Epic! unlimited online children's books

A couple of weeks ago, we were looking for new apps for one of my school iPads when we came across a really neat app! It's available on Andriod, IOS, and the web. Parents and families can subscribe for a monthly fee. The best part...it's FREE for elementary teachers and librarians in the US & Canada!! Yep you read that right, FREE!! 

Now let's discuss exactly what the app is all about...

Epic! is an unlimited online children's book resource. Internet connection is needed to stream the books, but they can be saved for offline reading as well. It is designed for ages 12 and under. There are thousands of books available, and they continue to add hundreds of new titles each week! 

The Epic! library includes picture books, chapter books, comic books, non-fiction books, and junior novels from leading publishers including HarperCollins and National Geographic. There's also a huge selection of titles with audio read by some of the industry's most talented narrators. 

Educators can have up to 36 students per account. You can set up preferences and track student progress. Accounts can be synced to multiple devices (including each child's progress). Kids can unlock badges and rewards. It gives extra motivation and allows them to customize the look and feel of the app. 

Promise we're not being paid to rave about this app...we just really love it!

Wired Wednesday: Adding a Poll on Blogger

I'm working on putting together several tutorials so let us know if you want to learn how to do something in particular! Here's a tutorial for you! Today, I'm going to show you how to add a poll to your blog sidebar! 

Blogger has a built-in poll gadget. I personally prefer using Polldaddy. You can sign up for a free account!

Or if you happen to already have an account (or a Wordpress account) simply sign in.

Once you've signed up/signed in, your dashboard will come up. 

Click "create a new.." and choose "poll".

Now it's time to type your question and options! 

Scroll to the bottom and set up the advance settings. Click "Create Poll."

Now, it's time to choose the style of your poll gadget and the size. Because I use them in the sidebar, I choose to to use the 'micro' style and 'narrow' size. Click "Save Style Settings."

You're ready to get your gadget! Copy the code. 

Now it's time to go to Blogger...go to your layout settings. Click "Add a Gadget."

Scroll down and choose HTML/JavaScript.

Paste the code you copied into the box. If you want to center your poll within your sidebar add the <center></center> tags around the code. Save it!

Decide where on your sidebar you want the poll to show up and rearrange if desired. Be sure to click "Save Arrangement" if you moved your gadgets around.

Finally, it's time to view your blog and make sure everything is exactly how you want it! You can see the one I created in this tutorial on the left side! This poll will be up for a while so be sure to vote and tell us your favorite part of "Back to School."

We also have a poll on the right side. Now as our reader, you can vote on "Next week on Wired Wednesday..." This poll will close at midnight on Mondays and be refreshed each week. The topic with the most votes will appear that Wednesday. So be sure to vote before midnight Monday (7/15) on our topic for next week's Wired Wednesday post!

Hope you find this tutorial super easy! If you have any questions just comment below, and I'll help you out! 

Wired Wednesday

Wednesday already? Manda and I went to the pool to lay out (and to swim of course) while Lil Man was at dance camp. It's been such a pretty day!

Well I'm feeling kind of defeated when it comes to Wired Wednesday. I really want to add a page bar across the top of our blog with drop down menus. I stayed up until 2am trying to get it to work. My plan was to get it all set up and then blog about it for our Wednesday post. But as you can see ^^ it didn't happen. So I don't really have a post for you today :(

I'm off to try and figure it out though. If you have drop down menus on your blog or know how to add them to blogger, I'd love your help!

Also, be on the look out for a poll to be posted towards the top of the page in the sidebar. I'm going to create a "Next week on Wired Wednesday..." poll and let our readers vote!

Wired Wednesday: Blogging for Kiddos

Wow! Can you believe it is already Wednesday?! I feel like this week has flown by! Manda is home with us today so everyone is happy! Lil Man and I are super excited to share today's post with you!    

**Disclaimer: bare with us this post got a little long winded!**

 

 Last week Lil Man was watching some videos on Brain Pop Jr. He watched one about blogs. Unfortunately, unless you have a subscription to Brain Pop Jr., you won't be able to watch the video. You can read a little about it on the page though. Basically, the video tells you what a blog is (web log), describes some types of blogs (general topics, specific subjects, personal, photo, travel, news, etc.), explains the parts of a blog (title, author/contributors, posts, tags, comments, archive, links, pages, etc), shares ways to participate in blogs (writing and publishing posts, including photos and/or videos, and reading and commenting on others' blogs), and shares a little about safety with blogs (not sharing personal info).

