Miss Smith's Dynamic Learning Blog

I have truly enjoyed exploring the many technology tools presented throughout this course.  I found ways to integrate new tools in both my technology and art classes. Keeping up with trends in technology is a never-ending job. Sometimes it can be overwhelming to seek out new tools and websites to use with my students. I understand, as I did throughout this course, that trying a new technology tool doesn't necessarily mean that it will be useful. Having time to dedicate to trying something new, reflecting, and evaluating whether or not it will be useful for my students at this current time was valuable. I have found several tools that are now part of my regular "tool box" in my classroom. I now use Padlet to organize all of my video lessons. Paired with ad-filtering from ViewPure.com and QR codes around my room students are able to help themselves if they need to review a lesson. I absolutely loved creating the infographic and will be sharing piktochart with my 4th grade...

I chose to complete my research assignment on the pedagogy behind the new curriculum that I am rolling out to my Graphic Arts classes this year. See the slideshow below for my research process and the following presentation of my results. Enjoy! I enjoyed the step-by-step guidance by the resources website and can see myself using this with my technology students to help break down the process. I am happy with my final product and think I may be able to further develop the presentation for my Graphic Arts section on the Oak Ridge School website. I had never used emaze before but found it simple to create and the final presentation to be engaging and interesting.

      The design process is not easy! Creating a new idea is difficult for students and teachers alike. I was inspired by the inventor of the Chemex Coffee Maker to create my Pretty Powerstrip. I enjoyed learning about Peter Schlumbohm's process of inventing a coffee maker at a time when aesthetically pleasing style held as an important feature was a new idea.        Powerstrips are something that everyone has around their home, schools, and offices. The design has remained largely unchanged since its' invention. My idea was to design a more attractive powerstrip available in a wide range of colors. The plug areas would snap on an off easily so that you would have just what you need, and no unsightly unused or overused plugs.        I decided to create an infographic to display the product and also a brief summary of the process behind the idea.

I chose to complete the screencast activity with a lesson that I am teaching this upcoming week in my 4th grade technology classes. The students in my classes will be logging into Typing Club for the first time. I am thinking that by showing them the process with this screencast it will eliminate most of the questions about what to put in for usernames and passwords.  I chose Screencast-O-Matic to create this short screencast. I found the user interface to be really easy and loved that you can set your own capture frame. I didn't have to close out of my many tabs open for working on this course just to shoot my short instructional screencast! I anticipate using this screencast tool for my technology students as it is easier to do it once and record it than to try to always recreate it on the fly. I teach so many sections of the same class that this will definitely be a time saver. I am also thinking that I will most likely embed the videos into a slide show for each le...

I have loved using PiktoChart to create this infographic! I am particularly excited to introduce this tool to 6th grade, whom I think will love to use their Chromebooks to create these images as a visually interesting way to display their ideas and information. The three tech tools that I chose to highlight are new-to-me discoveries that I have just begun to explore.

This week I was finally able to use my set of Sphero Sprk+ robots with my students. This is a new piece of technology that I had seen at the MassCUE conference last year. I wrote a Cape Cod 5 mini grant and paired that with a PTA grant to buy a set of 10 robots. Since that funding was secured last March I have struggled to get the robots paid for by the school district and shipped by the company. Ultimately, I was unable to get them by the end of the school year. The robots finally arrived over the summer and I have been working to collect enough ipads to actually use them. This week has felt like such an achievement as the students used my hodge-podge collection of broken ipads, old cell phones, and recycled kindles to used their knowledge of block coding to control the devices. The first challenge that I gave my students was to make their robot move in a perfect square. This is a sort of pre-test to see where their computational thinking skills are as well as their manipulati...

As a member of several art-teacher groups on Facebook and Instagram, I love getting ideas from art teachers in other parts of the US and internationally. The sharing of ideas has greatly impacted my own teaching and continues to do so on a regular basis. When I was able to attend the National Art Educators conference last March it felt like I was seeing old friends, even though I was just meeting people for the first time in real life. I have loved learning more about global collaboration through this course. I am signed up to receive the Connected Classroom emails and each one is so tempting! If I were a classroom teacher I know I would be so into the Mystery Skype experiences! My main struggle that is keeping me from jumping in with both feet is time. I see so many students, but only once a week. If I were able to schedule a mystery skype, only one of my many classes would get the experience. I had considered video taping it for other groups, but that completely defeats the p...

Exploring resources on GCFlearnfree.org The Intro to Graphic Arts, Photoshop, and Digital Photography sections of the site were EXACTLY what I've been looking for! Although these resources are a bit advanced for my students, I can guide them through or use them for inspiration in creating a more age-appropriate resource. I can also add these items to my padlet so that students can reference them while they are independently working. I am excited to recommend this website to others as a great resource for learning more about the basics of using computers and technology. The range of subjects is wide and I love the simplistic breakdown in text and video.

