Christmas Product Review!

So, I decided I'd like to do a post to review some of my newly acquired goodies I received (or bought myself) for Christmas. Warning: many of these items will not be directly related to teaching and you may learn that I am an even bigger nerd than you originally thought!


I will try to put my amazon affiliate link for products that were purchased or found on amazon, you can click the pictures to find them on amazon when available.

I got my husband a Nintendo Switch, but to be honest, I've been playing it like crazy. We used the trade in program at GameStop to get our Switch. We traded in our Nintendo Wii, remotes, games, etc.

I really enjoy the game Stardew Valley, where you are on a farm and have to work to build up your farm and complete challenges. This is also available for Xbox and Playstation 4. The creator of the game is always working on new game content and has almost completed some adjustments to make it multiplayer. (I follow the creator, Concerned Ape on Twitter).  I love that with the Switch I can play with it connected to the TV, but if someone needs to use the TV you can then take it off the stand and play on the smaller screen that is on the Switch itself. It basically combines all the joys of a bigger gaming device like the Wii or Xbox with the convenience of a DS. You can play in the bed, in the car, outside, etc. The multiplayer use is also fun. My husband and I have enjoyed playing Portal Knights together in the multiplayer mode and Mario Kart. I'm super excited to see that lots of games are schedule to come out in 2018 including Toe Jam and Earl!

So, I know many of you probably bought a Switch for you child. I am going to suggest that you take some time to play a game on it, you may actually like it!

If you do have a Switch or your child does, I highly recommend getting a screen protector. 

I am loving my warm comfy Columbia jacket. Amazon has lots of colors. My husband bought me the the Nocturnal color. Nocturnal is in between purple, gray,  and navy blue. 

During Black Friday I was able to grab up the JBL 3. I like have a speaker that my Alexa dot can hook up to automatically (after you've done it once, she remembers and does it each time). I have an older version at work the JBL 2+ and honestly, I haven't noticed much of a difference between the two. So, if you find an older version on sale, I think you would be fine and enjoy it just the same.

I use mine to listen to music while cleaning or listen to an audio book.

The one thing I do like about my new one is that I bought the teal version. :) 

My sister got the Alexa dot for me last Christmas. I use my Alexa dot to tell me about the weather, set timers while cooking and play music. Do you have one? What do you use it for?

I already have a Fit Bit Blaze, but I went ahead and bought my husband one for Christmas. He is one of those people that if they already have a watch even if it is 5 years old and barely fits, feel that they don't need a new one if the old one works. 

I like that I was able to use the app to set alarms for my watch to vibrate at specific times each day. I have it vibrate about 3 minutes before my classes are picked up by their teachers. This gives me time to have them stand, push chairs in, get the library books and line up. 

I also like that it counts by steps, etc. and I appreciate that it alerts me when I have phone calls and text messages. I will warn you that the Fit Bit Blaze does not allow you to text back or answer phone calls like the apple watch does. I don't have a problem with using my phone to respond to messages or phone calls, but if that's something you want to be able to do then you'll need to go with the apple watch.

If you have one, I suggest that you get the screen protector. 

I have completely converted from the rubber band type hairbands to elastic hair ties. 

I ordered myself some basic black ones for the new year and I was not disappointed.

They do not damage or snag your hair while you are wearing them.

 We decided to get an amazon fire stick for the TV in the bedroom. I love it! It is so easy to use to get to Netflix and Amazon Prime! Love it! 

I recently enjoyed watching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon Prime. It won Best Comedy TV Series and Best Actress in Comedy TV Series at the Global Globes. 

I was pleased with the Netflix Original movie Bright with Will Smith.

I bought myself this purse for Christmas after seeing my sister's in blue. I bought the gray. I like how it folds over on the top. 

This was a great purchase. I needed a new lunch box and it's hard to tell the size of the lunch box when you purchase online, but this one did not disappoint. I can put a water bottle as well as pyrex lunch containers and sting cheese all in this lunch box without issue. There are many colors and designs for the lunch box.

I received and enjoyed both of the following books. I always enjoy a good fantasy.

My husband and I enjoy playing board games during our Christmas Break. Our new favorite game is Bears vs. Babies. This game is by the same creator as Exploding Kittens.

My sister gave me a wonderful sleep mask. You can heat it up or put it in the freezer to cool it off before wearing it. I prefer the cooled version, but you may like it warm. When I wear my sleep mask I feel that I am truly pampering myself. This was a terrific gift. Something you may not buy for yourself, but is something that you will use and enjoy.



What are some of your thoughts on your Christmas gifts?

GAETC Recap 2017

Yes, I realize that it is 2018 and this post is about the Georgia Educational Technology Conference from November of 2017, but the info is still good and I've been meaning to share. I will keep the descriptions short and to the point for you.  Some of these are websites, some are ios apps and some of chrome extensions.

