Week 9:Tools of the Week

 This week we focused on GroupMe, Slack, and What's App.  They happened to be tools that I am already fairly familiar with as they are tools used to bring groups together.  My son's swim team uses Slack, his ROTC class uses GroupMe, and my family uses What's App.  Although I'm sure there is always something new to learn on those apps, my mind was focused on Linkedin.  So, I spent time exploring Linkedin, again. I'm about 100% certain I'm not using that as well as I could be.  I learned quite a bit about Linkedin from Danica's Knowledge Sharing and Tracking VoiceThread which inspired me to go out on my own and learn more. I still have a lot to learn!

Miro was something new for me and playing with this sent me in 100 different directions...in a good way. It actually had me wishing my students were not on summer break because I want to play with Miro with my students.  It's described as a communication and project management tool.  So, of course I could use it for concept maps and timeline activities.  There is a place for users to share what they have made and I hit the jackpot! As a teacher in a virtual classroom, classroom management looks quite different than it does in a brick and mortar classroom.  This was definitely something I struggled with when I started teaching online.  I tried to find ways to engage my students while competing with activities in the classroom.  The users on this site have some fantastic ideas! Seeing their ideas has inspired me to create some of my own activities, which I have time to do now since my students are on vacation! Before school ended, my students were all abuzz about the Inside Out 2 movie.  While it would be fun to create something around this theme, I know that could run into some copyright issues. I think it would be ok if I wasn't selling it or sharing it with other Miro users, but I would definitely need to look into that before I created something to use with students.

This activity with the Mario theme could have some copyright issues also, but it looks like so much fun. This is my favorite video game ever!!!!!

The emoji scavenger hunt is so easy and kids LOVE emojis! This one is definitely going into my bag of tricks. I pick an emoji and the kids have to find it. The first one to find it makes up a story using that emoji.  Depending on the ability of my students I might just have them create a sentence rather than a whole story. Now, I immediately thought of the student who would just opt to not find the emoji so they didn't have to make a story or sentence.  An easy solve for this problem is to award badges or points and suddenly it becomes more about getting the most points and less about having to come up with a story.

I also had a great conversation with a friend who is an elementary school principal.  I asked her how they are using tools like Miro in her school.  They do lots of work with thinking maps, but not as digital tools.  A few years ago there was a huge push to have every kid with a device in the classroom. Now, a local district is moving away from that and not allowing devices at all during the school day.  I can see both sides of this coin, but I think there has to be a compromise. Devices in students' hands all day is probably not best for learning. Devices for specific learning activities like creating a digital timeline of a story's events can be powerful.  In my opinion, the all or nothing approach is generally not a great philosophy when it comes to most ideas in education.