In today’s world, the topic of using technology in the classroom can be intimidating. In this monthly column, join one teacher on a quest to discover the best way to meet the needs of her digital-age learners…moving beyond the technology tools to focusing on supporting each student’s learning.

I know that writing instruction can strike fear in the hearts of many educators. I think many teachers wonder, “Do I have to be a strong writer in all genres to teach my students how to write?” Although I feel like teachers who write become more confident in leading their students through writing projects, and they understand better the perspective of a student who is composing a piece of writing, there is no way we can become true experts in all genres.

There is great news though—there are people who get paid to write and publish in each genre. They are the true experts. After all, we are the ones who need to lead our students to the resources and experiences that will strength their scope of learning. These texts become mentors for our students to study, analyze, and emulate throughout their writing experiences. These are real texts, not something merely generated for one particular lesson. As one of my students said, “These people are the best at what they do. If we learn from them and write the way that they do, we become experts too.”

The first time my students wanted to create opinion editorials, I really had to do some digging to find some age-appropriate—yet still authentic—ones to share with them. Once I found my mentor texts, the challenge that I faced was that although I usually could find physical, hard copies of mentor texts for my classroom, students often gravitated to a particular one throughout the writing process. If a peer had that one text, the others would have to wait to look at it while a peer was using it. And as classroom teachers, we know how “creative” students can become while they are waiting for something. Also, many of them would want to write at home and wouldn’t be able to have access to all of the texts while they are writing.

How do we put high-quality mentor texts into the hands of our writers, provide accessibility to these resources, and keep the writing momentum going? The answer comes in the form of a digital tool called LiveBinders. LiveBinders is just what its name says; it’s a digital three-ring binder that organizes all of your resources neatly and easily online. To begin using LiveBinders, you need to sign up for a free account. Then you can begin creating binders on any topic.

My students expressed an interest in publishing poetry for a collaborative project in which they were engaged with peers across the country. Different students wanted to learn different types of poetry. We began by creating a poetry binder. Within that binder, we created different tabs for the different forms of poetry that my students were interested in writing. Then, under each tab, we could put the different online resources and mentor texts that we found for that topic.

That’s one of the features that’s great about LiveBinders—it organizes all of your links into one organized place so that students aren’t surfing all over the Internet. The webpages are now in your binder as a “page” so that students can study the mentor texts right there. You can even add a “LiveBinder It” bookmark tool onto your web browser’s toolbar so that when you (or your students) find a mentor text, you can easily capture it and add it to your binder, which is easily organized by tabs and subtabs.

Another great feature of LiveBinders is that you aren’t limited to just adding webpages to your binders. You can upload images, Word documents, and PDFs as well. You can combine your resources into one place, giving your students accessibility to these resources from any device that has Internet access. Every time we are using mentor texts and writing in new genres, I have students who find additional texts that they want to share with their peers demonstrating to me that they really understand the importance of finding high-quality resources, and they have a clear understanding of the characteristics of different genres. With LiveBinders, you can have access and the ability to edit from any device seamlessly. There is also a free app available on the iPad if any students have those at home or you have these devices available to use in your classrooms.

As educators, we know that the more we connect with fellow teachers, the more information, insight, and resources we learn to enhance our lessons with our students. LiveBinders knows that as well. With a LiveBinder, you have the ability to invite other educators to have access to your binder to add additional resources. While we were working on our poetry project, I connected with another teacher who was also teaching poetry. I gave her editing rights to our poetry binder and she was able to add her resources to our binder providing her writers, as well as my writers, a greater collection of mentor texts to enhance their own writing.

So the next time your students express an interest in writing and creating in a mode that you may not feel a high degree of confidence about, remember to look to the experts, the ones that can provide guidance and mentoring through their own writing. With LiveBinders, you can provide all of your students access to all of their mentors organized easily in one place…their digital binder.

Are you a fan of Plugged In? Come see Julie D. Ramsay present a session on collaborating in class and online at IRA’s 58th Annual Convention, April 19-22, 2013, in San Antonio, Texas.

Julie D. Ramsay is a Nationally Board Certified educator, a fifth grade teacher in a student-driven classroom, and the author of “CAN WE SKIP LUNCH AND KEEP WRITING?”: COLLABORATING IN CLASS & ONLINE, GRADES 3-8 (Stenhouse, 2011). She travels the country to speak, present, and facilitate workshops in applying technology to support authentic learning. Read her blog at juliedramsay.blogspot.com.



Teaching Tips: A Peek Inside—Digital Tools that Empower

App, App, and Away...Creating a Class of Superheroes, Recording Artists, and Famous Athletes

In today’s world, the topic of using technology in the classroom can be intimidating. In this monthly column, join one teacher on a quest to discover the best way to meet the needs of her digital-age learners…moving beyond the technology tools to focusing on supporting each student’s learning.

