Flair Pens and Lattes

When I was younger, I remember having many opportunities for enrichment outside of my school classroom. I remember field trips being so much fun. When I was at ISTE a little over a month ago, I remember learning about Google Cardboard. I had heard about it before, but never fully investigated it. Sometimes it takes me a little longer to jump onboard with new tech channels and apps because there are so many I already love so much. But today on the blog, I'm talking about Google Cardboard. I'm no expert yet, so this introduction to this Google feature will be very basic. First of, Google Cardboard brings teachers and students immersive experiences. It does cost, but it's relatively affordable. Viewers can be bought here . There are many viewers to choose from that bring virtual reality to your classroom. Along with the viewer, you also need the Google Cardboard app on your phone. After you have the viewer, you can go to the Google Play store and choose from a variety of app...

When I was a student teacher, I realized that I needed my own personal iPad. Ok, maybe not "need," but it was worth the investment. My parents were generous and gave me one for Christmas that year. I was beginning my lead teaching in February and having my own iPad to use made life much easier. I could test and try out new apps, and create project samples at home. It also made professional development easier because I could take notes, test new apps and create on the spot. I definitely have a few apps that make teaching and my life easier. They're simple, and not new, but so helpful. 1. JotNot: I talked about using Kami in a prior blog post, but I still love Jot Not. For those unfamiliar, JotNot is a free document scanner app. I've used it to return signed forms via email, upload my teaching certificate to applications, email progress updates to parents, and many more. All you have to do is scan the document and you can email it or upload it directly. Due to a lack...

NOTE: This post is not about technology, but it's incredibly personal and a story that I'm finally ready to tell. At the beginning of the 2015-2016 school year, I was faced with the hardest decision of my life--leaving teaching temporarily. The whole month of August 2015 was a whirlwind and a blur. I spent the prior school year looking forward to moving down to second grade and the summer writing an EXTENSIVE classroom management plan, buying decor and supplies for my owl themed classroom (that started the day after school let out for the summer) and doing lots of professional development reading. I loved my sixth graders, and still think about them all the time, and I loved teaching writing, but I never felt that it was where I belonged. One Thursday morning in August, I was headed to a math curriculum training before going to put the finishing touches on my classroom. When I was about to turn in to the high school where the training was, I received a phone call from my prin...

I just finished some work in my Google Drive so today is perfect for Part 3 of my Going Google series. Today, I'm writing about something I've never used in my classroom personally, but want to wherever I end up next. It's time to hang out with Google. Right now, I use Google Hangouts for conducting my sorority's alumni council meetings. We live all over the south so Google Hangouts is how we conduct our meetings. I first learned about Hangouts when I attended TCEA in February 2015. I never really investigated it or experimented with it until last fall. I now love Google Hangouts and have seen how many uses there are for it in a classroom. First, you can talk to experts from anywhere in the world. It's kind of like virtual field trips, except students are learning from someone in the field. As an elementary generalist, I don't think of myself as an expert in any content area. I'm always developing my content knowledge when planning. I feel that it is imp...

As a teacher, there are apps that make my life easier and that I absolutely love using. One that I discovered recently deserves its own post because it's about to make teachers' lives so much easier. Pocket is a new FREE app that I just discovered this month when browsing the Education section of the app store. I just finished teaching myself how to use it. After you download Pocket, you create an account  and enable the pocket extension. You can sign up through your Google account. And if you don't already have a Google account, you should. I enabled Pocket on my iPad, phone and laptop. When I went to my Safari browser, I pressed the upload/save button, found Pocket and then enabled it. Now, whenever I find an article on my iPad that I want to save, I can just download it directly. My library in Pocket so far--these are all links I've saved on Facebook the past three years. I didn't include irrelevant ones. On my computer, I enabled Pocket by adding it t...

Two summers ago, I spent a lot of time crafting my teacher website for what was supposed to be my second grade classroom. I wanted my website to be fun and informative just like my sixth grade one (my principal even commented on how informative my website was and parents knew it would be updated daily and weekly). We were trained on Weebly at my school, and luckily I still have my Weebly account even after leaving the district. Fun and informative websites are critical for teachers. The first thing I do whenever I find out I have a job interview is look at the school website, the administrator websites and the teachers' websites for the team I might be a part of. I want to learn about the classrooms and teachers. Parents and students are the same way. I've seen great websites and I've seen outdated ones. If you're thinking of upgrading your teacher website, here are some of my tips. I love Weebly for websites because it's easy to use and allows teachers to personali...

Google Forms! Google Slides! Google Sheets! Oh my! In part one of the Going Google series, I wrote about the most basic feature of Google--Google Drive and Docs. (I just finished using my Drive to write our lessons for the kids of parents in a special training at my church this summer. I modified the lesson plan I have used for teaching before.) In my teaching, I've also used Google Slides and Google Forms. They have been tremendous tools in my teaching and I know that there are tons of teachers who use these frequently. They're kind of like Google Docs. First off, as a teacher, Google Forms can be a tremendous help. I've seen them embedded in teacher websites, as a way to collect parent and student information at the beginning of the year. With answer options of multiple choice, checkboxes, short and long answer there are so many ways to use Google forms at a school or in your classroom. When I submitted my presentation proposal at iPadpalooza, it was done through forms....