Later in the afternoon after watching the video, he made a comment about blogs. We told him that we have blogs that we post on (this one and personal one). He made the comment that he could start a blog. We didn't think much of it at the time, but since then, while we've been working on blog posts for here, he's made other comments.

Yesterday, we were discussing topics for upcoming weeks and he made a comment, "I could make a blog and talk about my family, things we do, and being a dancer." Mind you, he is 7 years old and doesn't really enjoy writing...so this idea is both scary and intriguing at the same time! We've always had the thought that we would like to have classroom blogs so we decided that this would be a great experience for him and us!

I spent some time researching last night about how to help him set up his blog. What he needed to know, what I needed to know, and any information I could find really. I just wasn't sure where to start with him. I actually watched the Brain Pop Jr. video myself so I would know exactly what it had talked about (hence the notes from above). I found a great Blogging Rules printable from Scholastic. I also read a blog post 14 Steps to Meaningful Student Blogging, which is of course directed to teachers getting ready to blog with their students, but I definitely got some ideas.

So then it was time to sit down with Lil Man and get him started!

We discussed about some rules:
    --Only use your first name
    --Don't put the name of your school or dance studio
    --Don't put the name of the apartment complex
    --Don't give any personal contact info (email, phone number, or address)

Then we talked about some things that he can talk about on his blog. He was having a hard time coming up with what to say so we made a circle map:

Then we sat down and wrote out his first post (I had to write because he started tearing up when he realized we were going to write it on paper. Told you he doesn't like writing; it's a big weakness we're working on.) We also helped him come up with a catchy blog title.

Then I sat down with him at the computer and set it all up. I let him choose all the fonts, background, and everything. Then he sat down and typed what we had written. 

We're excited to help him get started. We all talked about some ideas for posts for him to do. We'll keep you updated on how his blog is going! If you'd like to visit, just click the screen shot above!

QR Codes

**Sorry I thought I had scheduled this to post, but somehow missed it.**

With all the advancing technology we as teachers have to stay up to date. I for one love technology in the classroom! I also love student-directed learning whenever possible. Have you seen products/resources with QR codes? Have you used them in your classroom?

I've used QR codes once with my 2nd grade kiddos. They loved being able to check themselves when they completed the task cards! Unfortunately, we only had my personal tablet to use so it was a little harder than I would have liked.

We'd love to hear some of the awesome ways you've incorporated QR codes in your classroom!

If you have any great TpT products that use QR codes please share and we'll promote them too!

~Steph

Student Response Systems

 

During my student teaching I had the opportunity to learn about and implement the use of ActivExpressions from Promethean. I loved using them with my fifth graders because I could do multiple choice, true/false, and short response! They are so expensive though! In my EIP room, I have ActiVotes which allow me to do multiple choice and true/false. This is a great tool, but sometimes I just would like a little more. The school won't purchase the ActivExpressions because they opted for iPads (5-6 per classroom). Well thanks to a 2nd grade teacher I work with, I have been introduced to a new technology tool, Socrative. I love it and wanted to share it with our readers. I got to see it in action yesterday in his classroom. It is a student response system the is completely internet based. There are apps that you can download for Apple or Android, but you don't have to. Teachers simply log in to their virtual classroom on t.socrative.com and set it up. Then you have your students log in on m.socrative.com to participate. You can use any device (computer, tablets, smartphones, iPod Touch, etc) that has a web browser. When you're finished with the activity you can print the results or have them emailed to you. I'm so excited to get to start using this tool! Check it out and let us know what you think! Have you used it before? Do you have a similar tool you'd like to share?