These days, we’re finding more and more webinars, workshops, articles, blogs, and discussions on the subjects of apps for the classroom. The conversation is everywhere. I must admit that when iPads were first released, I was not one of the teachers who immediately jumped on board. It seemed to me to primarily be a consumer-driven product. Meaning, our students would simply be consuming information instead of becoming producers. I think all of us can agree that a worksheet (or a textbook) on an iPad (even though it’s digital) is still just a worksheet. It doesn’t raise the thinking levels of our students. It doesn’t truly engage them any more or produce critical thinkers. Isn’t that what we want for all of our students—to problem solve, analyze, synthesize, and create something new to enhance the learning of others?

However, educators and app designers quickly saw the need to change the types of apps being designed in order to promote high-level thinking in students of all ages. Then we started to see apps that promoted students being producers of content and not solely consumers. This was when I purchased an iPad for my class. (Before you can say, “There’s no way I can afford that in my classroom,” I just want to remind you that there are all kinds of grants out there where you can get the funds to purchase one. I got a grant for ours. It is in use all the time in our classroom.)

I wanted to share with you three apps that can get you and your students started publishing with your iPad, using it to its fullest potential while fostering creativity and higher-level thinking. My fifth graders enjoy using each of these apps when publishing. Although each project can stand on its own, my learners design and create their projects and publish them as part of a larger project on other tools like Weebly, wikis, Prezi, Museum Box, or Voice Thread.

ComicBook! ($1.99 available on Apple or Android devices)

What student doesn’t love creating his/her own comic book? This app is extremely user friendly. The user has the ability to create their own comic book using photos taken on the device. My students enjoy creating their own images and then photographing them for their comic. The app provides the user with different filters for the photos to make them look like the artwork in comic books as well as adding borders, captions, stickers, and graphics within different layouts. The finished product can be saved as a JPEG (image) or PDF making it easy to embed into other tools. You can also share it through email, Twitter, or Facebook.

Although all of my students enjoy using ComicBook!, it is a tool that I have found particularly useful when working with my students who have English as a second language or who are struggling writers. Because it’s not text-heavy, they are able to reach a high level of success in telling a story or sharing an idea by using this app while building a strong foundation in writing and communicating ideas. Being able to create something that their audience will learn from and enjoy gives them the confidence and experience to successfully publish and tackle a more challenging project the next time.

Songify (free; available on Apple or Android devices)

I think every person, at some point in their lives, has imagined being able to perform music live, whether we try out for America Idol or sing into our hairbrushes. We can ignite that feeling for our students with Songify, even if they struggle with carrying a tune. In Songify, the user can record their normal speaking voice and then select the beat or sound that they want. Then the app auto-tunes it and creates a song for them to share with the world.

We discovered this app when my student, Kearston (see last month’s column), decided she wanted to take a poem that she had written as part of her Scientific Method project. Her poem was beautiful, but she expressed to me that she wanted it to be extra special … “you know, like a song.” At that time, we didn’t have an iPad, but I had found this app on my iPhone and downloaded it. She went into the hallway and within a matter of a few minutes had published her song. Everyone was sure that her song was destined to become a top 40 hit. Until that time, my writers began publishing different writing projects in this format. One student loved it so much, he brought in an iTunes gift card and bought the additional soundtracks for the class to enjoy. Now all of my students can become recording artists by writing and recording with Songify.

ReadWriteThink Trading Cards (free; available for iPad)

In addition to becoming a superhero or a world famous recording artist, many of our students dream of becoming famous athletes. Trading cards speak directly to that interest. Much like the ComicBook app, this provides users with the opportunity to create a project that it not text-heavy, but still displays an interesting way to share information. They learn the power of summarizing and selecting the most important thing to write within their limited space.

This week my students were exploring cells. They used the trading cards to create different parts of the cell. This gave them the opportunity to explore a topic from a different perspective, synthesize what they knew, and create something new to share with their peers. With RWT’s Trading Cards, students can use existing photos, or take new ones. My students chose to draw their images and then photograph them. Once they completed their cards, we saved it as a photo and then uploaded it to our class’ science wiki, but students can send them through email or print them. One of my learners commented that it would be cool to be able to embed it into another tool so that you could still have the flipping animation to see both sides instead of just a photo. They are already formulating some ideas of different ways they can put this app to good use.

When you think about using your iPad (or tablet) in your classroom, ask yourself whether or not an app gives your students the ability to reach beyond being consumers and promote them being producers of high quality content. Each of these apps has applications across content areas and age levels. Their imagination is free to explore and publish. Until our students become a superhero, recording artist, or famous athlete, with these apps, we can tap into our learners’ interests while promoting a unique way for them to create and publish their writing.

Looking at these apps, many of us probably already had our students creating some of these activities on paper. But, with technology, we can differentiate the writing instruction to meet their needs and they can now produce, edit, and share their writing with a larger audience much quicker, leaving them time to focus on their next great publishing adventure.

