This video below shows "A Day in the Life at Martin" which was posted to the Kuno Website Home page that highlights our first year with our Kuno Tablets. (Video can be retrieved from http://www.mykuno.com)
It has definitely been an adventure changing my teaching style from the more traditional way of teaching with textbooks, overheads, whiteboards, worksheets, and workbooks to going completely digital and just about paperless in the classroom.
At first, I was panicked and frustrated. Many of the teachers' attitudes were negative and poor because of our lack of training. We were rolling out a brand new reading curriculum (Pearson Reading Street), getting rid of student textbooks, and told that we shouldn't be using paper tests, quizzes, or worksheets anymore. Everything we were told to teach was found online. Many of us had the questions: What if the Internet doesn't work? What if my students' tablets don't work? How am I going to find everything I need to on this portal? Energy was running high and we had a week left of training before school started and many of us had no idea how we were going to survive, let alone teach our students.
Many teachers were miserable. It finally took me to realize that I needed to step up my game, learn the new material and become a 21st century teacher. I am not a negative person, I don't fold to a challenge! There was no choice. So suck it up and embrace the technology.
I did just that. I began jumping in head first to new apps and Web 2.0 tools that I found. I began to think of new ways that I could represent information to my third graders where they would actually be interested in learning about it. I also found new assignments and ways for my students to show me what they were learning about.
If you are just starting out: some Web 2.0 tools to think about that are easy to use are:
-Skitch: A free android app that students can add text, arrows, underlining, etc. I used Skitch for word sorts and making diagrams.
-PicSay!: Another free android app where students can take an image they have captured, add text, speech bubbles, arrows, and stickers. I use PicSay! during math for students to post to our Wiki about different angles, shapes, multiplication & division problems. I also use PicSay! for creating sentences with different parts of speech. It takes the learning from the workbook to applying what they are learning into real world applications.
-Explain Everything: This is a subscription, however, students are able to draw diagrams and record their voice at the same time to explain or describe what they are learning. This is helpful for when students are showing you how they completed a math problem.
-Kahoot: This is a free online website (https://getkahoot.com) where you are able to create quizzes and questions to review with your class. Students will then choose the answer using their tablet while looking at the main screen on the projector to choose their answer. The faster you choose your answer, the higher your score gets.
These are just a few to name. My advice to you: don't be afraid. Be ready to jump right in and embrace technology because it is not going anywhere.
Joining a Professional Twitter Learning Network has really helped me learn new strategies and apps to use with my students.
Take risks. Have fun. Try something once. Fail. Try again. Share ideas with each other.
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