I'm baaack...with Two Tech Tuesday Tips!

Okay, yes, it's been 5 months.  Where has the time gone?  Where are the posts?  Well, it all started when I all of a sudden became extremely exhausted this summer.  We went back to school on August 1st, and my first contract day was July 15th.  Well, I soon found out I was pregnant with my 1st...never in my life had I felt so exhausted.  I didn't care about the laundry, the dishes in the sink, let alone blogging.  So despite the great, amazing news of expecting our first, RunTeacherRun suffered!  But now I'm baaaack!

So I've been in and out of classrooms a lot thus far this year, and I continue to learn about great new things that I wish were out there when I was still teaching.  For Tech Tuesday I have 2 items to share:

1. Wonderopolis

This is an awesome website that is sponsored by the National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL) and posts questions that relate to normal everyday occurrences.  There is a Wonder of the Day that posts a question, a video, and a text response to the wonder.  Wonders that you might find interesting:

 • How are Books made?

 • Why do you sneeze?

 • What gives you the giggles? 

 • How does mail find you?  

What I like about this website is that students can use it for Read to Self, Read to Someone, as an intro to a new unit as a "hook" to get them intrigued, or even to pose their own wonders to the website.  A simple click of a button will even read the text aloud to students!  Students in my building love this app, and I've even heard parents who talk about family conversations about the daily wonder.  

2. Popplet

Popplet is a great website (or app on an iPad) for creating graphic organizers or visual representing a topic or concept.  The interface is extremely easy to use and the kids love to move and organize their thoughts to reflect the message they are trying to convey.  

Well, that's all for me tonight!  I'll be seeing you all sooner rather than later this time!  Gotta run!

Tune Into Technology: iPad Apps (Notability and Mover+)

Happy Thursday!!  I dropped the ball last week with the 4th of July and didn't get my Technology post in with the Tune into Technology Linky, so I'm excited to be getting this one in...and I love iPads!  We are certainly not 1:1 yet, but each grade level has a set that they can share between them and one of our grade levels wrote a grant to get iPad minis.  This will be a great linky to start building ideas to share with them!  I love Amanda and Aylin, from Learning to the Core, and they have a super cute new blog design!

The first app I'm going to share with you is Notability.  I LOVE NOTABILITY!!

As the icon shows, Notability lets you write (in different colors and thicknesses), type, and take notes as well as record voices.

Here is a display they use on iTunes.  You can upload a PDF and either you, or your students can then edit and type on top of the PDF.  It will connect to your Google Drive and other Apps on your iPad that might have editing capabilities. 

 

My school just went to Everyday Mathematics and with the new Standards for Mathematical Practice we are wanting to make sure our students can reason, be precise in their calculations, and use content terminology when discussing their problems.  Notability lets them write out the problem and talk about it as they are solving the problem. I created this example of Partial Products to show my students and color-coded each step.  I recorded my voice explaining what I was doing as I was solving the problem. My students though tit was soooo cool, and they couldn't wait to do their own.  

With my ENL kiddos, it's great because it gives them practice explaining what they are doing in a private manner.  They can record it individually without the pressure of messing up in front of their peers.  

              

Here is an example of a Write about Reading Daily 5 Center, where they were focusing on fairy tales.  I added it to my Google Drive, and then it gave me options on where to open it.  On my iPad, I get 3 options.  I wanted my students to mark it up, so I told them to open it in Notability.  The right picture shows how they can use Notability to mark up the page with text, color, writing, etc.  The best part is that it won't delete the PDF, so students can mess that part up! :)

Organization with Notability
I'm planning on using Notability with my students even more this year, and I can easily organize everything I do, and they do, by creating subjects and categories.  Since I work with all grade levels, I've created K-6 folders to put my students' work in.

...And to get their work onto my iPad?  I use Mover+!

This is the icon for Mover+ on iTunes. 

Mover + is an awesome (and free!!) App that allows you to "move" documents, PDFs, photos, etc. from one iPad to another.  When two or more iPads are close to each other and have the App opened, it senses the other one and lets you "slide" the document off of your screen to a specific iPad.  You can see in the above picture, that my iPad is "sending" the document to my husband's iPad.  It is so easy, and students can see when other iPads are on Mover+.  

I'm thinking story writing, starting and finishing math problems, etc. for next year!

Gotta run, but I'm hoping to be back tomorrow with a great post about our INDY BLOGGER LUNCH!  It was sooooo great to see so many faces, even if my husband was a little weirded out that I was meeting complete strangers! :)

Integrating Technology into Reading and Bloglovin' Giveaway!

