"Can We Skip Lunch and Keep Writing?" Collaborating in Class and Online
Today's students have different expectations than our past student. We need to focus on the C's of education which rests on the 3R's. Students expect to be able to communicate, collaborate, create, and use critical thinking to solve real problems. This is what they do in their free time; we need to bring that into our classrooms.
It is our job to become SMOKE (stuff muffling our kids' education) detectors to protect the integrity of the learning day. You can find a blog that I wrote about being SMOKE Detectors here.
5 Strategies for Creating Self-Motivated Learners:
Make it Relevant
It is our job to become SMOKE (stuff muffling our kids' education) detectors to protect the integrity of the learning day. You can find a blog that I wrote about being SMOKE Detectors here.
5 Strategies for Creating Self-Motivated Learners:
Make it Relevant
- Google Drive easily facilitates collaborative writing with the ability to collaboratively write, edit and comment upon one another's work. Here are some examples of how my students have used Google Drive: The Power of Choice and Igniting the Learning Fire. On ILA's Reading Today, other ways we use Google Drive with Students: How Do We Know What They Know and Where Do We Go from Here?
- Skype allows for free video calls. You can find authors to Skype into your classroom. If you want to include more than one person or group, Google Hangouts and Facetime are a great alternative.
- If you are looking for some established collaborative projects, you students can join the Global Read Aloud (theglobalreadaloud.com/), Mystery Skype, International Dot Day, or join The Educator's PLN and see who else is looking to start a collaborative project.
- On Twitter, students can join many different conversations. My students joined #6Word for publishing six word memoirs, #ReadIt for their book jacket book reviews, #TweetStory for publishing stories in 140 characters or less and #WhyIWrite for National Day of Writing. Not sure about how Twitter works? Here's a blog where I explained the basics of Twitter. Uncomfortable using Twitter? Try Twiducate. Want to connect your students with a scientist? Here are 100 Scientists on Twitter by Category.
- Padlet (formerly Wallwisher) is a digital post-it board; great for collaborative brainstorming. Wallwisher can by embedded into sites like wikis and blogs. Another tools that works similarly is Lino. Here is the Lino that we created of our ideas of how we can give our students the freedom to drive their learning.
- StoryJumper, MyStorybook and Storybird each publishes digital storybooks. My students used StoryJumper to create Math-terpieces. Read about our Math-terpieces experience here.
- Blogs about the student-directed lessons that I discussed: Students as Teachers and My Kids' Think Skype is the Cat's Meow
- Surveys can be created on Poll Everywhere or Google Forms. These surveys can be taken via computer or mobile devices.
- Online quizzes can be created on ProProfs. ProProfs can be embedded into websites and blogs.
- What do we learn from listening to our students? Do we misdiagnose our students?
- Voice Thread is collaboration made simple. Here's the example that I shared:Exploring Our Heritage Voice Thread is also available as an app for your mobile device. A Voice Thread Tutorial can be found here.
- With Flipgrid, learners can respond to an open-ended question or prompt using video. It's also a great platform to share book reviews, book chats, or become guest readers for students in other classrooms. This is a great way to assess your students by "listening" to their conversations. Flipping for Book Chats with Flipgrids.
- Using voice typing or video gives students another avenue to share their voices with us and their peers. For videos, learners can use Instagram, iMovie, or We Video. Sometimes, we need different tools to help students address their specific challenges: Using Tech to Meet Learning Challenges: Dyslexia.
- Digital Storytelling on Photo Story 3 or iMovie (also available as an app).
- Digital Comic Strips on Toon Doo.
- Podcasts on Audacity. There is a download required, but then all the editing is done offline.
- Publishing Tool Smackdown...AZK12 Edition. Publishing Tool Smackdown...SDE Version, Publishing Tool Smackdown..Houston Academy. Ten of our favorite publishing tools: What's in Your Writing Tool Belt? Here are some of the tools my students used when publishing their final GRA projects.
- When given freedom to create anything to prove mastery of literacy standards, often students dream up methods we never considered. I've had students code robots, Dot & Dash, use stop motion animation, build Minecraft worlds, and construct elaborate Lego builds.
- Kid Blog is a great place for students to reflect and teachers can read posts and comments before they are published. A great lesson on teaching students how to blog can be found at Notes From McTeach. Here's how we began our year with blogging and the expectations that my students created for themselves. Through blogging, you can Make Every Day "I Love to Write Day" for your students.
- Student created rubrics: By guiding students in forming their own rubrics to assess themselves, you are giving them the power to bring the learning full circle. They designed the project, chose how to create it, and they should have the power to assess their own work.
Still have questions?
Still wondering how this looks in a classroom? Perplexed as to how you can mange this within the confines of your schedule? Do you need more step-by-step instructions on how to use some of these tools? All of that is discussed in "Can We Skip Lunch and Keep Writing?" Collaborating in Class and Online.
Please stay in touch. I would love to continue these conversations. You can follow me on my blog at [email protected], on Twitter and Instagram @juliedramsay or on my Facebook author/educator page, Julie D. Ramsay.