Internet Comments

Good communication offline and online is very similar.

You should be cordial.
You should give compliments.
You should try to keep the conversation going.

What comment would you make about this picture?

Not finding anything in my own files for elementary students, I came up with the following guidelines.

Compliment
If you are taking the time to write a comment, there must be a reason. Give the author a boost and tell them what caught your attention.


Connection (if possible)
Just like in reading, show a connection from the post to yourself or from another comment in the thread to yourself.


Ask questions in your writing
Conversations are like playing catch with a baseball. The game ends quickly if you don't throw it back. A question is how you can do that in your comments.


Think before you post. 
Ask yourself, is this something I want my parents, teachers, friends, strangers to see? What are the consequences if you post this?

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Browsing through my files I found this gem from a friend sent to me a few years ago. I really like the one about proofreading and I think I will add that to what I give my students.

Make a compliment

Add new information

Make a connection

End with a question

Proofread your comment

A Digital Readers Theater

I read the story, Ganesha and the Curse on the Moon, for my students and they really liked it. So, I started thinking about plenary activities for them to do and decided we would act out the book as a play.

Right away I could see the vocabulary would be a challenge and there would need to be a lot of time to practice lines. I also wanted a way to share their performance more than once.

I made the book into a script and printed out enough copies for all the students. Each student was able to choose a part. They could be a reader, someone who reads the lines, an actor, someone who controls the puppets, or a narrator. After they chose their parts, I highlighted it for them so it was easier to read.

I started by trying to record the audio separately and was going to put the audio together with the video. iMovie doesn't allow you to tag, or rename clips. So the audio and the video got jumbled and were difficult to put together. The actors did not know when to do what because they could not hear the readers.

One of the things I did right, was to use the mic on my earbuds to get better sound quality. And although we had to film in the hallway, and it got noisy, the mic made the sound audible.

In the end, I ended up just filming the students acting out and reading the parts and then doing the reshoots right then and there.

Sometimes simple is best.

Publish to a Wider Audience

Recently a teacher asked me to look into different options for publishing ebooks.

Publishing digitally to an audience covers the 4 C's of 21st Century learning, Critical Thinking, Collaboration, Creativity, and Communication. This project also covers a fifth C, choice. 

Critical Thinking

Collaboration

Creativity

Communication
Choice

My mind immediately came to the conclusion of an actual ebook, one with pages that turn. For that, I had the following ideas:

"Book" Options

PDF -

Saving as a PDF is the Swiss Army Knife of publishing since they can be opened on any device. Students could write their story in Google Docs and download their doc as a PDF.

Issuu -

Issuu allows you to make an animated version of your PDF where you can turn the pages. Students would do the above and upload the PDF to Issuu. Then embed the Issuu PDF in their blog.

iAuthor - 

Apple has a good tool with iAuthor. It is a little challenging and awkward for me, but I cannot argue with the beautiful results. I am thinking it would be interesting to make some sort of unit book using iAuthor.

Book Creator -

This summer (2017) Book Creator will come out with a web version of their app. Until then you need an iPad or Windows computer to use this great tool. Books created with Book Creator can be exported as a movie, so embedded movies and recordings will automatically play.

Google Slides - 

Google Slides is an extremely useful tool outside of presentations. In class, I use Google Slides for my own resume and have used Google Slides for students to publish infographics and ebooks.


Make yourself a copy of this resume

Other Options

Lucid Press

Lucid Press is the "Google version of MS Publisher". While not a product made by Google, it was created for the GSuite environment. I don't use it much, but it is very flexible.

GSuite Apps as Webpage

Google Docs, et. all has the ability to embed links. So, in theory, you can create a site with any Google product as long as visitors are available to view the content. In this case, I like to use Bit.ly to create a unique short URL.

Google Sites - 

Google Sites is pretty cool and the new version is very easy to use. One idea I would like to try is a site for a unit where each student has their own page to act as either a digital scrapbook or a summative project.

Use Github to Host Your Website

Courtesy of J Pilon

The above directions are how to host your website on Github. The process is tricky, so pay attention to the directions and follow the steps exactly.