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All Hands on Pear Deck!

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As teachers, we can all agree on a universal truth: teaching can be overwhelming. Working in a school means more than instructing students. We have meetings, cleaning, preparing, and anything else that we put on our plates. For example, not only do I teach fourth grade, but I am also the auxiliary sponsor for the band and serve on a school-based committee on raising funds. I don’t say that to brag but to reiterate that teaching is overwhelming. That being said, we need to take every opportunity to make our jobs easier. One of my favorite resources is Pear Deck. With Pear Deck, I can supplement my lesson plans with previously prepared content. Not only that, but Pear Deck helps to organize my lesson plans. By selecting a content area, I can choose materials that can be turned into an interactive PowerPoint that I can utilize in my classroom. Additionally, I can select words for our vocabulary, and Pear Deck will create sets for my students. From there, my students can assemble definit...
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Blooket!

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How do we keep learning interesting? We are in a time where we can have anything and everything sent to our front door within two business days. Not only that, but our entertainment comes from an app full of thirty-second videos that we can scroll through endlessly. So how do we as educators compete with what our students find entertaining? If you can’t beat them, join them! Gamification in the classroom has become an ever-growing and prevalent portion of learning. Making games out of classic learning or giving out awards for high scores in trivia are common in all age groups. However, websites such as Blooket have made learning competitive and fun for my students! Blooket allows the teacher to search for a certain topic and series of questions. After this, Blooket offers various different games that put students head to head. Students can answer questions to earn points, rewarding the top three players. Blooket also has similar battle royale games where students are eliminated, ur...
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Symba-who???

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Organization has always been a struggle in my life. I have items shipped to multiple places, my inbox is full of subscriptions, and I am lucky to find matching socks when I do laundry! I know that we have all been there. However, I am proud to say that I keep my classroom and learning as organized as possible.  That being said, I would love to share about a project we completed in my elementary technology class. Symbaloo is a cloud-based homepage where you can set and bookmark certain websites for frequent use. I have a personal Symbaloo for all of my work-related websites and logins, making it easy to navigate my responsibilities in the morning. For example, a classroom of students might have a Symbaloo that has all their learning and assessment websites all on one, easy-to-navigate page. Not only that, but you can have multiple Symbaloos next to each other, separated by subject. This makes learning THAT much easier for the students. If they have free time, they even have a Symb...
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Prodigy in my Classroom!

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 As we are getting close to the beginning of the school year, I often find myself at the school. In addition to getting my classroom ready and painting the elementary school, I am also involved with the high school. My boyfriend is the band director at the high school that is on-campus with my elementary school and I help out with the flutes and color guard. The band started their rehearsals this week and it’s shaping up to be a good season! Being in a different teaching environment is very eye-opening at times. Not only is the band a different subject area completely, but it also has more, higher grades than what I am used to teaching. Further, the technology he uses in his classroom is much different than what we use at the elementary school. He focuses on tools such as metronomes and tuners for the students while keeping everything organized on his MacBook. He admits that he does not utilize resources online like he should, but he says that he will try harder this year to keep...
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What is Technology?

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What a crazy week! We finally have some more things moved into my classroom, but it still looks like a disaster. I am helping with my school’s band camp for the next two weeks and working a second job. There just doesn’t feel like there is enough time in the summer to get everything done! However, I am finishing up my trainings and will have a little bit more freedom moving into August for the start of school! Speaking of training, I must share my experiences with AMSTI from the past week! It was such a fun time and I am very eager to integrate all forms of technology into my classroom this year. Last week, I drove from Haleyville to Russellville every morning for a week to learn about the science and technology portions of AMSTI. During the training, we learned about dams, aqueducts, solar power, and electricity, and I even got to build my own fan with paper, a Styrofoam cup, wires, and batteries! Although it’s not all the same technology that we are talking about in class, I thin...
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FlipGrid!

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 It’s already next time! I had some thoughts on the projects that we had done in class and wanted to share my experiences. Further, I wanted to share how I might utilize these within the classroom. It may not be listed as a project, but our FlipGrid assignment is most definitely something that I could see using in fourth grade. Firstly, I LOATHE videoing myself. I don’t know if it’s personal or generational, but the idea of videoing myself and submitting it for a grade makes my stomach do more somersaults than Simone Biles. Part of me wants to blame it on the lack of proper technology integration when I was in primary and secondary classes. Even my undergraduate courses did not have me do anything like this. However, if we can help our students to feel more comfortable with these aspects of learning, they stand a better chance of properly using technology when they are older. Zoom calls are becoming the norm in businesses, and even our social lives are moving from text to video...
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So What Next?

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Hey everyone! What a week! I am currently moving into a new classroom on campus AND diving into as much training as I can get done before school starts. As the only fourth-grade teacher on campus, I have to be trained in a multitude of areas. You can probably imagine how busy it has been. (This also explains my late posting!)                                                  As I am getting my classroom ready for my twenty-three kiddoes, I cannot help but think about how to set up my classroom in the most learning-friendly environment. Not only am I considering the layout of my room, but the learning that will happen within its walls. How will I use the technology available to me? Is my SMART Board in the right place? Will we use Chromebooks as much as we did in the fourth grade? More or less? How can I better utilize Chromebooks and th...
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