Today was the first day we had students this week and already it has been a big week for me…
My classroom was finally graced with it’s SMART board at the end of last week, but suffered some technical difficulties off the hop so it was basically unusable until today. It being web-video Wednesday in my class, I finally was freed from the shackles of rolling in the projector cart, unraveling the cords for the internet and power, as well as having the students rearrange their desks to fit the monstrosity into the classroom. Three cheers for the SMART board!!! I took some pics, but haven’t had a chance to upload them yet. Will add those to a future post about my #learningproject.
I would also like to share that I got my students started with their Penzu Classroom journals today. Goodbye duotangs, hello font options! I think this will be a fun new way to have students write their journal entries. However, I may have to go over the expectations and guidelines a little more closely since a couple students wrote one line entries with no punctuation and several text message shorthands. Their first entry was about their e-habits or digital life; I wanted to know what apps, e-tools and social media they use. I was surprised at how many students talked about ask.fm because until a couple of weeks ago I had never heard of it. This just goes to show that the majority of my students are probably way more digitally advanced than me. So far the students seem to be engaged and I like that their journal entries are submitted directly to me and they’re not public.
Lastly, I really enjoyed the guest lecture from Alan Levine, @cogdog, last night! He gave me so many ideas about digital storytelling that will work so well in my ELA classes. Already today we tried doing the improvisational story using pechaflickr. The kids thought it was awesome! They wanted to continue doing it the entire class. In case you were wondering, the subject we used was “farming”. I am planning to use this for some creative writing activities in the future.
There you have it… this could be referred to as Web-nesday perhaps 🙂 Corny or catchy??? Overall, it was a big day in my digital evolution and I am looking forward to continuing this journey of moving outside my paper and pencil box.
EC&I 831 
Hi Stephanie, love that you already put pechaflickr into action! I’ve never heard of penzu classroom so I’m definitely going to check that out. I’m also on a journey to move from my traditional paper pencil writing modes to more technological but interactive modes of writing and sharing. I was wondering if you are in a 1-1 lap top situation, or do you just make sure you book lap tops for your daily writing.
Hey Shauna,
We don’t really have laptops at my school. If I want my students to work on computers I have to book one of our two computer labs. We use http://www.keepandhsare.com to organize our computer labs. They are usually booked at least a week ahead of time so you really have to be ahead of the game and know when you’re going to need the lab. This is the only problem with doing this e-journals. In a school of almost 300 middle years students, we have two computer labs with approximately 30 computers each. I miss the lap top carts my school had when I taught in Regina Public! It’s for this reason that these journals will not be a daily occurrence (i’m shooting for twice a week).
Pecha Flickr was really popular with my undergrads a couple of years ago. I was also a participant at an Australian Edcamp where Pecha Flickr was used. It was really a great bonding experience, and a great activity for exercising your mind. It’s great to hear that you’ve already used it.