As a side note, I took the Level 1 Google Certification test this week and I am now:

 You can make url shortcuts that will look like shoutkey.com/my or shoutkey.com/feeble This is great for presenting and needing everyone to go to a certain webpage.

 Easily create bingo cards, hangman game, word search etc. by importing lists from google sheets.

 Is available for chromebooks. You can create 40 books for free. 

Deep L is a language translator.

 an ios app that takes a picture of something (a person, book, receipt, anything) and tells you what it is. Download this app on your phone and play with it. It tells you what it is looking at. For example, you can scan a person and it will tell you how old the person is. Honestly, not sure how I’d use it in the classroom, but I’ve been having fun with it guessing people’s ages. My colleagues and I have enjoyed using it. It would also be great for someone with vision deficits. 

 You can change the qr code destination. Basically create a QR code and give it out as a code to get to homework and instead of changing the qr code every time homework etc. changes, you can instead change where that code takes you. 

 I downloaded this app on my phone and I've started using it for making my grocery list and I share it with my husband. That way he can also add to the list and whoever goes to the store always has the list. I like that it allows you to immediately click on things in the list to mark them out instead of having to click backspace/delete for each letter of the word.

 A trivia game where you place a pin point on a location to answer the trivia question.

 Shows a picture and you can make a guess about where the picture was taken by placing a pin point on the world map. There is also a challenge mode.

Allows you to see where if you tunneled through the world at one location, where you would wind up on the other side of the globe. 

Played by two classrooms on Skype. The aim of the game is to guess the location of the other classroom by asking each other questions. It has totally transformed the way students learn about the world in my school.

 Can cover parts of the screen while you are presenting. This is great for covering an answer and then revealing the answer to a math problem. 

Can use this to send students a message that will open in a new tab and can remind them to get to work, etc. You can send the messages, but they can not reply.

It was interesting to learn that you can make a youtube playlist using google sheets. It even has a little thumbnail of the videos that you put in the playlist.

My husband is in the Innovative Champion program for the county and was also sent to GAETC. It was basically like being able to visit two sessions at once, because he could tell me everything he learned from the sessions he went attended.

Hello 2018!

Thought I'd start the year off with a 2018 post!

For some reason,  I don't like the phrase "New Year's Resolution". Therefore, I am calling the following my goals of 2018. 

I have got to find a good balance between work, TPT, school (grad school, I'm working on getting my specialist in library media), and fun aspects of life. Quite honestly, I also have goals for each of these areas. I'll try to keep those short and to the point.

Work- Google Certification this year. I am working on it this month actually. I've gotten better about not staying late or worrying too much about things at work, because they will be there the following day for me to work on. :) I'd like to keep this mindset for the rest of the year. It's hard to do this in education, but I'm getting better and better at it. 

TPT- I have totally neglected TPT this past year. I have got to get organized and pace myself with realistic goals. Possibly, try for at least 1 instagram post a week, 2 new TPT products a month, 2 blog posts a month. I need to make a chart/check list to keep up with this. I love checklists, they are my jam!

Grad School- This is where all my time and attention has gone and it's not even going to end in 2018. I have 5 more classes. I plan to take 1 in spring, 2 in summer, 1 in fall and 1 in spring. I tried to take 2 at the beginning of this school year in fall, but just couldn't do it. Fall is such a busy time with it being the beginning of the school year and I have so many other things needing my attention during that time. So, I've paced the rest of my courses accordingly. I wish I could just rip it off like a band aid and be done with it, but slow and steady will win this race. 

Yep, take care of me. I need to get more exercise, eat better, and drink more water. The holidays and cold weather are just terrible when you are trying to be healthy, so I have to get back on it. I still love taking my Plexus each morning and will continue in 2018.

Laugh more! This is a real goal. I am known for taking things too serious. I just have to laugh more. My husband is the best partner for this goal. We actually recently purchased a Nintendo Switch and have laughed like crazy while playing many games together. We also love board games. Have you played Exploding Kittens? Well, the people that made that also made Bears Vs. Babies and it has been lots of fun to play over the break.

Those are my basic goals for 2018!

Digital Storytelling

Blabberize

Blabberize allows you to add voice to a hand-drawn picture that you upload to the site.

I have used this website for students to publish writing. I often integrate science or social studies into my writing block. 

For example, for third grade you can have students write about a region of Georgia to go along with your science standards. Then have students draw a picture of an animal from that region. After that you would take a picture of the drawing and upload it into blabberize. Lastly, you will record the each student reading their writing. When you play it back it will look as if the drawn animal is talking and reading the writing. 