Julie D. Ramsay is a Nationally Board Certified educator, a fifth grade teacher in a student-driven classroom, and the author of “CAN WE SKIP LUNCH AND KEEP WRITING?”: COLLABORATING IN CLASS & ONLINE, GRADES 3-8 (Stenhouse, 2011). She travels the country to speak, present, and facilitate workshops in applying technology to support authentic learning. Read her blog at juliedramsay.blogspot.com.



An App Stop on Their Learning Journey

Global Read Aloud- Character Trading Cards

In today’s world, the topic of using technology in the classroom can be intimidating. In this monthly column, join one teacher on a quest to discover the best way to meet the needs of her digital-age learners…moving beyond the technology tools to focusing on supporting each student’s learning.

When we look at today’s students, it’s easy to recognize that the way that they spend their time has changed. With the constant influx of information and communication, they are more plugged in to the world around them than ever before. Our learners crave the ability to create and design something new to share with others. As we are thinking about them, it’s crucial for us to give them the opportunity to share their learning in a way that’s meaningful to them. How many of us can remember the projects or reports that we did in school? I can clearly see the to-scale model that I built of Stonehenge and the accompanying report that I read to my peers. I also remember the mobile I created of the solar system (which hung in my bedroom long after the project date). I worked for hours on both of those projects. I can still see them in my head. We all have memories such as these…but are these really the kind of projects that our students need to be creating?
As I’ve reminisced with other educators, there is one common theme. All of these were “about” projects—projects that just dealt with the sharing of facts. Was there any really deep learning happening? No. Were we creating, analyzing, or synthesizing information? No again.

With our students, there isn’t going to be much appeal to “tell” about a topic because they are already using the tools to which they have access to create, communicate, and collaborate.

And we need to bring them into our classrooms.

Today, when students are researching, they are building background knowledge. That’s where most of us stopped with our projects. Their research produces text, blogs, videos, podcasts, interviews, and webinars. Many times, they can contact an expert over Skype. They have so many different mediums at their disposal.

Photo: ba1969

Yet, what do they do with all of it? They want to take all of this research and then create something new to share with their audience. Often I have students who want to create multiple projects on their topic and put them into one place to publish. This can very easily become overwhelming. Where does it all go?

Last school year, I had a student, Kearston, who was very creative. She wanted to create multiple small projects on her theme of the Scientific Method (a topic my students chose to dig deeper into and publish for the collaborative partners all across the country). That’s when we started using a tool called Museum Box. It’s a tool where students can create multiple three dimensional boxes within a virtual drawer. On each side of the box, a different type of medium can be placed.

Although Museum Box is a free tool, you do have to register an account. They will check to make sure you are a classroom teacher before your account is accessible. It only took about two business days for the approval of my account.

As the teacher, then you can add your students, who can then begin creating their own boxes. Anything students create must be approved by the teacher before their Museum Boxes are accessible for others to view, giving you control over what is published. Each drawer can have up to three levels, and each level can have up to eight six-sided cubes. That’s a lot of space for content. Learners can add text, graphics, audio, video, and URLs.

Kearston created a couple of Vokis because as she researched the history of the Scientific Method, she learned the importance of Aristotle and Sir Francis Bacon, which she felt was crucial for her audience to understand her topic. She also wrote a poem, which she published as a song using an app called Songify (available for iPhone, iPad, and Android). She included photos, a joke, fun resources, her own science lab, a Wordle, writing, and graphics. Kearston curated the best resources she found and added them to her own creations to share with her audience. By providing her with a tool that supported her learning, her final project was an amazing 48-item resource that she created and curated (be sure to click on each box to see each of the six sides).

As amazing as her final project was, it didn’t come without a few hiccups along the way. When students are trying to manage content, the sheer amount of what they collect and then create can quickly get out of hand. We learned that for this to be successful, like any other project, it required some planning. Kearston realized that much of what she created fell into categories. She grouped like items together onto the same box. You’ll notice that a majority of what she included in her Museum Box was created by her, extending her learning beyond that “about” stage of the project. She only included additional resources where she felt they would improve upon the learning of her audience.

So as your students start digging into building background knowledge, moving beyond the “about” to create projects with higher order thinking, remember that sometimes, the solution to our publishing challenges can really be inside the box—especially if it’s a Museum Box.

Julie D. Ramsay is a Nationally Board Certified educator, a fifth grade teacher in a student-driven classroom, and the author of “CAN WE SKIP LUNCH AND KEEP WRITING?”: COLLABORATING IN CLASS & ONLINE, GRADES 3-8 (Stenhouse, 2011). She travels the country to speak, present, and facilitate workshops in applying technology to support authentic learning. Read her blog at juliedramsay.blogspot.com.