Primary Tech Tools

I am forever looking for new resources that will put books in my students hands and give them more choice. When I stumbled upon Epic! I felt like I hit the jackpot! Epic! is an app and website that is free for teachers to setup memberships and logins for their class. It is a digital library of books, videos, and quizzes. One wonderful aspect about Epic! is the availability of books that students and teachers know and love! There are award-winning books, graphic novels, and so many series that are dependable and engaging. At the younger level, many of the books have read-me options, too! When students login, it keeps track of which books they've read, time spent reading, and gives them badges and points for progress. This is a great app worth checking out! You can download the app or find the website at  https://www.getepic.com/

One time I can always be certain my students will be excited to record their voice while reading is when we use ChatterPix! This app, created by Duck Duck Moose is a classroom favorite. It comes in handy when students have complete reports about a nonfiction topic and have drawings that go along with their work, but we have used it in so many different ways! To use the app, simply take a picture of something from inside the app. Then it gives the user the chance to draw a mouth across the image. After that, it gives 30 seconds to create a recording. When finished, the video looks as though the image is speaking, reporting whatever had just been recorded. There is also options to add in stamps, filters, and other fun details. The app allows the user to easily export it to the camera roll or share it through email.  Here is an example from a time my students created repeated addition and multiplication sentences using a puppy and its food bowls. This student created a word p...

I have been working on getting my masters in Educational Technology over the past year. It has been quite a process and throughout, I've learned a great deal about subjects I knew very little about and have reaffirmed knowledge in areas I already knew. One topic I have found very interesting is the idea of "digital natives" and "digital immigrants." Put simply, for the most part, digital natives were born into technology use or have used technology for a majority of their lifetimes. They feel comfortable using new technology and find it intuitive. Typically, digital immigrants, meanwhile, were not born into technology. Similar to immigrants to a new place, digital immigrants had to learn technology use almost if learning a new language and figure out how to adapt.  I found all of this to have such huge implications for the way that I operate within my school. Working with second graders, I can assume that the students I interact with are digital natives. The...

Have you ever used Seesaw before? In my classroom, we utilize Seesaw a lot! I find it to be very user friendly and my second graders can easily upload their work, then use the Seesaw app to add another layer of learning. When learning about arrays and the differences between rows and columns, students use manipulatives to create their own array. This is the easy part and they are usually excited to get out the Legos, hashtag blocks, small erasers, and any other small items they can use to create. Once they have made an array out of the items of their choosing, they grab an iPad and use it to take a photograph in Seesaw. If you are new to Seesaw, on the main page when anyone logs in, there is a large, green plus sign. After clicking on this, the user has choices. Users can add a photo, drawing, video, notes they've typed, a link, or upload files, photos, or videos. Once my students used the "photo" option to take a picture, they could click on a microphone on the ...