Blogging is a terrific tool for teaching and learning. As a writing teacher my first year, I tried  to get my students to understand that writing is a way to process our ideas and thinking. It's a way to share our ideas with others and publish our work. I was blogging back in college; I started a style blog from my dorm room sophomore year and also was required to create a post for a class blog for a course I took my junior year each week, as well as respond to other students' posts. A lot of teachers are already blogging with their students, and I took full advantage of it my first year teaching. If you work with younger students, it's a bit harder to create a blog but it's perfect for upper elementary and secondary students. You may be asking, how do I begin blogging with my students? Let me tell you. In my sixth grade class, all students had school email addresses through Gmail, as did I. Blogger was what I was already incredibly familiar with so I chose it for our...

As a teacher who loves using iPads in my teaching, I have my favorite apps that I love using thanks to my amazing mentor from my MAT year at Trinity. I'm always learning about new ones and trying them but I definitely have my favorite go-to ones. Today I'm sharing some of my favorite and simplest apps for students to use. Some of my favorite apps for students. I call them classics for a reason. Number One--Thinglink I heard about Thinglink during my student teaching year, but never gave it a chance. For some reason, it seemed challenging to use and my mentor and I never used it in our class. Fast forward to April of my first year teaching. I was up at school on Good Friday long-term planning and thinking about our research project in May. Right before beginning this project, students would have finished book review (not a book report FYI) and they had written a lot of papers so I was looking for something that would be more fun and engaging for them. I decided that they...

It's no secret that I love using technology when I teach students. Educational technology is something I am very passionate about and I love learning more about how to use it; that's why this blog exists. Today's post is something I have been thinking about a lot lately even though it has nothing to do with a particular technology tool. Besides technology, hallmarks of my teaching are incorporating the arts (I was the theatre and choir student my whole life and have learned so much from those experiences) and engaging students in what interests them and their passions. When I taught sixth grade ELA, I noticed at the beginning of the year that one of my students loved to write stories. One day, he came up to me after class with a story he had been writing outside of my classroom. Many of my students (well, most) sadly did not share his passion for writing and constantly asked me why they had to learn to write. I should add that many loved writing at the end of the year.  I...

When I visited the expo hall at ISTE, I came across something called Kami. I made a note of it in my phone and then went home to investigate what this tech tool was. I experimented and have already used it once. Kami is a web based document annotation software. To use it, you first create an account with Kami. Kami can connect to your Google mail account. If you read the last post, you know that I use Google Drive for ALMOST everything. You import a file from your desktop or Google Drive. You can then directly annotate on the document. It's so much easier than using Adobe. Kami came in very useful when I was planning my first pop up party for C + I yesterday. For those of you who don't know, I became a merchandiser for Chloe and Isabel jewelry last month (perfect time to start as I have weekdays free) and love being involved in this company. I needed to download a party host planning sheet and fill it out. I downloaded the file from my online office to my desktop and then ...

Is there a teacher who hasn't used Google in some way? I don't think so. I think everyone knows how to use Google Drive and has used Google Docs. Everyone knows how to use it, but today I'm talking about how I've used it in my classroom. I have been using Google for pretty much everything since freshman year of college.  I say pretty much everything because I did use Microsoft Word for my class newsletter template and some signs for my classroom. I'm fortunate that I learned to use Google Drive at the beginning of college so I had no problem transitioning to student teaching and then teaching in a GAFE district where students had personal gmail accounts from the time they enter kindergarten to their graduation. In college, I used it to type term papers (I never dealt with a computer crashing and if I had, my documents would have been safe), sorority meeting minutes, suggested that we use Google forms for our master recruitment list when I was my sorority's recru...

Last Wednesday I visited the expo hall at ISTE and absolutely loved getting to meet with the exhibitors to discuss cool new tech tools. My absolute favorite was getting to see a performance at the Flocabulary booth. Flocabulary reminds me of Hamilton as it uses hip hop songs to teach about concepts.  On their website ,  there are tons of videos for academic concepts. Rappers actually pair up with content experts to write the lyrics to the songs. Not only are they engaging for students and help students learn, but the songs go in depth into content. Students can also write their own lyrics for songs. What a great way to show student learning and understanding.  I would have loved to have had this resource for my sixth grade students. I don't see this as being as useful for students below third grade. The one downside to Flocabulary is that it's not free. Individuals, schools or districts have to pay. Individual accounts run $97 a year, so it's not cheap. I'm hoping ...

I wrote in my first post that when I was beginning my journey in education, I was hesitant to use technology and was a little bit scared when I was placed in a classroom where students were using technology for almost everything. I believe that many teachers echo this attitude. I like to joke that there are two types of teachers: ones who fully integrate technology (or do so whenever they can--my first classroom had no smartboard and I was doing a lot of long term planning to be able to reserve the iPad cart) and ones who are scared to. When I was at ISTE last Saturday, there was a session on how to engage reluctant teachers to use technology. Therefore, I decided it would be perfect to include a post about that in the blog. It's scary to use technology--you have to experiment with apps and find out what technology works for your students. There are so many apps and websites that you can't use them all. You find your favorites and easy to use for students and go with it. Du...