Some ideas for each grade level (based on 2017 Georgia Standards of Excellence):

K

1. Have students illustrate a picture of themselves and write about themselves or their family at the beginning of the year. Record their dictation of their writing.
2. Have students draw a picture of the Statue of Liberty or Bald Eagle and tell about American Symbols after writing about the topic.
3. Have students draw themselves and then tell about rules and why they are created.
4. Draw police officer, fire fighter, etc. and write about the work they do. Record each student reading their writing.

1
1. Students can draw a picture of Johnny Appleseed (or other person you've recently learned about)
Have students write what they have learned about Johnny Appleseed.
Record students reading their writing about Johnny Appleseed.
*same activity with Ruby Bridges, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Sacagawea, etc.


2
1. Students can draw a picture of Jackie Robinson (or other person you've recently learned about)
Have students write what they have learned about Jackie Robinson.
Record students reading their writing about Jackie Robinson.
*same activity with Mary Musgrove, MLK, Juliette Gordon Low, Jimmy Carter, etc.

3
1. Students can draw a picture of John Cabot (or other person you've recently learned about)
Have students write what they have learned about John Cabot
Record students reading their writing about John Cabot.
*same activity with Henry Hudson, Christopher Columbus, etc.

4
1. Students can draw a picture of Paul Revere (or other person you've recently learned about)
Have students write what they have learned about Paul Revere.
Record students reading their writing about Paul Revere.
*same activity with John Adams, Patrick Henry, Benedict Arnold, etc.

5
1. Student scan draw a picture of Thomas Edison (or other person you've recently learned about)
Have students write what they have learned about Thomas Edison.
Record students reading their writing about Thomas Edison.
*same activity with George Washington Carver, Alexander Graham Bell, Langston Hughes, Babe Ruth, etc.

Examples:




Example 1

Example 2



Example 3

Storybird
This website allows you to set up a classroom account for free. Students can then create their own books and use professional illustrations in their book. 

I use this website for students to create ideas based on the illustrations provided. Students can get as creative as their imaginations allow.

You can share their finished book by embedding the book on your webpage, sharing it in an email or even through class dojo and google classroom.

Voki

Your students will absolutely love Voki. You can publish any piece of writing that your students have completed by creating an avatar on voki and having the avatar read the writing. I often have students type their writing into a google doc and then copy and paste that into the text portion of voki for the avatar to read. My students especially enjoy the strange accents that the characters have.

Example 1

Example 2

Voki Tutorial

Powtoon

Powtoon allows you or students to animate your own presentation or story.

There is a free and paid version of Powtoons, the free version is limited on characters and objects. The free version will work perfectly fine for students to create stories or presentations.

After selecting a premade template or starting from scratch, students can add their own characters and objects and text to the presentation.

At the end they are able to add a voice over to each slide and apply music provided by the website. 

The end result is a very professional looking presentation or story.

Google Slides

Students can access this from google. I call it a "bingo board" that they click on in the upper right of google and then they can select slides.

Students can share their presentation/story with other students and work together to complete the presentation/story.

They can add pictures from kiddle.co or draw their own illustrations using Google Drawing (go to bingo board, Drive, new, and then google drawing).

I know that some of you have iPads and would like to know how to do this with apps. Here are some noteworthy apps, but voki and google slides are offered as apps as well.

Morfo

See my past post for Morfo HERE

Sock Puppets

Toontastic

Telestory

Tellagami

This Week in the Media Center- 10/30/17

Here are a few things we did in the media center this week.
First off, we dressed up to say, "Boo to Bullying!"
I was Lilo and my paraprofessional was Stitch. Basically, all the kids thought I was Moana and she was a mouse. I guess I went a little too old school on the cartoon reference.

My administrators performed one of their wonderful Pay Day songs!

I had all 3-5 students bring their chromebooks with them to the media center this week and add the media center google classroom code in order to join my classroom. Now, I can easily send links and information to them.

We learned about the Media Festival and I explained that students could easily use Google Slides to create a presentation or tell a story. We discussed how students must be very concise of copyright when submitting projects for Media Festival. I showed students that one option for illustrations would be to use Google Drawings to create their own graphics and pictures, instead of finding images on the internet. They were excited to learn how to access Google Drawings. We also practice selected an image they created in Google Drawing and pasting this image into a Google Slide presentation. This may seem obvious to you, but my students were pumped to learn how to do this.

We also created accounts in Powtoon and discussed how a presentation in Powtoon would be considered animation in the Media Festival categories. We practiced using the premade templates and swapping out the characters and objects. I also discussed adding a voice over and background music on the presentation. This part was a bit rushed and I intend to review Powtoons with students another week when they visit the media center.

Book Reviews using Flipgrid
I showed each class how to use Flipgrid to record a book review. We talked about how it should be a commercial/advertisement for a book and should not give the entire book away. Students said to not give too much information or else it would be a spoiler alert! They giggled and laughed so much while watching me record myself do an example of a book review.

Lastly, I had students listen to my very favorite Halloween story.