Easily Share Links with Students: Tech Thursday {1/28/15}

Technology Thursday is a weekly linky dedicated to all things technology related. Check out our Linky Parties page for details on how to link up!

Today, I'm excited to share with you how I manage the links for all of the websites we use in my classroom. I don't know about you, but I use a TON of different websites in my class. More often than not, my students need to go to our specific login page, which can be tough to relay to students, since it's usually a pretty long URL.

A few years ago, I learned about a site called PortaPortal, and I was so excited to have a place to save all of the classroom links we use so that my students could just find the right one and click. There was one downside though... I didn't love that the links were text only, when so many of my students are visual learners. 

Enter Symbaloo...

Symbaloo is a totally free site that allows you to save your favorites as icons - much like the smartphone and tablet icons our students are so used to using. 

Symbaloo is easy to set up and add links. Just click an empty tile, paste in your link, and click save. It will even try to automatically pull an image for the website's icon! If you want, you can also edit the title of the link, select an image for the icon, and choose a background color. 

If you need more room that what's shown, you can add more boards or add extra rows and columns to the board. 

The only downside to Symbaloo is actually the fact that it is so easy to move, edit, or delete tiles. This is a great feature for my boards, but it can be a problem in the classroom with students who *occasionally* make mistakes on the computer. Don't worry though, I have the solution for that too!

Weebly...

Weebly allows you to create a totally free website with zero ads and an easy to remember URL. It's super easy to set up a page using their templates, and then embed your Symbaloo page onto it. This way, you can easily update in Symbaloo, and also give students access to links in a format that they can't accidentally delete! 

If you're thinking that you can't make a website, think again! I'm going to walk you right through how to create your site and embed the Symbaloo boards onto it. It's easier than you think!

First, you'll need to select a type of site... 

Next, choose a theme. You will be able to change this later. I recommend looking for a simple layout with wide text areas to allow room for your Symbaloo boards. You can change colors on many of the themes, and can even add your own backgrounds to some. 

Now, it's time to choose your domain. Make it something simple for your students to remember. (Mine is doyle5.weebly.com) There's no need to purchase a domain unless you just want to. 

From here, it's all click, drag, and type! Edit text and images by just clicking on them. Add features by dragging from the left sidebar into the page.  If you have a photo heading like the one shown, and don't like it, you can remove it easily by clicking Pages at the top and changing the page layout to one with a smaller picture or no picture. This is also where you can also add or delete pages.

Embedding your Symbaloo board:

First, on Weebly, drag the "Embed Code" button onto your page wherever you would like it to appear. 

Next, head back to Symbaloo. Click the Share button at the top of the window, and you will see a popup like this: 

Decide if you want it shared publicly or privately (I choose private). Click Share my Webmix, and click Embeded Code. You will see a small popup with a box full of html code. Don't get nervous... they've already done all the work for you. Just select all and click copy. 

Back to Weebly. Click in the box that says "click here to edit custom HTML" and paste in the code you just copied. Click outside the box and watch your Symbaloo board appear! Done! 

I actually keep several different Symbaloo boards going on my site at one time. Feel free to head over and see how it works! My favorite part is that students have easy access to the sites we use at school no matter where they are, as long as they remember the URL. (Which I have printed on labels inside the front cover of their agendas... no excuses, kiddos!)

Students and parents have loved that they can access things so easily and only have to remember one website instead of dozens. I even use it at home to access our classroom sites! (And you might notice that my old PortaPortal site is still there... it has oodles of links that I haven't moved to the Weebly site.)

You can use your Weebly site just as a homepage for your students to jump to other websites, or you can make it a full-fledged classroom website easily with their click & drag interface. I can't say enough about how easy it is, and how much you can do with it! (I am in no way affiliated with Symbaloo or Weebly, I just love their sites!)

So... what technology have you been excited about recently? Link up below and share with us!

   

    An InLinkz Link-up

   

Five for Saturday (10/19/2013)

I had all intentions of posting yesterday, but it just didn't happen. Little guy decided to wake up at 3am Friday morning, and didn't go back to sleep until 4:30. By that point, I was too awake to go back to sleep. It was a long day to say the least, and last night, it was all I could do to stay awake until his bedtime. Hubs and I were both asleep on the couch by 8:30.

