Participate

Have you found Participate.com yet? I happened across them a little over a year ago, and so glad I did! This site has revolutionized my teaching for a several reasons:
  1. I.heart their tweet deck!! They have SOOOO many chat groups (over 500!!!) already to go on a calendar! If you don't already see yours, you can add it! Chatting through Participate is so easy.  Once, I had trouble getting online with them - I thought I was going to quit Twitter chats if it was going to be that hard without Participate. Seriously.
2. When you're done chatting, everything you've talked about and all resources collected through the chat can be curated in your account at Participate! FOR. REAL!!  AND....you don't have to type your #hashtagchat each time you want to post something!  Have I sold you yet?!
3. You can create collections of your own, or find items within Participate to add to your collections.  For example, my school uses Literacy by Design for language arts.  I add to it by curating videos to help teach themes.  Instead of trying to remember where I saved my videos on my computer, I simply save them within Participate, in a collection I created for Literacy by Design.  I have other collections for math, sea turtles, Black History Month, etc.
     I have to confess that I accidentally deleted my Literacy by Design collection a while ago, so I recently recreated it. Oopsies. Luckily I knew what I had in there! It does happen, and it was my fault!
4. You can also collaborate with other Participate users! There are chat windows you can open and have dialog with other users.  For example, I may want advice from someone on what else to add to my Black History collection.  I can invite other users, then ask them what I'd like to know. They reply back on their own time, similar to Twitter Direct Message, Facebook Messenger and emails.
5. Customer Service is fantastic!  If you have a problem or an idea to improve their service, please feel free to share it with them! The staff at Participate are THE BEST!
6. It's a free site, yes, but that doesn't even factor in for me.

So....have I convinced you to give them a try yet?  Here's my advice:
Start with an account.  You can create an account with email, Google+ or Twitter.
Join your favorite Twitter chat group for a few weeks and you'll be hooked!  You'll have Participate.com bookmarked on your computer toolbar, or always open, like me. 😊

But please don't stop there!  After you've gotten comfortable in chats, start a collection or two, and invite others to join Participate, too! Participate is a place for many to do just that - Participate! It is a verb - a vibrant, active place for teachers to come together to collaborate and work together, creating wonderful materials and resources for students worldwide!
I will blog more about their awesome Professional Development courses and badges soon, but I have run out of time for today.  My family duties call...aka laundry is stacking up, dishes, vacuuming, etc.

                       

Conference Symposium Application Overwhelmed!

Wow!  I have never applied to be a presenter at a major conference before.  I bow down to all of you who do this on a regular basis!!  My friend, Cassie and I are hoping to present at the NCTE summer global literacy conference in Tucson, AZ in July.  I just hit the submit button for us!
Poor Cassie has had the most Miserable cold EVER! Between meeting in person, Facebook messenger and Google Docs, we hammered out all the details.
I know the next one will be easier, but symposium writing...lesson plans for an awesome group of 1st graders...hmmm... 😊
I'm sorry it's been too long since my last post! Boo!!! Coming soon, I promise!! I've got great things to blog about!!! Here are a couple of sneak peeks at two of them:
Participate
Flipgrid
If you don't have accounts with either of them, head there now!  I'll be blogging about these great sites and the awesome potentials for you and your planning/students!

Blogging in My Classroom with Seesaw

After reading AJ Juliana's article about taking risks, http://ajjuliani.com/risks/,I felt it was time I shared this site with my class. I also felt as though I'd been blogging with my students all along.  I started combing through last year's Seesaw archive for a particular student's video posts, as I thought he'd been modeling blogging all along. Sure enough, Matson was blogging and didn't know it - the problem was, neither did I! A great opportunity slipped through my fingers!
                                      Click here to see Matson's Game

It was an awesome way to share his learning, in a personal way, and he felt very empowered! This was "HIS" site! He must have posted 6-8 videos ending with, "Thanks for watching."

Now, after reading the article on taking risks, I told my students I want them all to use their Seesaw account as their personal blog.  We will still only post their best work, but what a great conferencing opportunity this creates for myself and my students! We can view their work together and decide if it should go "live" into their account.  Sometimes I happen to see them recording live, so I can approve the work without having to view it a second time, but we usually do, as a lesson in editing (you never know what the sound quality is like, for example).
We are first graders.  Our videos are far from perfect.  Sometimes saying goodbye at the end of videos gets silly.  Cameras zoom in and out, faces get really close to the cameras, voices change during the last 10 seconds of recording.  It's all a part of creative expression and style - and learning what your audience wants (or what your teacher will tolerate, lol). Time to talk about building digital footprints!
By the way, I will blog about the video you watched - the math lesson I did with my students  - later.  It was FANTASTIC!!! :)
Happy Blogging!!!

