Green

My course of study prefers the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education (it's nice, but I  haven't made up my mind about any one approach).  One aspect of this approach involves the placement of a "provocation" to children's learning.  Another component to that approach is an appreciation for the inclusion of natural items whenever possible.  So, as such, here is my St. Patrick's Day "provocation" involving green peas, measuring cups and spoons, a funnel (sorry it's plastic), a bowl, and a pot of rosemary.  Princess horse was intrigued.  Interestingly, this actually didn't take off until I put the water table beside it.  The combination of water with the peas made them sticky and sculptable which kept them busy on and off for the whole day.  Unfortunately, it also made the peas unusable for a second go, as they became too soft and a bit smelly, but it was worth it for an annual event.

Forget Measles, Here's the Career Killer

(By Deval Kulshrestha (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

I think it's died down, but there has been a recent hubbub about the anti-vaccination parents and whatnot.  Do I believe in vaccinations?  You betcha.  But there's a danger lurking in the classroom more deadly than measles, mumps, or rubella, and it has been laid upon my heart that it will kill your career as a teacher.  It's called a self-righteous, judgmental attitude.  All last Fall, I ran into teacher after teacher completely and utterly consumed by it.  I watched it literally suck the joy out of everything they did.  Thank goodness for my current practicum in Head Start home visitation.  The teachers there are often as desperate financially as the families they serve.  They do the job as a calling, not just a paycheck.  They have hearts of gold.  What they don't have - they cannot have if they are to do what they do - is a judgmental attitude.   Not only as a teacher, but as a mother, I see the families they serve and the horrible impact poor choices have on the children.  It is hard for me not to fall prey to that judgmental mindset.  I am, luckily, surrounded by those great examples of unconditional love.  In my devotional, on Thursday, were these words:  "In a day in which harsh judgment of others seems to be the rule, it's good to remember that love starts with us."  (Our Daily Bread, March 5, 2015, entry by Dave Branon).  A special education friend of mine posted a message on Facebook:  "Your job is not to judge.  Your job is not to figure out if someone deserves something.  Your job is to lift the fallen, restore the broken, and to heal the hurting."  Teachers, love begins with us.  Vaccinate yourself.

App-tastic

Today, I wanted to talk about an app that I think is really interesting.  I found out about it at the SECA conference this year.  It is called Tykester .  It is an app that allows childcare providers to update parents on how their child's day is going.  The teacher can input real-time tracking for meals, naps, potty, mood changes, daily events, photos, and notes.  Any entry can be applied to multiple children.  And the teacher/director or parent can call or text without leaving the app.  Best of all, it is completely free.  I am not currently a childcare director, but this is something I would definitely look into.

Project Overboard: A Humbling

I am studying the Project Based approach to a curriculum. The current project with my kids involves boats, so we took a ferry ride on the river to study them. I asked them why they thought there was ice in the middle of the river and not on the sides. "Blah, blah, blah, mom." When we passed a coal barge, I pointed out that the barge was traveling east, and asked what direction it was coming from. My son says, "South." After at least five minutes of scaffolding to try and get him to come to the right answer, he still said "South, and all your helping makes me feel stupid." Just when I think, "Man, I will be an awesome teacher!" my kids bring me back to earth.

Kidsperation

Here is a chart that I made using a software program called Kidsperation.  Kidsperation is a tool specifically designed for students in kindergarten through fifth grade which helps you to arrange your curriculum content in such a way as to be very graphically and visually appealing to my students.  I think that Kidsperation would be particularly effective for my special needs students .  Kidsperation allows the student to use a text-to-speech feature that will support my students facing challenging in learning printed text.  I can use built-in symbols and pictures to help create visual supports such as PECS.  I can also use it to build storyboards to help children visual the sequence in an orally presented story.  I think it would be fun to create a storyboard together.  It also allows teachers to group information visually using a mind map.  In my admissions placement at the Early Childhood Center at NKU, the teachers often created mind-maps to visually document the children’s interests as shared during morning meeting.  As you can see, I used it to build a sequence to help my future students understand what to expect in their daily routine and to more easily transition from task to task. 