~Steph

Making Clipart

Hey guys sorry Tech Wiz Wednesday is a bit late this week. I hope everyone is enjoying their week. On Tuesday I asked everyone to tell me about there favorite product on Tpt. Now I want to ask about making clipart. Many of you guys make clipart for your products and I want to learn how to do this. I have played around with some basic things. I want to do some more detailed clipart. I was wondering if anyone wanted to share their knowledge about making clipart? Does anyone have a video or directions that they found helpful?
Most the time we use our Tech Wiz Wednesday to inform everyone about something with technology. This week I wanted everyone else to help with the information. :)
Thanks in advance for your help!
~Manda

How to Make a Glogster

Since we have finished up our series on podcast we figured we would talk a little more about one of our topics from the series, Glogster. Like we talked about, this is a great alternative to the usual poster board. This week I thought I would share a video I made in school that explains how to make a Glogster and shows some of the key features.

Hope you enjoy and learn something new! :)

~Steph

 

Podcast pt. 6: Skype & Google Earth

Hey everyone! Sorry we're a day late again; state testing is so draining! This is our final "episode" to our Podcast blog "series". This week we are talking about Skype and Google Earth.

What Steph has to say:
So my last topic for our Podcast series is Skype. I really like the idea of using Skype in the classroom to connect students with others outside our class. You could take pen pals to the next level with Skype by having your students "meet" and talk to their pal on Skype. Collaborative projects with other students/classes/schools would be a great opportunity as well. I also like the idea of using it to interview people. For instance, maybe you've done a huge author study and love the idea of being able to have your students meet the author. Well let's face it, authors travel and work all over the place...so see if the author would be willing to set up a Skype meeting with the class! Like I also said, this could be a great tool to communicate with families outside of school. Have a student who can't come to school, but the family wants to help the student stay caught up on work. If you were to use Skype, you could talk with the student and help them if they needed instruction in order to complete it at home. These are just some of the ways I can think of to use Skype in the classroom. Have you ever used Skype in your class? What other ways can it be used?


What Manda has to say:

My last topic for our Podcast series is Google Earth. I have loved using Google Earth in the classroom. I have used it several times to take my students on a virtual field trip. When teaching a pre-k class about their city, I tagged several important places in our town. We then "visited" and discussed the different things in our town. I also used it to show them the difference in their town, state, and country. I have also used it to show students places that we are discussing in history. I like being able to give the students a visual of things that we would never be able to show them otherwise. It is so cool to be able to let students "visit" so many places we would never be able to actually take them to. Have you used Google Earth in class? If so What have you done with it? 

FYI: On our Facebook page, we are about 7 likes from doing our 3 giveaways! If you haven't 'liked' our page yet be sure to and feel free to share with friends and colleagues!

~Steph & Manda

Podcasts pt.4: Blogs & Wiki

What Steph has to say:
I love blogs! I have always enjoyed posting to and reading blogs, even the old Myspace and Live Journal kind when I was younger in school. Blogs in the classroom sound like an amazing opportunity to have your students write (about anything, whether it's a teacher given topic or individually chosen topic). It gives those students who "hate" writing but LOVE being on the computer a new medium to write on.

Yes, blogs are more informal and should not be your only medium for writing in the classroom, but it opens so many doors. Students could comment on classmate's blog posts and so can the teacher. Depending on the nature of the post it could be discussions with thoughts and feelings about the post or it could be constructive criticism for a piece that is to be published in another medium.

I love having this blog. I hope to someday have my students write blogs, like writing journals. I would also like to have a blog "writing journal" with my students. I even love the idea of having a blog to share things we do in our classroom and communicate with the students' family at home.

What Manda has to say:
In my podcast I discussed Wiki Spaces and the ways they could be used in a classroom. As a teacher I would love to have a space for students and their parents to access info about my class from home. I would love to have that available for parents to stay involved in what their kids are doing. I would use it to communicate with parents as well as post reminders of upcoming school events. I would also love for my students to make their own wiki and use it for assignments and communication with classmates. I think it is important to give students the chances to work with technology since it is such a huge part of our world.

Do you use wikispaces in your classroom? Do you use a website or blog to communicate with parents?


~Steph & Manda

Podcast pt.3: Digital/Video Cameras & Computers

Here's our Thursday edition of Tech Wiz Wednesday. Sorry it's a day late, life caught up with us. Trying to transition back into routine has proved to make for a tough routine! 

Our Tech Wiz Wednesday this week is part 3 of our Podcast series. This week we're going to focus digital and video cameras and computers. If you missed the first week's post head on over to read about (and hear) our Podcasts.