Lessons Learned in Genius Hour Studies

Hello! Well, I was super excited to have Genius Hour with my students this last Friday.  I had loaded a video for each of them into their Seesaw account.  Yes, it was a bit time consuming, but SO worth it! I found the videos on YouTube, copied and pasted the link into SafeshareTv, and then into each student's Seesaw Genius Hour folder.  I love SafeshareTV, because that's all the kids can see - what I put there.  No links, no side bar graphics, etc. This is what my students saw when they logged in:

Some of the animals my students were researching were more difficult to find videos than others.  But that was the least of my problems :)

I did not think I would have WiFi issues.  We were the only class in first grade, and very likely the only ones using WiFi in our building (10 classes of 1st grade and 9 classes of kindergarten).  The time of day we do Genius Hour is between 2:00-3:00 on Fridays.  The high school and the middle school are done at 2:20.  The bandwidth should have been pretty open.  BUT.... only about 1/2 of my kids could get their videos to load.  I did eventually get everyone able to view his or her video, but it took until 3:05 - time to pack up to go home - before we got everyone done! INSERT SAD FACE HERE!!
Lessons learned - always lessons learned!
1. Plan on having around half of the students go online at a time.  The other half of the students can be researching with books, looking for pictures to add to their work, drawing features, or working on another project.
2. Pre-teach a few students how to help problem-solve basic problems which may come up.  For example, how to access the file (some forget how to find their video, and end up watching someone else's video).  This will save you lots of time, and help your students feel empowered!!
3. Teach two students a new technology tool, and have them teach two students, and so on... Again, empower, empower, empower!  You do not have 21 brains, 21 mouths and 42 hands to help them all in the time frame they want.  I've been there! This technique will limit the number of questions you will get tenfold!  This last Friday, I used this technique to teach my students how to take screenshots, and how to upload the photo to Seesaw.  It took me 3 minutes to teach two students.  Like wild fire, they taught the class and told others to teach someone else after they'd practiced it.  Will they have it perfect? Not everyone.  Will they remember it the next time they need it? Most will, but I will have to remind a few.
I will make a book of experts for each of the apps.  The kids can see who the "Go To" kids are for each app.  Eventually, we will be able to offer our expertise as  "Kid Tech Team" for our building, helping other classrooms when needed and asked.
4. Here are some examples of the QR code helpers I use, the guides my students use (if they want)for animal research, and some "live" Genius Hour projects in progress.  We will work 1 more time researching before we put our research into a presentation, using Shadow Puppet Edu.  You'll notice in my students' journals that they've cited (or it was on a previous page I didn't photograph) the book they used for their research.  I've made it very clear, even at the first grade level, the importance of citing work.  It may not be APA format, however, lol!

These are the supplies we use for our animal research Genius Hour projects, in addition to library books and iPads.  We will also use Chromebooks to research, with the same websites bookmarked on the toolbar.''

  

All of my students listed the facts they knew about their animal first, before they picked a book from the library.   This student listed all he knew about cardinals first on the paper, then as he learned NEW facts, he added them onto post-it notes.  I modeled this procedure for them using bats as an animal to research.  I wrapped up the research phase last week, and will model how to make a presentation in Shadow Puppet next week.
Shadow Puppet is not the only way my students can present their learning, but for their first project, I want all of my students to learn one complete process the same.  After this Genius Hour project is complete and everyone has shared his or her project with the class, I will model different ways to share projects - I'll save that for a different blog post! :)

Other examples of my students' projects.
This is my go to for great animal researching!  I have the students bend the paper back, so only 1 QR code shows at once.  You just need to have a QR reader loaded on your device.  I have QRJump on the iPads.  There is a Chromebook extension for a QR code reader if you use Chromebooks, and QR readers are available on android platforms as well.

The next pages are from a great friend and master teacher, Sabrina Peterson.  She shared them with us when she worked in our school a couple of years ago.  I miss her so much!!

I've used these pages with my first graders for 3 years, but usually in May.  It's a bit hard for many of them to read all of it this time of year though.  I made it optional, and not too many used it.

Reflection is always important for teachers to do. After each lesson I do this - with the students and again after they are gone.  I asked them about the problems we had, and if there were any things we learned from our frustrations.  One of my kiddos said, "It's ok, Mrs. Heikes.  Sometimes it's like our Smart Board.  It's an ornery board.  So we just had ornery iPads today."  Patience is a virtue!  Bless his heart!! We learn from each other every single day!

