The Socratic Sister: Awesome Technology Activity

4/5/14

Awesome Technology Activity

We are so fortunate in our district to have technology gurus who will help you plan a lesson, come to your class and help you implement the lesson as well as get it all set up for you. I had the pleasure of not only earning "comp. time" but getting a great amount of help from one of our instructional technology specialists.

I wanted a lesson on inferencing. I blogged about using magazine pictures to help the students make inferences. (link here) I wanted them to come up with pictures and their own inference clue collage. Using magazine pictures would have taken years. First, the tech. specialist helped me come up with a list of topics. I assigned them an inference topic or theme (like New York City, Victory, Rescue, Weekend at Grandma's, etc…)

Next, I taught the kids how to use the app, Pic Collage, which took all of 5 minutes with my iPads in small groups because they "get it" in no time when it comes to apps. It is a cool app that my kids loved!! We just practiced making collages of anything they chose. They had so much fun doing that.

We met our technology specialist in the computer lab to learn Kidblog. Kidblog can be used for MANY activities, but it's safe and fun - I highly recommend. He had each child's account already set up (thank you!), and he showed them how to login. They practiced by commenting with their inferences about a picture he had posted of two bear cubs. Here are a couple of ideas he used to help students make inferences.

After they commented on the picture, he showed them how to create their own posts. Just for first try, they posted about what they planned to do over the weekend. We already have a class blog that I manage and just let them type posts (they can't login), but now using Kidblog they can access their own blogs and comment on each other's posts. You should have heard the giggles. It was precious. They were having a blast!

Next week, they will create their Pic Collage (I'll require that they find at least 5 pictures) based on the topic I gave them and upload their collage to Kidblog. We will go to the computer lab, look at everyone's collages and make inferences using comments. It should be and awesome day! I'll post about how it goes!

...And Here's How it Went:

We went to the lab today, uploaded our collages to Kidblog then using the comments part of Kidblog, we commented on each other's pictures by figuring out the inference they intended. Here are some examples of my student's Pic Collages from the iPads. I think they did a FANTASTIC job!!