What Steph has to say...
Cameras have so many great uses in the classroom. Students can use digital cameras to collect data, evidence, and material for research projects. Teachers can use digital cameras to document student progress. Of course it's always fun to have lots of pictures of your kiddos too! Video cameras are great for filming skits, commercials, and other presentations. This is another great medium for student presentations.

What Manda has to say...
On my podcast I start off by talking about Computers and their importance in a classroom. As teachers we all know how beneficial computers can be. They are a great way to get students exploring their own questions and I want students to be able to tell their classmates about what they find. It is important to have computers for students in a classroom. Computers have become such a part of everyday life I think it is important for students to have access to them at school. Teachers can use computers in so many ways. Whether students are researching, typing, or even taking assessments the computers are a great technology to have in a classroom. What is your favorite things to use computers for in your classroom?

Thanks for bearing with us!

 ~Steph & Manda 

Podcasts pt.2: Tablets, iPads, and Smartphones

It's Wednesday!! We're super excited it's already Wednesday because tomorrow we leave for Pensacola, FL to see our beautiful niece Cadence (Cady-bug) who was born March 5th!

Meet Cady-bug!

Steph also started her long term subbing today!! It's a very exciting week around here! 

On to what you came for...Our Tech Wiz Wednesday this week is part 2 of our Podcast series. This week we're going to focus on tablets, iPads, and smartphones (in the classroom, of course). If you missed last week's post head on over to read about (and hear) our Podcasts.

What Steph has to say...

As I mentioned in my podcast, I feel like we could turn the whole ban against cell phones around and use them to our advantage. We used Poll Everywhere in college classes, and I think it could be very useful and engaging for students. Poll Everywhere doesn't need a smartphone just a plain cell phone with text capability. When it comes to smartphones, there are so many free apps out there for all platforms.

But like I said not all your students will have cell phones/smartphones. So for portable connectivity tablets are great!

Now of course while having a 1:1 ratio of tablets to students would be a dream come true it's just not likely. The school where I'm subbing has purchased iPads for the classrooms. In the younger grades there's one per class (for the teacher mostly) and in the older grades there's 4-5 per class. Another dream would be to have 3G/4G connectivity (with the 1:1 ratio), so that like some school districts who pass out laptops like text books, schools could pass out tablets/iPads and students could have connectivity everywhere they go. This would mean all students would have access to the internet at home! An expensive dream...

Our school district is actually allowing students to bring technology devices from home (with a contract signed by teacher, parent, and student). Having any access to tablets/iPads is great in the classroom for so many reasons though. There are so many free apps you can use. These devices open so many doors in the classroom!

What Manda has to say...

In my podcast I talked about iPads and how useful they could be in a Science class. I also want to discuss how they can be used in any content area. iPads are a great classroom tool for students at any age. The greatest thing is their portability. Students can use them at their desk, in the floor, or even outside the classroom. If you were able to have one for each student you would not be confined to a classroom. I also discussed how great it would be to have a classroom blog. This would be great to have discussions with other people. A classroom blog could help with your students working together or it could allow them to work with people that are far away. I think that these would be an excellent technology advancement in any classroom. 

~Steph & Manda

Podcasts

For our first edition of Tech Wiz Wednesday, we've decided to share something we created in one of our classes our last summer in college. For our online technology class we were assigned to create a "TechCast". It just had to be a podcast (audio), but we both decided to add video to ours. The assignment asked us to discuss 5 top technology resources we could use in our future classrooms. Not only did we enjoy researching the technology to talk about, but we really enjoyed making the podcasts in general. We both could see using podcasts in our classroom as well! Think about those students who just can't stand having to get up there and present in front of the class...let them record a podcast! Or you could stick with the true meaning from which podcast was derived and have "episodes" for different subjects/assignments.

This week we're going to share just our podcasts. Over the next 5 weeks we're going to discuss each of our technology tools a little more.

Here's Steph's TechCast:

Here's Manda's TechCast:

 

 Did you enjoy our podcasts? Could you see using podcasts in your class, either by you or your students? Would you like to know how to make a podcast (with and without video)?

~Steph & Manda