Genius Hour Resources

I recently did a webinar with the my friend, Angela Gadtke from @Seesaw.  We talked about how awesome Seesaw is to use with Genius Hour.  We've both taught Genius Hour in primary grades (Angela in kindergarten and myself in first grade) this past year.  During the webinar, someone asked what my favorite websites were to use to support my students' researching.  I have to be honest, I was not prepared for the question, and after a 12 hour day, and 2 weeks of recovering from pneumonia, I was shot.
So, I am posting my favorite sources tonight! :)

If you have students researching animals, here are my top 3 choices:
National Geographics - Kids

A-Z Animals

San Diego Zoo for Kids

If your students are looking for projects to make, here are a few sites:
DIY - for kids

Instructables

You Tube -You may find videos for your students yourself, but remember to put it into SafeShareTV for them to view safely.

I will post a few other resources my students are trying out for me - after we use them.  We are trying a more guided Genius Hour project for our first project this year, so my students know HOW and WHAT to report and share.  I will post samples of their work this next week, as they are working on their projects on Monday.  They are very anxiously waiting for Monday to come!  They were able to choose any animal to research.  I modeled the process with bats.  We wrote on post-it notes (thank you, 3M!!!) and put our notes in columns - CAN, ARE, HAVE.  As we learned NEW information through reading books, we added new post-it notes with the info. listed, but the post-it notes were of a different color.  This helps my students visually see we learn new information. Next week we will look at our notes and see if some of our original ideas of bats were true or false.  If the notes were false, they will be eliminated.

At the end of each working session, I will have my students take a picture of their journals and talk about what they learned that particular day, and what their next step would be.  This is something I was missing last year, and I learned from Angela.  Webinars, Twitter chats and other blogs are great ways to learn from each other!
Keep learning and keep moving forward! :D

Genius Hour Wrap-Up

The end of the Year was CRAZY!  I'm so sorry my end of the year post on Genius Hour is so delayed.  As far as Genius Hour goes, we were still working on projects right up until the last hour of our last day of school!! Don't do that!!!! ;)
Here are a few pictures of our projects, and a few closing thoughts for next year.

Some of the projects were green screen technology-based.  We used DoInk for them, though the large production was hard to do in DoInk, so I ended up with it in iMovies. This is just one of the scenes we shot.  My student's Genius Hour project was actually directing the movie.  She caste the movie, developed the props (with help of her classmates and her final approval), and then ran the production.  She was adorable!  If someone forgot lines, she would duck under the camera and run to them to whisper the lines to each of the actors.
https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_item?item_id=item.9b8250f8-fd04-4acf-a0fe-a3faef3de525&share_token=s5q40kzWTPaoMMecqR6CmQ&mode=share

Two students painted with acrylics.  At the beginning, one of my sweeties called her canvas her, "easel".  So much learning went into the project, including mixing, color temperatures, which parts to start with, and most importantly, our guest artist stressed the importance of creativity!!! Huge thanks to Tara Kilian, former colleague and dear friend who took time out of her day to come and spend it with my students!

This young fellow wanted to learn how to weld!  Yes, weld!  He'd already had some experience, so going to the  high school to do some hands-on welding was certainly a treat for him!

https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_item?item_id=item.a8795557-5c90-484b-9147-979bb36d852c&share_token=ZUzuWX87Q0mnbk4kNvrIfQ&mode=share

 I invited a staff member who
 is a master gardener in to work with two of my students who wanted to  learn about gardening.  My students looked through books to decide what they wanted to plant, then I went to Walmart and took pictures of their seed racks.  I let them choose which variety of seeds to choose from the pictures, if there was choice (color of flowers, variety of carrots, etc.).  She would stop every couple of weeks to check on the plants and make sure they were doing ok, thin them out with my students, and let them know what to watch for next.

 
 We had many sewing projects.  Luckily, I had a parent who was willing to come in and volunteer her time and talent.  While she is a stay at home mom, she is also busy sewing diapers for stillborn babies.  She sends them to hospitals all over the United States, donating them.  They had a stillborn baby themselves, and saw the need and felt the desire for helping other parents through such a difficult time.  Just a side note. as we don't always get to hear what our students' parents do for work, let alone for hobbies and interests.  She rapidly became a superhero to me!!  She came several times, bringing her sewing machine each time, and her two little ones, who were incredibly well-behaved!!  She even took a project home to work on, to get it almost completed so we could put the final stitches in at school during the last few days (we knew we were not going to get it completed otherwise).

In addition to this wonderful mom, I had a high school helper who was a wonderful seamstress as well.  She helped on the days she came (every Tuesday and Thursday).  She also helped with the green screen productions while I monitored behaviors and video taped other projects.

