I’ve looked at Glogster Edu for the past couple of years but had only used it during SSTVS. But this year, after hearing that other schools in our area are using it, I decided to buy a subscription for our 3rd and 4th graders. A glog is an interactive poster that allows the creator to add images, text, links, video, and more.
Starting with 4th graders, it quickly became apparent that this was a HUGE hit! The students were more excited about this than I’ve seen them about anything recently! To learn how to make a glog, the assignment was to create something that told about them – their likes, favorite activities, fun links, etc. After showing the basics, I let the students explore and experiment. They picked it up very quickly and enjoyed designing their first glog. At the end of class, I told them to find some website links that they would like to add to their glog. I would show them how the following day.
As the students arrived the following day, I was immediately greeted with: “I worked on my glog last night and added several things.” “Some of my favorite links are now on my glog.” “My dad and I worked on the glog and added a video.”
After seeing how much the 4th graders enjoyed Glogster, I introduced it to 3rd grade. They were just as excited! We spend two class periods doing an “intro” glog; adding links, uploading MS Paint illustrations, and more. Plus, these students are also working on them outside of class.
The next goal is to help the teachers see the uses of Glogster in their curriculum. Since it’s so close to the end of this school year, we’ll probably wait till next year. Already, the students are excited about creating glogs next year so we’ll be off to a great start then.
In celebration of Seuss week, we have done a variety of activities in the computer lab. First graders read Wacky Wednesday, by Dr. Seuss and created a “wacky” self-portrait in MS Paint. For silly sock day, the 2nd graders illustrated their colorful socks or their sock monkey. After reading My Many Colored Days, the 3rd graders wrote their own color poems and added clip art.
The 1st and 2nd grade pictures have been combined and converted to ePub books which can be opened in iBooks (free app from iTunes store) or Adobe Digital Editions software (free download for PC and MacOS). If you have a Nook reader and Adobe Digital Editions, you can transfer the books to the Nook (the formatting isn’t perfect but it still works). The ePub books will not work on a Kindle.
The 3rd grade poems have been saved in PDF files which should be able to be opened on any computer.
You will need to have either iBooks or Adobe Digital Editions on your iPad (or other iOS device)/computer in order to open and read the ePub books. If you have an iPad or iTouch with the iBook app, you should get a message asking if you want to open in iBooks. If you are on a PC with Adobe Digital Editions, the ePub book will open in that software and you can then plug your Nook into the computer’s USB port and drag the book to the Nook. You can also read the book straight from Adobe Digital Editions software.
Searching for information on the internet is daunting to adults! Think about what young students experience as they attempt to sift through the myriad of sites in an attempt to collect information about a topic!
To introduce how to evaluate websites, I told the students that I wanted to get information about the octopus. Using google, I typed in the word and we watched as the results popped up. Wikipedia was first then came a travel agency which we quickly decided wouldn’t help with the research. Stopping at the third choice – Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, I made a huge deal out of how interesting that looked and wouldn’t that be an unusual topic to research? Clicking on the link, excitement from the students increased as they, too, decided this was a very unusual animal. We started exploring the site until finally, one student said, “I thought that an octopus had to have water to live in. I’ve never heard of any living on land or in trees.” Hooray! I was getting a little concerned because everyone was buying into this strange animal! That let to a wonderful discussion on why you need to look at websites carefully and get information from more than one source. Next, I “googled” the Northwest Tree Octopus and we discovered a wikipedia article saying that this is a hoax (the 3rd graders loved that word!).
The next part of the lesson involved checking out 3 websites about frogs and filling in an “Evaluating Resources rubric_3 frog sites” rubric. (Rubric based on Kathy Schrock’s Critical Evaluation of a Website). The sites we used were: Welcome to Froggyville, Frogs (from Exploratorium Museum), and The Froggy Page. Pretending that we were doing a research project about frogs, we carefully examined one of the sites together – talked about the author (if that person was an “expert” about frogs or were they trying to sell something), looked at the information on the pages (would it be useful for a project or were there just games). Next the students worked in pairs as they became a “web detective” to check out the value and authenticity of the other sites. As we discussed conclusions about the websites, the students were able to see that, although some of the sites were lots of fun, only one had information that would truly help to learn more about frogs. (Note: I’m not sure where I found the “frog” research lesson. If anyone knows, please share that so I can give proper credit.)
We talked a lot about the importance of finding at least three sources to make sure the information is validated. One observation was that even though a website looks bright and fun, it may not always have the best information for their project. Hopefully, this activity will help the students become more discerning as they research the topic for their upcoming class project.
What I love about what I do is seeing the growth of students throughout the years! By having them from kindergarten through 4th grade, I can watch not only the growth in technology skills but motor skills, artistic ability, and more.
Our third graders worked on their self-portraits in MS Paint this week and it was amazing to see the differences from last year to this year – much more detail. The most notable change was in how they designed their eyes. Younger students tend to have the eyes look forward but several of the 3rd graders made the pupils gaze in other directions. Another interesting addition was backgrounds – not just plain, one-color backgrounds. Intricately designed backgrounds filled many canvases! Here are some of the examples.
Next week we type “I Am” poems, using the template found here. Then we upload everything into their blogs.
Our 3rd graders celebrated International Dot Day by reading the book, The Dot, by Peter H. Reynolds. This is a story about Vashti, a young girl who can’t figure out what to draw in art class. She is encouraged by her teacher to “make her mark” which sends her on a journey to discover her potential.
Before reading the book, I had the students open MS Paint and draw a “dot” of any size on their canvas. Then we read the book. As I was reading, I could see the students start to think about what they would be doing with their dot.
When finished reading, I gave these directions: Create something using your dot. You can add more dots, a background, and you can also add other features but you must have at least one dot in the picture. And you must finish in one class period. Everyone came up with something – it may have been an abstract drawing or something more realistic. We had a Circle of Life, Pac Man, elephants, outer space, a sunset, balls being kicked, and much more. Below are their creations.
The second part of our celebration was to upload the drawings into the students’ blog and then have them write a post about what they did. This was good practice for them since we’ve really been focusing on how to write quality posts and comments (still working on this!). I gave the students a “challenge” where they were to answer one or more of the following questions:
Hello boys and girls,
Had you ever heard of International Dot Day before our class? We’re eager to hear about your dot picture. Write a new post and answer some or all of the following questions.
When you first drew your dot in MS Paint, did you have any idea what you would do with it?
Did an idea come to you right away or did it take a little while to figure out what your dot could become?
Describe your thoughts on how you decided what to draw.
Could you relate to Vashti, not able to think of something to draw? How did you feel about that?
Vashti started out really frustrated because she couldn’t figure out what to draw. How and why did she change throughout the story? Why did she decide to help the little boy near the end of the book?
I’m looking forward to your posts!
Take a look at Mrs. Weth’s Class Blog. Not everyone had a chance to finish but Mrs. Weth and I thought they did quite well working under pressure since we were running out of time. I wish they had answered more of the questions such as the one comparing how Vashti felt and how they felt as they tried to decide what to draw. Next year, I’ll be sure to allow more time for the blog part of the project.