I tried out Adobe Spark with relative success! I can see this as a nice tool for myself to create some instagram posts for my classroom account. I can also picture having students create kind images with this application. The site was easy to use on a chromebook which was a pleasant surprise. My one criticism is that the text boxes and font were not as intuitive as the apps the students typically use. After a few moments I was able to figure out the nuances; but I worry that this might cause frustration for some of my younger students. Overall, this tool rocks!

Content curation has evolved tremendously since the late '90s when every other website was titled "My Favorite Links"! It is amazing how many tools we have at our disposal to organize content. It is more important than ever that we are giving ourselves and our students places to organize relevant and important information. With so many curation tools we are lucky to be able to find something that suits our own individual needs. I love pinterest because it is so visual, but found that uploading from the web sometimes feels too public and a little clunky. For this assignment I tried LinkHub which I found to be quick and easy to curate, but there seems to be an issue with the way they pull images from the sites you link to. I haven't had to tool successfully pull an image on its own, and stopping to upload one separately is time consuming. The tool is still in beta so I sent some feedback to them and am hoping for an update soon! I loved the arguments made in the ...

I've used google forms in the past for many purposes, including student feedback and assignment submission. By going through this form-creation exercise I am getting excited about the possibility of using student feedback forms to shape the studio centers that my students will work in throughout the year. Working artists that share a studio would constantly be communicating with each other about personal and studio-based needs. I think that by asking the students to contribute, on a monthly basis, by giving feedback about what works in the studio will help to further the authentic experience that I am hoping my choice-based curriculum will give them as artists. In addition to helping me craft my classroom space and curriculum based on student need, using this feedback form will help me to keep track of inventory and address questions of students in a timely manner. I am hoping to replace one reflection period per month with a feedback form similar to this draft. Loading...

~*Cloud of Goals*~ Word clouds are something that I used to do with my students all the time. I'm not sure why I stopped other than I felt that it was getting overplayed when students started to make them in every class. I really enjoyed this activity and using word clouds to reflect some of my personal learning goals for the upcoming school year. In building a word cloud you are forced to sum up the goal in one or two carefully chosen words. Looking at my word cloud I can see by my chosen words what is of the most importance to me. I have been working this summer in building a choice-based art curriculum that focuses on the authentic artistic processes of the students. I can see that this is reflected here and that a huge piece of this is to continue to build and draw from the professional learning community that I became a part of after my participation in the NAEA conference last March.  I created this word cloud with Tagul on wordart.com . I chose this site because of ...

I love using short, student-friendly videos like this one to introduce the importance of taking care of your digital footprint. Today's students are fighting an uphill battle when it comes to protecting their image online. When they come to my classroom at 10-12 years old, typically a family member has already documented their every move on social media up to that point. Those potty-training pics might have been cute 10 years ago but for an adolescent, not so much. It is important that students recognize and understand that what they post, text, tweet, email, and comment on will follow them indefinitely. How Your Digital Footprint Can Hurt You       This article from the Huffington Post includes an awesome slide show of "7 Ways you might be Oversharing". Oversharing is a big problem for kids who are just starting to find their way on social media. Suddenly everyone can read and react to their opinions! I often see kids get themselves into uncomfortable situations b...

When searching for myself, the results were surprising in a different sort of way! https://docs.google.com/a/sandwich.k12.ma.us/document/d/1PgyJP4ifhWCvbtT14rQCcs8sFBGmMzkzdopt_6g8ToM/edit?usp=sharing

Teaching students (and parents) about online safety is as important as the "stranger danger" discussions we all had as children!  OnGuardOnline  &  NetSmartz  are two awesome resources to get the conversation started. Both sites have parent/teacher resources as well as kid-friendly pages. As informed adults we are better able to support our students as they navigate the web. Technology is constantly changing so it is important to stay up to date on the latest safety and security tips. These sites also cover a wide scope of tech devices including video games and social media. It's easy to take for granted that when we are feeling safe at home or school we have the entire world in our pockets, on our computers, or TV screens. Something that seems like its "made for kids", like apps and games, might be the very place where our kids are most at risk. Having the conversation about online security early and often creates a trusting relationship where kids and stu...

Got to play with one of my all time favorite resources for helping to build computational thinking with students: Code.org! This site uses engaging games with recognizable characters to hook kids in to using code to solve challenges. It is seriously addicting! Already getting excited for the Hour of Code this December :o)

Hello! I am a graphic arts and technology teacher for grades 3-6. I am taking this course to gain more exposure to technology that will help me build a worldwide network of art and tech teachers as well as connect to colleagues within my district. I already use social media to participate in classes, book clubs, discussions, and to connect with other people who "get it" (teachers!). When I am not working on curriculum or cleaning my classroom I love to travel, go to the beach, and spend time with my family- including my dog, Moxie!