How can you not LOVE the excitement Genius Hour brings to students????!!!!!!!

https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_item?item_id=item.58dcfc53-50a5-4154-b16c82a3a50d51e2&share_token=v4k1bSl_Tsatxgz33aP8vQ&mode=share 

Two of my boys wanted to learn about the Vikings.  They did research of different plays, how many players are on the field at one time, how many games they play, and things like that.  Because so many classmates were doing projects, we decided to have them make pennants, so they had something to take home as well.


















https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_item?item_id=item.b82cc86c-45e2-4900-8e2d-2f9134da049a&share_token=ndCNce2zS5SAm1f27ocDKw&mode=share
This student wanted to learn how to build a robot.  When he found that would be just a little too ambitious for a Genius Hour project at school (too costly for us, for one, too time consuming for another), he began looking through the robotics book for an alternative project.  He found a recycled pop bottle car project in the book, but it had no directions.  He researched it on YouTube, made a list of all the materials we would need, and we began collecting materials.  The only item I needed to buy was the motor (which ended up being too heavy for the car).  His Genius Hour helper is one of our IT technicians for our district.  He had a blast, as did my student!  If you watch the video clip, you'll notice the battery had run out of power.  I ran and got a new battery, which worked, but the car still didn't run very well at school.  My student and his dad worked on it at home, and with changing the aerodynamics of the fan on the car, they got it to work much better!!

Other projects not shown included more green screen projects with Leogs, Minions, and Avengers; a tie blanket for a student who moved shortly after we began Genius Hour, and research on an angel shark.
I kept the materials which were donated and were not consumable.  Most of the students understood that next years students would be using the materials for their projects as well.

At the end of the school year, I asked my students to complete pages in Seesaw to document their "Favorites" during the year.  Here's just a couple samples of favorite things we did in our classroom.  Many students said Genius Hour was their favorite part of their whole year this year.  They loved the projects they got to choose for themselves.

https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_item?item_id=item.88debc82-6b03-42f7-b8ba-df991841d98d&share_token=skg0LtYMQDCbRilAcan6_w&mode=share

Genius Hour  was a success for many reasons
* I let the students choose their projects
* Students helped each other, but asked first if they could
* We connected with families, community and staff from other     buildings to complete projects, building upon their knowledge and strengths

Things I will do differently next year
*start sooner with a more controlled project first
    -I want to teach my 1st graders how to become good researchers, to know where to best look for answers with a controlled subject so when they choose their projects, they will have a solid base to turn to.
* Broaden my community involvement in the projects my students choose (depending on the subjects, of course)
*Try to blog the culminating data and photos sooner and more often.  I believe sharing with other teachers is important.  We learn from each other.

I hope this has been helpful!! Feel free to email or tweet me with questions!

Genius Hour and Community Involvement

When I first thought about trying Genius Hour in my classroom, I thought, "Ok, I can do this and I'll just keep this within my four walls.  That way, if it doesn't work, no one will need to know."  How many teachers think this way when trying new things? Well, that thought lasted all of 15 minutes for me!  I am a teacher who wants learn from my mistakes.

Well, now I've really opened it up!  I've invited many people from the district and the community to come and help us with our Genius Hour projects.  So far I have a student going to the high school to weld with the instructor (which I will video tape for him and Periscope), an instructor from a local business called, The Paint Factory to work with two students to do acrylic painting, and a teacher from the district who is a master gardener to come and plant container gardens with two students. We've invited a technology specialist from the district to come and build a car from a recycled pop bottle, but we haven't heard back yet (we invited him on Friday afternoon), and we are sending emails on Monday to two local business to help with the green screen work (I have 3 students who are working on DoInk projects).  We will email parents to ask who can come and work with studetns who are working on sewing (four students, and two of them are challenging projects!).  If I can't get parents to help, I will ask the Middle School and High School teachers and students for help.  My final emails I'm working on are to a professional football player to ask if we could Skype for 10-15 minutes with questions they receive ahead of time.  Wish us luck!!!

My purpose of blogging about Genius Hour is simple: 

• Try Genius Hour, and think BIG!!  
• Get the help you need to make it all work.  
• You definitely want extra hands in your classroom when you are doing Genius Hour in primary grades.
• Video as much as you can, or ask someone else to come in and video it for you.  It is awesome to go back and see their excitement and watch their learning happen!

By the way, when I was at Walmart, explaining to the employee cutting all my fabric what it was for, he was LIT UP!  He kept saying, "Why couldn't I have had you when I was in first grade.  I would have loved to learn about things I was interested in!"  

FIND THAT PASSION, PEOPLE!!!! :)