Anyway, without further ado, here's my Saturday version of Doodlebugs' Five for Friday.

I popped in Wednesday to let you know that our Walking Classroom kit had arrived. Well, my teammate found out on Thursday that she's getting a set too! We are so excited about getting to start this adventure together, and it makes us both more comfortable walking off school property around the kids' neighborhood since there will be two adults instead of just one. My to-do list this weekend includes getting a pair of comfy shoes to keep at school for those days that I wear heels and we walk. We're going to introduce the program on Monday and hopefully start walking next week (as soon as her kit arrives)!

We got a new assistant principal this week. Having a new administrator in the building is always an uncertain time, but so far, so good! She's popped in a few times to get to know all of us and to see what's going on in our classes.

This was a short week for us, and I had something I really wanted to get done in Language Arts, so we skipped out on mentor sentences. Boy, was I unpopular for that decision! I had no idea after just one week, that my students would be so attached to them! Needless to say, we are back to doing a mentor sentence every week starting on Monday! I've never seen them so excited about ANYTHING in Language Arts before! If you're not already using them, Jivey's Mentor Sentence Units are AMAZING! (Eek! When I went to TPT to grab the link for you, I saw she has an American Revolution Mentor Sentence set too! These will be perfect when we get there in Social Studies in a month or so!)

In science, we worked on our scientific inquiry skills this week. After all the notes and discussions, we did a "guess the mystery item" activity. I passed out 5 boxes, each with a different item inside. Students had to "do" four different things with each box in order to try and determine what was inside. They lifted it to feel the weight, shook it and listened and felt how the item moved, smelled it, and more. They were so creative with how they tried to figure it out, and showed some really good critical thinking skills. I had them asking me all kinds of random questions, like "do you have a cat?" to try and figure out what kinds of items I might have had at home to put in the boxes. It was so much fun, and I HATE HATE HATE that I didn't take any pictures to share with  you!

On Wednesday, we had a parent meeting to explain the concept of our Flipped Classroom, and to tell parents how it's going to work in our classes. (We kind of already started flipping, but we wanted to save the parent meeting until we had figured a few things out!) It went really well, and overall, there was a lot of parent support. If you're flipping and want to see the PowerPoint we used or the letter we sent home to the families who didn't attend the meeting, I'm happy to share them! Just leave a comment, and make sure you're not a no-reply blogger.

Five for Friday

So, I swore I wouldn't let it happen, but it has. I haven't posted in two weeks! Between grad school and school school, it has been super busy! I did want to take time to link up with Doodle Bugs for Five for Friday, though. I took the time I had off this week to get a little ahead in grad school, work on a couple of TPT products, and hang with my favorite little man. 

I am SO excited about my new Duck Dynasty themed math workshop board! I can't wait to get back to school and put it up! My class is crazy about the show, so I'm hoping this gets them excited about math too.

 

I made these 7 Habits posters specifically for upper elementary grades this past summer. The feedback has been great! Apparently I wasn't the only one who wanted some "not too babyish, not too grown" posters for my big kids! After a couple of buyers left feedback about having trouble reading them, I decided to change the backgrounds a little to make them easier to read. 

My teammate and I both ordered custom minis from Teaching in the Tongass, and boy, is she FAST! She sent my mini within a few hours of me sending her the pic. I will mostly be using her on the site where we post our flipped math videos, but I wanted to show her off here too! Isn't she adorable?! 

 

I am so frustrated with PowerPoint right now! My teammate and I made 3 flipped math videos last Friday during our work day. Then PowerPoint started going to a plain white screen with a big red x when I wrote on the screen with the Smart Board markers. It's kind of like the x that shows up in place of missing pictures, but it covers the entire screen. I'll see If I can get it to do it again and post a pic later. Anyone have a clue what's going on or how to fix it?

After 18 months of having an empty dining room, hubs and I are finally buying a dining table! (Long story short...baby boy showed up early, a week after we moved in, then hubs deployed, then there was all this furlough and gov't shutdown mess.) Anyway, furniture shopping is always a pain because we never agree. I've narrowed it down to the first 2, but he's still holding out for the 3rd one. (Don't you love the fall decor they have out!)

  

Head over to Doodle Bugs to link up or to see what everyone else has been up to this week!

Tried It Tuesday: Flipping Math Class!

