write letters is also an excellent strategy.

You will definitely also want to check out her tips for preparing for a Skype session and ideas for how to make sure it goes smoothly. Just like any good lesson, skyping with authors takes time to prepare students by helping them become familiar with the author and craft questions that will be meaningful for all.

This was a really inspiring session that gave everyone a ton of ideas about how to bring authors and other experts into our classes. We hope that if you didn’t make the live session that you’ll check out the links and LaGina’s slides.

Our next TLP-C Live session will be on Thursday, January 23rd with a presentation by Sandra Rojas about Digital Storytelling with English Language Learners.

Our next live session of TLP-C is this Thursday, December 5th from 4-5pm EST (Click here to find out when the event is in your timezone!) Anyone is welcome to join the session. Just click on this link to join us:

Click Here: TLP-C Sessions #4 – Skype with Authors

In this session we will learn how to encourage young writers and give students a chance to actually question an author.  LaGina Gross has tips for us about how to connect with authors.  Skyping opens a whole new world on how your students interact with literature.  Skyping with authors in your classrooms, literature circles and book clubs, will allow students to have direct conversations and experiences with characters, places and themselves as digital citizens. Listen to students share their Skype session with authors and the difference it made in their lives.   Also, get tips and the resources you need to Skype with award-winning authors for free!

Illustrated by Marc Rosenthal
http://www.slj.com/2009/08/programs/met-any-good-authors-lately-classroom-author-visits-can-happen-via-skype-heres-a-list-of-those-who-do-it-for-free/#_

TLP-C is a space for teachers to learn from other teachers. Each session consists of a teacher sharing some innovative strategies and other teachers listening, asking questions and sharing their own ideas and experiences. We hope you can join us!

We had a fabulous presentation on October 24th by elementary teacher Heather McFadden about effective use of Prezi in the classroom. While we were riddled with technical issues (sometimes it seems like anything that could go wrong, does go wrong!), it was still an excellent session for us to listen, share, and learn with each other.

To listen to the recording of this session, click here. If you are listening to the recording, please know that we had a few “technical” moments at the beginning of this session, you might want to go ahead and fast forward to minute eighteen.

Heather gave us some awesome tips about good presentations regardless of the tool being used. She reminded us to keep it simple and concrete but to also throw in some unexpected elements and appeal to emotions. She shared how one of her students favorite presentations was on light and reflection because she uses an image of a giraffe looking in a mirror!

We then checked out a sample Prezi that Heather has used with her class. It was a brilliant example because she really maximized Prezi’s ability to zoom in and out to make the concept of molecules more concrete. To check it out, click here.

It was great to then have everyone set up a Prezi account and collaborate on a document together. It was fun to try this out with everyone coming to it with different technology skills and levels of comfort. This was exactly what TLP-C was designed to do – let us all experiment and collaborate together! Thank you to Heather for leading us bravely down this path.

If you haven’t tried Prezi yet, accounts are free and there are lots of examples posted by teachers and students on all kinds of subjects. Participants at TLP-C shared that they make their own presentations for introducing new topics but that they also let students make their own presentations. And, as Heather said, the students are light years ahead of us and as long as we supervise the content, they will make the presentation engaging and visually powerful!

Heather McFadden will be presenting at TLP-C this Thursday, October 24th, from 4-5pm EST (Click here to find out when in your time zone). Everyone is welcome to join- just use this link:

TLP-C Session #3 – Prezi

Heather will talk to us about what qualities make for a great presentation and how Prezi can be a perfect tool for making those presentations more dynamic.

We’ve all sat through student presentations where we can’t read the font, where the text is all copied and pasted and where we wish we could shake things up. Prezi could be the answer. This free, online tool allows you to make your presentations more interactive, more collaborative, and more memorable. Come this Thursday and learn about how Prezi works.

Already using Prezi? Join us and share your ideas and experiences. We all use these tools differently and it will be great to hear from others about how they use Prezi, how students have used this tool and what you see as its strengths and weaknesses.

We had another great session last week with Alexis Miller introducing us to great tools for Flipping the Classroom. We talked about different ideas about Flipping, easy tools to use, issues that come up and, of course, the benefits of Flipping. To listen to the session, click here. (The recording started a bit early and there are a few quiet minutes at first as things get going, you might want to fast forward to minute 55 or so).

The most common question by far was what do you do with students who don’t have access to the Internet at home. Alexis shared that she always gave about a week for students to watch the videos. She then made her classroom available during lunch and after school so that kids could watch the videos there. She also encouraged students to go to a friend or relative’s house. Finally, she worked to make sure that videos could be viewed over smart phones, since more and more students do have Internet access on phones.

