Sunnyside Book Fair 2013 photos (take 2!)

Sunnyside Book Fair 2013, a set on Flickr.

I changed the permissions so my photos show up - thanks for letting me know, Liz! :)

Activity 10: Flickr

One of our campers this summer asked about a way to insert a slideshow gadget on her blog.  This is an option with Blogger, but you can't simply add photos you have saved on your computer.  You need to create a Flickr or Picasa photostream and access the pictures through the cloud.  Picasa used to link easily with our MVGmail accounts, but it doesn't anymore.  So for Activity 10, I decided to check out Flickr so that hopefully I can answer her questions at open lab this week!

Flickr seems like the kind of site where I could easily lose track of time browsing through photos.  I didn't let myself explore it much yet, since my goal was to figure out how to upload and share my own school pictures.  Once your account is created, you can upload pictures.  I like that you can change the privacy settings for each photo or as a batch.  You can create sets and collections, so it's easy to organize pictures by event or time of year, and you can archive photos into yearly collections.  Public photos can easily be embedded into Blogger, since you can connect Flickr to your Blogger account. 

I uploaded some of the photos I took of Sunnyside's Barnes & Noble Book Fair in February.  I wish I had brought a camera that day, but all I had was my iPhone - please excuse the poor quality!  I chose not to embed my photo set, since I'd rather not have the photos public.  I'd want to be sure to get parent permission before doing so (even though students aren't identified by name and mostly you just see the backs of their heads).  But there are also photos of Sunnyside Celebrities, teachers that came to read as part of the book fair.  I'd want to get their permission before posting their photos on my site as well. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/99918996@N06/sets/72157634952623196/

I think that Picasa WAS easier to use than Flickr, but this is our best bet for now.  Google is forcing people to switch to Google+, but our district has that feature turned off at this point.  Unless that changes, it's difficult to access old albums and virtually impossible to create new ones.  Picasa can still be downloaded as a software program, but it won't play nicely with Blogger.

Sharing photos is a nice way to communicate with families and share what's going on at school, especially if parents have to work and can't make it to field trips or other special events.  Flickr lets you create groups, so you can control who can view your photos.  This would be helpful for schools, since it allows us to protect student identities and only share pictures with specific people.

Activity 9: Fitness Assessment

This is a new assignment for Summer Camp - last year, we emphasized the importance of planning ahead when using Web 2.0 tools, but we didn't give concrete examples of what problems might crop up.  This assignment was created to help you get a step ahead of your students and take a proactive stance when dealing with internet misbehavior.

I'd argue that most of these hypothetical situations could easily be avoided by clearly outlining your expectations before students start using whatever tool you're sharing with them.  Our district has a generic permission slip for students to use online accounts, but you should be sure to share your plans with families in advance, giving them the choice to opt out (and letting them know how that impacts their student's learning, outlining the other ways their child can complete the work).  Your principal should also know ahead of time what you're doing and how it fits into your curriculum.

Besides having parent and principal support, you also need students to buy in.  They need to know what's expected of them and what the consequences are if they misbehave.  The consequences aren't necessarily just you preventing them from using the tool or restricting computer privileges - talk about their digital footprints and how impossible it is to take back something once it's posted online.

Scenarios 1, 3, and 7 are situations where students don't realize how their inappropriate conduct could haunt them later on.  In Scenario 1, students using Google Drive to peer review work are using the comments tool to insult each other.  We had elementary students figure out early on that they can use comments to chat with each other during work time, and that they could easily create a new document that wasn't shared with a teacher.  We had students call each other names and harass each other, but the only way teachers found out was if a student told us.  Those documents quickly spun out of control, since kids could easily share it with each other and even with students in other buildings.  We can't lock down the collaborative features; that's one of the strengths of Google Drive is having those features available.  Instead, we need to be clear upfront about our expectations and hold students accountable.