Hi everyone! I'm linking up with Fourth Grade Flipper for Tried It Tuesday to talk about something I am really excited about trying: Flipping my classroom for math!

For those who don't know, here's "flipping the classroom" in a nutshell:

• The idea is to maximize our use of students' face-to-face time with the teacher in class.
• Typical classes (especially in Math) start with direct instruction from the teacher, then we take a little time to practice together and students do much of the individual practice for homework.
• Flipping the classroom is the idea of switching up the order of events. Students watch a video to introduce the new topic/skill for homework the night before the lesson.
• Then they come into class with notes and questions.
• The teacher can then spend almost the entire class time working with small groups on the skill, because there's no need to repeat the "lecture" or direct instruction portion of the lesson.

Last year, one of my teammates took a class on "flipping" and loved it. I was skeptical. Fast forward to this fall... When we got our new schedules, we found that we really only have 45-50 minutes a day for math, tops. Last year, we had 75, so this meant we needed to radically change the way we were teaching if we wanted to be effective.

My other teammate and I started doing some research, and she started taking the same class. (I'm in grad school already, so I'm skipping out on the formal class for now!) The one thing we both learned through our classes and research is that it is most effective when you video yourself giving the direct instruction, instead of using videos from your curriculum, Khan Academy, Study Jams, etc. I could do a whole blog post on reasons for this, but that can come later on, if there's interest!

The idea of videoing lessons scared me. It seemed time consuming, and I thought I would have to learn new technology. Then I found Katie Gimbar's YouTube videos. She makes it look so easy! Her videos are relatively low-tech, with minimal editing, but they are so effective!

Last week, my teammate and I videoed three math lessons, and created a website for our students to watch them on at home. It took us less than 30 minutes per video, including creating the PowerPoint that we use to show notes while we teach and videoing the entire lesson.

We have now watched two videos in class, and practiced taking notes together. Tonight, my students have their first video homework, so I am both excited and nervous to see how it went when they come in tomorrow!

After the video on Friday, TWO of my students told me that they like my videos much better than the ones we were using before (from our math curriculum). I was surprised because mine lack all of the animation and "fun stuff" that theirs include. I asked them why, and both answers were basically that it's easier to understand, because they're used to the way I teach! Talk about making this teacher's day!

If you're flipping your class, or are interested, I would love to have a teacher buddy to share ideas with!

A Peek at my Week and Saturday Snapshots

I'm linking up twice again today. I'm a day late for Saturday Snapshots (but these were taken Saturday, so it counts, right?) and barely making it for A Peek at My Week. My in-laws are in town, so I've been trying not to be on the computer too much. Easier said than done when  you're in grad school full time!

     

The week ahead is going to be great! We are starting our European Explorers unit, and my teammate found this amazing unit on TPT that *perfectly* matches our standards, and includes everything we could ever need! We're kicking it off tomorrow with a "Search for Gold" (coins) on the playground, if the weather stays nice. After that, we will be making Explorer Journals to keep up with all of the great things we'll be learning.

In Math, we're starting the multiplication chapter, which is usually pretty dull, but I've found some fun resources to incorporate. I'm "training" my kiddos on how to watch learning videos and complete their note-taking sheet for them so that we can *hopefully* start flipping our math class at the beginning of the next chapter. It's something new for me, too, so I'm a little nervous! If you're thinking about flipping, check out Katie Gimbar's YouTube videos.  They've been really helpful in getting started!

In last Sunday's Peek at My Week, I mentioned taking my little man to the zoo this weekend while his grandparents were here. The weather was amazing (75 and sunny!) and we had a great time! We only did half of it before nap time, so we'll definitely be planning another trip. I'll leave you with some pics of my little cutie pie enjoying the animals!

The first place we stopped...he was super excited about these gorgeous birds! I can't remember what they are now...Anyone?

Walkin with Mimi and Mama! I love this pic!

 The new kangaroo exhibit is amazing! You get to walk down a path right beside them, no fences or anything between you and the animals. Sometimes they even come up to you! You can pet them, too, but we didn't wait in the line. Maybe when Little Man is a little older!

 He loved this little bubble that we crawled into to get up close and personal with the meerkats! I was amazed at how close they came to the glass. You can't tell in the picture because of the tree, but there were at least 8-10 of them right around it!

Hope everyone has a wonderful week!