Tech Tool of the Week: Edmodo

This week's highlighted technology tool is an exciting new website called Edmodo. Edmodo is a free service that allows teachers to create and maintain their own safe and secure, collaborative classroom communities.

When you take a look at Edmodo, it looks a lot like a Facebook for the classroom. Edmodo allows you to create a social learning network specifically for your class. Unlike Facebook, however, Edmodo is completely private and secure.  And it allows you as teachers to manage class content, collaborate, and more.

Teachers can share educational content, manage projects and assignments, handle notifications, conduct quizzes and events, and facilitate other engaging learning experiences with students. Schools and districts can claim unique Edmodo web addresses for added communication and customization. And teachers can build profile pages on Edmodo, which they can use to meet and stay in contact with other educators, plus share best practices and top resources.

On the student side, members of an Edmodo classroom can interact with the site, take quizzes, participate in games, and ask the teacher questions. But students may not direct message each other within the site. Edmodo is not meant to be a social platform for student to student interactions that don’t relate to what’s going on in the classroom.

Finally, one other cool feature of Edmodo is that it works on a variety of different platforms, including the iPhone, Android, iPad, and laptop or desktop computers.  Check out some interesting ways that you could use Edmodo for mobile learning!


For ideas on how to get started and to access teacher resources, take a look at Edmodo's blog. In addition, here is a short demo video to give you a taste of what you can do with Edmodo:

Tech Tool of the Week: Prezi

If you attended this week's all school faculty meeting, you already saw this week's Tech Tool in action!  This week's highlighted tool is Prezi, an online presentation maker.  According to Prezi's website, "Prezi is cloud-based presentation software that opens up a new world between presentations and slides.  The zoomable canvas makes it fun to explore ideas and the connections between them.  The result: visually captivating presentations that lead your audience down a path of discovery."


Consider using Prezi as an alternative to PowerPoint!  It's visually stimulating to watch and can help engage your audience.  Check out one teacher's explanation about why he loves Prezi. 


If you're interested and would like to learn how to use this cool tool, here is a step-by-step tutorial on the basics of Prezi.


Last but not least, just in case you missed the faculty meeting, here is our Prezi on the technology plan for CAIS!

Tech Tool of the Week: Explain Everything

Explain Everything is a screen recording app for iPads that lets you turn your iPad into your very own interactive whiteboard.  Write or draw and explain as you go, and the app will record your voice and movements and create a video!  You can either write on a blank screen or import pictures and annotate them.  In addition, you can enter text and shapes.  At the end, you will have a video that you could email to a student or post on Veracross.  If you've ever heard of Khan Academy, this is a way to create videos just like the ones you would find there!  


What could you do with Explain Everything?  How about using it as an assessment tool to determine whether students understand a concept?  You could put them in groups and ask them to write a script for a video in which they explain a concept they learned in class.  They could then create the video and email it to you for evaluation.


Another idea would be to use Explain Everything to create your own videos explaining concepts you taught in class.  You could then post these videos on Veracross for your students to access.  For students who have difficulty grasping a concept the first time it is taught, this could be a great way to give them another opportunity to learn the material.


Here are two examples of ways that our own faculty members have used Explain Everything in their classes!  One is a video created by Mark Churchill's 6th grade math students explaining a math concept.  The second is a video created by middle school students that gives directions around San Francisco in Chinese.

Tech Tool of the Week: BrainPOP

This week's Technology Tool of the Week is a pair of websites called BrainPOP (3-12) and BrainPOP Jr. (K-3).  Here you can find a treasure trove of educational movies, quizzes, activities and homework help for kids.  The content covers a wide range of topics across many subject areas, ranging from science and math to arts and music.  In addition, BrainPOP content is mapped to Common Core and state standards.  


Using BrainPOP videos and activites is a great way to introduce a new topic or explain a difficult concept.  Best of all, kids love BrainPOP!  BrainPOP movies are hosted by two cute and funny cartoon characters, Tim and Moby.  The videos make learning new concepts interesting and fun.


To explore the BrainPOP resources, simply register for a free trial.  While some of the content on BrainPOP is free, much of it can be accessed only if you have a subscription.  If you like what you see, let me know.  If there is enough interest we can purchase a school subscription.  (Helpful hint: every week BrainPOP features one FREE movie!  Go to the website to see the free movie of the week.)


Also check out BrainPOP's free iPhone/iPad app.  Using this app you can watch a different animated movie each day and test your knowledge with an interactive quiz.  (Consider recommending this app to your students as well; it is designed for kids of all ages!)


Finally, don't miss out on BrainPOP's free community for teachers, BrainPOP Educators.  This is BrainPOP's space for teacher support.  Here you can search by grade or by standard to find related videos.  Teachers can also find and share lesson plans.  In addition, BrainPOP Educators includes a Curriculum Calendar that shows which free featured videos are coming up.


For more information on BrainPOP or for help figuring out the best way to use it in your class, please contact me!


To see a sample BrainPOP movie (plus get an introduction to the BrainPOP site), check out the video below:

Tech Tool of the Week: Puppet Pals

Welcome back and Happy New Year! Hope everyone had a restful break.

This week's highlighted technology tool is an iPad app called Puppet Pals. Puppet Pals is an easy-to-use app in which students can create simple animated movies. The first step is to choose characters for the story from a wide variety of cartoon characters. Next, choose one or more backdrops.  Then it is time to record! Students can move the characters on the screen as they tell their story. Movements and audio are recorded in real time. The final product is an animated movie that you can post on your class website, email to parents, share with the rest of your class, and more! Students can even use their own photos to create characters or backdrops.