In Scenario 3, the teacher didn't want to create individual blog accounts for students, so she talked about acceptable use and let kids blog anonymously.  The students figured out pretty quickly that their comments couldn't be traced back to them, and they posted hurtful and inappropriate comments.  Creating accounts (and talking about the importance of not sharing passwords!) would have prevented this problem in the first place.  Scenario 7 is similar, since students used a class YouTube account to post screencasts.  However, students posted inappropriate videos instead and changed the privacy settings.  Videos that were meant to be viewed only by the class were publicly available, shared and commented on by the outside world.  This violated students' privacy, especially those without photo permission.  If students had their own accounts or had just shared their screencasts with the teacher, she could have posted them appropriately.  

There's no way we can stay a step ahead of our students with technology, no matter how tech-savvy we think we are.  They're the digital natives!  But we need to teach them about digital citizenship from an early age, think carefully about our online assignments, monitor their online work for our classes, and hold them accountable for their behavior.  Online tools blur the line between home and school, so we need families to help us, too.

Activity 8: Polling & Data Gathering

Teachers are masters of assessment; we need to know if students understand the concepts we've taught and we use a variety of methods to collect that information from them.  This activity introduces some Web 2.0 tools to help us with that.  Here's an informal assessment on Summer Camp and what you think of it so far:
I don't know about you, but I love Google Forms!  It's a great way to get feedback.  When you complete summer camp, I'll email you a survey about your camp experience.  In the meantime, I'm sharing one of the year-end surveys I gave my elementary students to help me plan for next year.

Activity 7: Cloud Computing

I use Google Drive all the time now - it's my preferred way to save documents at home and at school, especially since the documents can be shared and edited by multiple people at a time. Just the other day I was editing some essays for my brother. We were both making changes in the documents at the same time, so it was cool to watch his changes. We could even argue about them by adding comments!  Don't worry, I didn't choose those documents to share with you!  :)  Here's a school-related document:



I chose to share a Presentation I gave to Sunnyside staff in the fall. My principal had asked me to give an introduction to Google Drive for all staff. Everyone who came and listened to my presentation then logged in to create and share a document with me. I got everything from PLC meeting agendas to knock knock jokes!

Google Drive is a powerful way to share information, so I'm glad we use Google Apps for Education in our district. It's great for us as a staff, but it's even better that our students also have access.

Activity 6: Study Tools

Last year I created a Tagxedo and flashcards for this activity, so this summer I decided to try Spicynodes and Timetoast.

Here is my Spicynode showing all the cool options for your Summer Camp 2.0 projects!  Laying it out this way surprised me...I didn't realize just how many tools we've included!

For my TimeToast, I decided to create a sample timeline for a biography project.  Fifth grade does a wax museum project each year and creates a newspaper with a timeline.  I don't know that this would be used for that project, but it's another way to represent that timeline, or a fun way to integrate technology into the lesson.  I used Melvil Dewey for mine, since I'm a library nerd.  :)  My information came from the OCLC (http://www.oclc.org/dewey/resources/biography.en.html) and American National Biography Online (http://www.anb.org/articles/09/09-00229.html).

I think there must be a better timeline option out there; I 've used ReadWriteThink's student tool before and found that a lot easier to navigate.  One thing I didn't like about TimeToast is that I had to put specific dates, and I couldn't always find the dates in my research.  I chose January or July 1st if I didn't have a real date, so not all of these things happened on New Years!

Activities 4 & 5: Screencasting & MVYouTube

Okay, I cheated and combined my assignments to catch up!  But activities 4 & 5 go together like peanut butter and jelly.  I used Smart Recorder to create a screencast to show students and families how to access our Mackin VIA account, then transferred the video to YouTube so it would be easy to embed on our school website.  If I make more screencasts, I'll definitely use Smart Recorder.  I've tried the web-based options, but this is much simpler to use.  I've heard similar complaints from my campers this year, even though we've updated our directions after feedback from last summer.  Having my own YouTube channel is a great way to save not only my videos, but those that would be useful to share.  I like that you can turn off advertisements and annotations too - it takes some of the risk out of showing videos in school, since those ads can be quite shocking!  Anyway, here's my video:

Activity 3: Digital Storytelling

I used Storybird to create a hedgehog story - I have one as a pet, and the illustrations were too cute to pass up!