Web 2.0 Tool: Little Bird Tales

A little bird told me that there was a digital storytelling tool that allows you to create original videos using voice recording, text, and images and allows you to share them with others.  The tool is called Little Bird Tales.  Once you arrive at the main page, click on the center image of a bluebird to get an overview of how you can create your own tale.  Click Here  to find out how a cranky and technologically challenged person such as myself would create an account and use Little Bird Tales in my classroom.  As a test, my own children and I used it to create a really cute story of our summer vacation to the Smoky Mountains, and they truly enjoyed it.

Now that you have an overview of the Little Bird Tales tool, and you know how to sign up, let me tell you about two of my favorite features of this tool.  The first is that you can either upload your own images (such as photos) from your own computer to illustrate your story.  You can also draw your own images within the tool.  I think the drawing feature would be particularly interesting to students.  Once you save the image, it will add it to your tale.  Then you an exit out of the image screen to add your voice and/or text to tell that portion of your tale.  Each time you add a new image, you get an opportunity to add to the next part of your tale.

The next wonderful feature that I think Little Bird Tales has is that it allows you to share your tale in several ways.  Once you have created your tale, at the top of the screen it has a prompt that says "Go To..".  Click on that, then click on "My Tales".  It will pull up your tale.  You have two choices: embed or more options.  You would use "embed" to share in your blog or on Facebook.  If you click on "more options", you can either share, copy, create a PDF, or delete your tale.  If you choose "PDF", then it will create a PDF file of the images and text from your story that you can print out for your students to take home (or to put in their file).  Instant permanent product.  If you choose share, it will automatically pop up a window to send an e-mail to whomever you think would want to see the tale, such as a student's parent. In our case, we sent it to grandma.

There are many pre-made templates that you can use to help you create tales to assist you in teaching in the classroom.  Hopefully, you can imagine all the great possibilities that Little Bird Tales could have for your primary classroom.  My little birds certainly enjoyed creating their own tale (warning: everything on Little Bird Tales takes at least 30 seconds to load, so it's not broken, just be patient).

Podcasting In Education

This post is dedicated to the idea of podcasting in your classroom and for professional development.  Currently, I use it for professional development.  However, I think podcasting would be a wonderful tool for use in speech therapy, so that the child could hear the word, and then hear the difference in how they pronounce it. (My daughter uses an app in speech therapy called "Articulate" that uses this principle.)  I think for a teacher or a student who is trying to learn another language, like Spanish, it could be used in the same way.  I also love to use music in my classroom, so I think that recording the children singing some of their favorite songs would be a big hit with both the students and their parents.

This week, I explored two tools for use in podcasting - iTunes and AudioBoom.  The benefits to iTunes include the fact that you have, at your fingertips, access to a wealth of knowledge on any subject you care to study.  For myself, there are more education and teacher podcasts that I would love to listen to than I have time.  Another benefit is the search capability.  It is not just a huge mob of podcasts that you have to sift through in order to find something that interests you.  AudioBoom is a new tool that I did not know about.  It has many features that I did not know about.  In regards to education, if you go to the AudioBoom website, click on the "More" drop down menu beside the magnifying glass, and then click on "For Educators" it lists some really great features for teachers and students.  You can give your students a voice.  It lists some exceptional student podcasts.  You can enhance your students' learning experience by giving them some other resources to make their learning come alive.  In a flipped classroom, I can see this as being a very effective tool, as these are some of the resources they can access during home study.  The final feature they list is in regards to professional development which, as I mentioned before, is the main way I currently utilize podcasting.

So, I created my first podcast using iTunes and AudioBoom.  I already had iTunes loaded on my Mac, so it was easy to search "education podcasts".  As an early childhood educator, I often read, watch, and listen to anything coming from the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).  Naturally, I picked one of their podcasts, this one entitled "Early Childhood Education:  The Road Ahead".  Of course, what I want to hear is, "The road ahead is smooth Beth. Jobs galore. Plenty of funding. Everyone recognizes what a critical time birth to Kindergarten is in childhood development, and they appreciate how you support healthy children and engaged families. Everyone knows that so much more is demanded of our elementary students now than in years past, so they understand how crucial it is for children to have a positive educational foundations in pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten."  Nope.  I listened to the podcast, became very depressed, and then recorded a summary of that podcast on AudioBoom for any sympathetic listener to hear.  I have two extremely old computers, and I found that it is important to see beforehand if your operating system supports AudioBoom.  I switched computers and then had absolutely no trouble.  I would recommend this free, easy to use tool to any educator.

listen to ‘iTunes Summary’ on audioBoom