The beauty of this app is that it can be used across grade levels and subject areas. For younger students, Puppet Pals could be used to teach storytelling skills. Older students could use Puppet Pals to explain and illustrate a vocabulary word, science concept, or math problem.  For Chinese classes, students could write and record a story using vocabulary they are learning in class. The possibilities are endless! 


Please let me know if you would like me to show you how to use Puppet Pals. It's easy to learn and fun to use! I can also help you brainstorm ideas for how you could use Puppet Pals in your class. If you are interested in watching a tutorial video, here is a link to one created by the designers of the app.


To get a taste of what Puppet Pals looks like, check out how one teacher used Puppet Pals with his 3rd graders:

Tech Tool of the Week: Glogster

Despite its funny name, Glogster is actually an outstanding, free website for with tons of possibilities for your classroom!  A "glog" is an online interactive poster.  (Imagine the posters you made for school while growing up, but redesigned for the 21st century!)  On Glogster, students can combine text, pictures, graphics, video and audio to create their poster.  They can choose to either use graphics provided by Glogster or upload their own photos or videos.  The final glog can be shared online!

Glogster is a great way for students to display knowledge on a topic.  It can be used across the curriculum and enable students to demonstrate their creativity.  

To begin, visit the Glogster EDU website.  Click on register at the top of the page.  When you register, you will be able to create accounts for your students.  Once they start creating glogs, you will be able to view all of your students' glogs! 

Here are a few helpful links to get you started:

• How to register, create a glog, and use Glogster EDU in the classroom
• Two tutorial videos on setting up and using Glogster EDU
• Sample student and teacher glogs

See below for an example of a student glog!

A Sample Glog

Skype Connections

Thanks to the efforts of Kevin Chang and our Lower School Chinese faculty, our LS Chinese classes have been connecting with students in Chinese immersion programs across the country!  On Nov. 11 the 2 Red class had a Skype chat with a 2nd grade class at the Global Village Academy in Aurora, CO.  Students had prepared questions in advance to ask.  With Su Laoshi's guidance, students stood  up one by one, greeted the other students, introduced themselves, and asked get-to-know-you questions to the children at Global Village Academy.  It was a terrific opportunity for our students to experience other kids just like them learning Chinese!

Since then, our 2 Green and 3 Gold classes have also Skyped with children in other Chinese immersion programs. The 2 Green class Skyped with kids from Global Village Academy while the 3rd graders Skyped with children at Unitah Elementary in Ogden, UT.  In January our 1st, 4th, and 5th graders will also connect with other classes via Skype!

Think your students might benefit from Skyping with another class?  Teachers in schools all around the world are trying to connect with other schools through Skype!  To explore the possibilities, go to Skype in the Classroom (Skype's education website) and set up an account with Skype or sign in if you already have one.  You can create a teacher profile for yourself where you describe your interests and what you're looking for.  Then you may search for other classes to connect with.  You can search by student age, subject, language, country, and more.  In addition, Skype in the Classroom has a wealth of resources including videos, links, tips, and articles to help teachers use Skype.  Check it out!

For a taste of one our classes' Skype sessions, here is a video clip from the 2 Red Skype chat with Global Village Academy:

Digital Books in Chinese

For our Chinese faculty: two Chinese reading resources.  Child Road is a website that offers over 1,000 books read in Mandarin by professional actors and television hosts in China, with characters and Pinyin for reading along.  There are multiple series and books that can be read/listened to online, as well as downloaded to an MP3 player for listening in the car.

To access CAIS's account on Child Road, use the following information:

• Login email: w_wright@cais.org
• Password: wpcais

Another online Chinese reading resource is 5Q Channel.  This site offers classic Chinese stories in a cartoon animated format.  Watch stories with either traditional or simplified characters. While CAIS does not currently have a subscription to this site, there are some free stories available. In addition, Warren purchased a CD-ROM of "The Legend of the Chinese Festivals" for the library.

Tech Tool of the Week: Sonic Pics

The first official Technology Tool of the Week is Sonic Pics, a terrific iPad app used for digital storytelling. Sonic Pics allows students to turn images into a custom slideshow movie. To make a movie, students add one or more images and record their voice as they narrate. Examples of types of images students could use include digital photos, drawings made on the iPad, and screenshots from Safari.

Here are some ideas for ways you could use Sonic Pics in your class:

1. Create multimedia books. Students create illustrations in a drawing app like Drawing Pad, save the illustrations to Photos, and then pull them up in SonicPics to record the words.

2. Document a classroom experience. Load photos of a field trip, science experiment, special visitor, etc. onto the iPad and have students narrate the photos.

3. Assess a learning experience. Load photos of an individual or group working in the classroom, and then have students narrate those photos to explain their process and reflect on their learning.

4. Retell a story. Have students draw pictures to represent the beginning, middle, and end of a story, and then record themselves retelling the story.

5. Generate questions to support inquiry. Load content-related photos on the iPad. Have students select 3-5 images and record their questions. This could also be used to assess the level of thinking and questioning students are engaged in.

6. Create a podcast. Use photos or student-created illustrations or diagrams as your images. Students could create a podcast about something they are learning in class, news about school, book reviews, etc.
7. Create a weather report. Take photos out the window and narrate them with data from any weather app or website. Share it on your class Veracross website.

Currently we are working with the 1st Grade Red and Gold classes on a Sonic Pics project. Students first drew a self-portrait on the iPad (using an art application called Drawing Pad) and wrote their name in Pinyin on the picture. Next, students used Sonic Pics to record their voices as they talked about themselves in Chinese. Students stated their name, age, birthday, and personal characteristics. Below is a sample of a video made by one of our 1st graders. Special thanks to Teresa Shyu for coming up with the great idea for this project!