We also talked about different ways you might want to use videos. Alexis mentioned that in some of her classes, she had the kids watch during class. This allowed students to watch at their own speed and to stop the videos as often as they needed. Giving students this ability to pace themselves is a wonderful way to differentiate your instruction. Many teachers meet with small groups of students while the rest are watching the video.

We watched a video that Alexis made via TedEd to help everyone picture how these videos work. We also had lots of fun talking about how we might have students create instructional videos. Kids love creating the videos and it is a great way to find out if they’ve really mastered a concept. Students enjoy learning from each other as well, so often students express things in ways we just don’t think of! Amanda E. jumped on and shared how she used ScreenChomp in this way!

Below please find many of the tools Alexis mentioned as well as some resources for videos or more about how to flip your classroom!

Tools to make videos:

Camtasia – 30 day free trial available, very good tool for making videos, inserting web cam video, adding quiz questions

Kaltura – embedded in Blackboard for ACPS folks. Ask your TIS to learn more!

Screencast-o-matic – free, online screencast maker. Very easy to use! A great place to start.

Great apps: Screenchomp, EduCreations, ShowMe

Resources of videos:

Ted Ed – let’s you upload videos, add questions, add video hints, and track student views.

Alexis’s Ted Ed Example – see a video that Alexis made

Learn Zillion – hundreds of websites already loaded, mostly Math and Language Arts

Math Train – math instructional videos made by students

Math2Me – instructional math videos in Spanish

Resource about Flipping the Classroom:

Using Camtasia to Flip the Classroom – website that Alexis and colleagues made about Flipping

Lots of Twitter hashtags worth checking out: #flipclass, #flippedclass, #flippedlearning, #flippedtip

The Flipped Learning Network – lots of great resources, they also host a conference each year.

Final tips from Alexis:

• start small (she just made 3 videos her first year)
• keep them short (under 5 minutes is best)
• don’t mention due dates or you’ll have to make new videos each day
• plan, plan, plan – you don’t have to script out your videos, but know ahead of time what you plan to say
• have clear expectations for your students

Join us on Thursday, September 26th from 4-5pm EST (click here to find out when in your time zone) to hear from Alexis Miller, 6th grade Social Studies teacher, how “Flipping the Learning” went in her class last year.

Learn more about what it means to flip your classroom, what tools you can use for flipping and how students respond. Get tips about managing this transition and share your own ideas about how you have flipped in your classroom.

In addition to hearing about Alexis’s experiences, find out how you can connect to other educators that are trying this in their classrooms. There are great websites and resources that can help you on your journey.

Join us by clicking on this link on Thursday, September 26th from 4-5pm EST (click here to find out when in your time zone). If you can’t make it at that time, check this space for a link to the recording of the session.

To listen to the first session, click here.

We had an energizing first session of TLP-C this afternoon. We had a great time getting familiar with Blackboard Collaborate, learning how to use the polling tool, raise hand feature, smiley face feedback and got comfortable using the chat. It was a wonderful group of educators, anxious to learn new things and share their experiences.

Caroline Doughty really got things rolling with her presentation on Scratch, a free programing website designed by the MIT Media Lab that is geared towards 8-16 year olds. She showed us a bit about how  Scratch works and let us play around a bit. We all made our sprites dance! Participants Sandra and Jen learned so quickly they taught the group how to add sound or change the background! Others asked good questions about how Scratch might work in their classrooms and about the best way to get started. What really drove home the importance of teaching kids to code was watching videos of Caroline’s students showing off their Scratch projects. Their pride in their accomplishments, their fluency with coding terms and their enthusiasm for what they learned spoke volumes for why we should consider giving kids a chance to code in school.

We wrapped up sharing resources for getting started, the great tutorials on the Scratch website and the online community of ScratchED.

Want to know more about coding in the classroom, Caroline also shared this excellent TedTalk on the topic: Let’s Teach Kids to Code

Do you have experience with Scratch? Questions about coding in the classroom? Please leave a comment or ask a question!

“Everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer…because it teaches you how to think.”- Steve Jobs

Coding in second grade?  Caroline Doughty didn’t think it was possible.  Launched in 2007, Scratch is a free programing website designed by the MIT Media Lab that is geared towards 6-18 year olds.  With Scratch, you can program your own interactive stories, games, and animations.  In addition, students learn to think creatively, solve problems, and work collaboratively all of which are essential 21st century skills.

On Thursday, August 29th at 4pm EST/GMT -5 (click here to find out when it is in your time zone) join us as we discuss what Scratch is and how to use it in the classroom. We’ll share our experience and resources that we found helpful when trying Scratch out in the classroom. Worried about how to incorporate it into your curriculum? We’ll share ideas about how to do this too. We hope you can be there!

Watch more about why coding is the most important skill we don’t teach in schools at http://www.code.org/