Good morning!  I'm joining Amanda and Aylin from Learning to the Core for their Tune into Technology Linky!  This week's theme is for how to integrate technology into reading.  I think this linky is great timing since the summer is the best time to explore new sites, apps, etc. and actually have time to play around with them!

After perusing my Twitter feed, I came across an awesome new website called ThingLink.  What I love about ThingLink is that it is super easy to use!  The whole purpose of ThingLink is to make your images interactive.

While reading The Other Side last year, we talked a lot about symbolism and what the fence meant in the story.  I wrote about this book on Sunday if you want more information.  With ThingLink, I found a picture of a white fence and uploaded it to my creation.  From there, it will let you tag anywhere on the image to add more information.  I tagged a place to describe the fence, talk about my favorite moment in the book, and add a link to the author's website.

Here is my ThingLink! It's pretty simple with only a few tags, but remember, this is my time to play!  I can refine later!  The colored dots reflect different tags that I have added about the book.  You may click on it to go to the actual page so that the tags work.

I also wanted to share another one that I found that is all about the song Wagon Wheel, a summer favorite of mine!  This lady has created a great ThingLink with lots of links, information, and even the song. I can't take any credit for it, but notice all of the tags!  Click on it for some good time fun with this song.

So...how can you use this for reading? Let me count the ways!

1.  Symbolism - I find this is the easiest connection since the whole premise is to make an image interactive.

2. Character Traits - We've all seen those organizers that point to different parts of a character's body and students write about what they are thinking, doing with their hands, feel with their heart, etc.  With this site, you can have them copy an image of the character or someone they think looks like the character and tag different parts.  

3. Book Retell or Report - What a great way to tell about a story while embedding links or just typing different parts of the book.  

4. Book Talks - An option with ThingLink is to embed video.  What better way to have students share what they know by video taping themselves and including it in their ThingLink. 

Here are just a few of the different ways I've thought of, but I can't wait to get started with my kiddos this year!  I hope you've enjoyed this!

Bloglovin' Giveaway!
I don't know about you all, but I'm loving my daily Bloglovin' emails!  It's helped so much so that I don't miss great posts!  I'm joining the rest of the Bloglovin' crew for a giveaway of one of my TPT products!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Link up and find all the great people who are doing giveaways!  What a fun way to meet new bloggers, and maybe win a giveaway!  

Alrighty, I gotta run, but don't forget to link up!

#TechnologyTwitterTuesday

I have to give a shout out to a great friend, Amanda, from Learning to the Core.  She planned a great weekend in Nashville for one of our friends getting married.  Amanda is in Illinois, and I wish we lived closer, but we're able to catch up via our blog and after school phone conversations.

 

Amanda and I are on the couch on the right and left, respectively.  You could say we like stripes!  Our friend, Rachel, top middle in the black, is also an amazing teacher, and we're trying to talk her into guest blogging!  

 

We were loving Elvis!

Amanda's blog is awesome, so head over for some great blog posts by both Amanda and her blogging buddy, Aylin!

Luckily, it's summertime, so heading back to the reality of "home" was a bit easier than during the school year!  It is a beautiful Tuesday evening here in Indy and I've been spending much of my day outside planting flowers, playing with the dogs, and oh yea, hiding upstairs for a bit when I was told a burglar was in the neighborhood (ahh!)!

Another piece of my summer is doing some reading from some great books and also tapping into the endless online resources through twitter.  My new district is big on Twitter and encourages its use for professional growth.  Now, I love bloggers who use Twitter to show their new posts or products, but I've tried to stick to the new learning part of Twitter.

One great part of Twitter are the twitter chats that you can be a part of based on your interests.   They are usually once a week for an hour.  The best part is that if you aren't quite ready to catch the twitter bug, then you can just be a passive reader and you don't have to "actively participate".  The topics of these range from 1st grade teachers to 21st Century learning to technology usage and CCSS.  @thomascmurray has put together a great list of these twitter chats so that you can find one that fits your niche and your schedule!  It's really a terrific list, and a great way to get started!

In order to stay organized on Twitter, TweetCaster is the only way to do it...oh, and do it on your iPad!  You can type in different hashtags and follow all of the tweets related to that hashtag...it's the best way to do the twitter chats too because it auto updates so you can read everyone's comments and responses.  Also, if you have multiple twitter accounts, personal and professional, you can toggle back and forth pretty easily.

Alrighty, well I gotta run and watch The Voice finale, but feel free to follow me on Twitter (@MBRileyNCE).  I typically post professional things, and I'm NO expert.  I'm just beginning to dabble, but love the links to websites, articles, and great professional ideas.  Happy tweeting!