This was an incredible week! I had more classes booked than I have any other week so far, which made me immensely happy. But the best part was that the visiting classes weren’t just doing library circulation and rolling out…teachers had me introducing their students to tech tools that I shared at the petting zoo and they want to use in their classes! SUCCESS!
Voki is a big hit, since it’s so quick and easy to use. Our 8th grade ELA classes have been working on their poetry unit, so several teachers are using Voki to have students create avatars to read their original poetry. One class completed their Voki’s with me in the library, and we had a blast! They had so much fun creating their avatars and using the text-to-speech option to have their poem read by their characters. They were so proud of and impressed with their finished products!
I also had one of my favorite teachers (that will be my roommate for ISTE!) come with her class to the library computer lab to create Go Animate cartoons using their vocabulary words. With a little more practice, they will definitely get the hang of using Go Animate and I know they will create more great cartoons!
I have four days of science classes scheduled for Glogster projects next week, too.
That’s a whole lot going on, right? It’s what I’ve dreamed of! I knew I needed to start keeping up with these great products that our students were creating with these awesome (FREE!) tech tools, so I created a new wiki. I’m wiki crazy, so sue me. I’ve professed my love for Wikispaces over and over, and I will continue to do so. This latest wiki will serve as a place to display and store examples of our students awesome web creations. You can check it out here, on the CMS Student Work wiki. I’ve already put a few samples under the Voki and Go Animate pages.
There was lots to be proud of this week. I’m proud of and grateful for my coworkers who are embracing my craziness and jumping on board so quickly. I’m proud of our students for the work they’re doing and the creating they will continue to do. I know that even more success is in our future.