I have Zooburst and Storybird accounts, but I think that Storybird is a more impressive tool.  The artwork provided is better and the site is more intuitive to use.  Someone said that you can upload your own photos or use a webcam to take pictures for Zooburst, so I might have to play around with that a little more.

I'd like to use Storybird with students, or at least choose an image for a writing prompt.  I think having elementary kids create their own Storybird might take more time than I'm willing to spend on the project, but several grade levels have asked me to find ways for students to publish their work.  This would be a great way to do so, and I like that you can publish a story but still have it set to private.  Kids could view it and they could share it with me or their classroom teachers, but it wouldn't be searchable or viewable by the general public.

Activity 2: Prezi

I don't know about you guys, but I think that Prezi is overrated!  That might be because of all the glitches I had when trying to create my presentation though.  Anyway, my project idea was to modify a 3rd grade country project.  Right now the students create their own PowerPoint slideshow about a country, put it in the drop box, and I combine them all into one enormous PowerPoint.  What if instead, we created a Prezi as a class that moved around the world?  Students wouldn't have quite so much information, but I like the collaborative aspect of it.  Or at least I did, until I tried creating the sample below:

Prezi allows teachers to create accounts for their students, and you can share presentations with other people.  I don't think creating a Prezi as a class is a worthwhile project though.  I spent way too much time creating a few slides, and I don't think students could easily work on the same presentation at a time.  You can share the presentation and give users editing rights, but I'm not quite sure how to do that with elementary kids who don't have email addresses.  I think older students would like it though, or at least appreciate having the option to create something a little fancier than PowerPoint.  As for me and my elementary tech classes, I think we'll stick with PowerPoint again next year.  :)

Activity 1: Blog Bling

Warning - don't click on this link unless you want a Black Eyed Peas song stuck in your head for the rest of the day!  My husband rolled his eyes at it but I think it's a catchy and nerdy song, so it's perfect!  :)


I think a video like this would pump kids up about reading.  It would be a fun way to start the year in the library, or we could make a video of our own for I Love to Read Month. 

As for blogging, I can definitely see replacing a class website with a blog.  The layout makes more sense and it's easier to update or add cool features that would be useful for parents and students, like the sidebar tools.  I don't know if I'd blog with elementary students.  I'd like to try KidBlog with some of the fourth or fifth graders, then possibly work our way down.  That would be a project to collaborate on with classroom teachers though, so that we're using it more than just once every 5 days.  I can see using blogs to share writing or as a journal, and with the privacy settings of KidBlog, that seems like the best tool to use for elementary kids.

Introductory Post

Hello summer campers! I'm so glad that you signed up for our Summer Camp 2.0. Emily and I offered our first version of this class last year, and I'm glad we were able to expand it out to elementary and high school teachers. I think you'll find a lot of great uses for these Web 2.0 tools in your classrooms. I hope that we will learn from each other and share our ideas across grade levels and schools.

What motivated you to become one of our summer campers? 
Emily motivated me to become a camp counselor last year - she had this great idea for a Web 2.0 class and asked for help getting it off the ground. It was so much fun to see the projects that the middle school teachers came up with, but we thought our program would work well K-12. :)

What you hope to learn about in Summer Camp 2.0?
I participated in last year's Summer Camp to make sure I could help my campers, and this year I'll participate again so I can learn new tools to use with my elementary info tech classes next school year.

How would you describe your current comfort level with technology? 
I think I'm relatively tech savvy from being the media specialist and resident technology fixer at my buildings, and my husband works for the district tech dept. Our house has more computers or Apple devices than people who live there.

What tools do you use already in your classroom (if any)? 
I've used some of these Web 2.0 tools in the classroom, like Google Drive, Tagxedo, Prezi, Google Forms, Shelfari, etc. I try to find ways to integrate technology resources with the topics classroom teachers are studying with their students in any way that I can.