PowerPoint - Just One Tool in the Toolbox

Five years ago, I was teaching students all the ins and outs of creating a PowerPoint presentation. We talked about how to use a PowerPoint as a visual aid without having it take over the show. We also talked in great detail about how much text should go on a slide. Much of what they learned seemed to be a bit pointless at the time because they rarely got a chance to use it outside of the Computer Lab. Over the last five years, the students have become PowerPoint experts. They can almost create a slideshow with their eyes closed and their hands tied behind their back!

Five years ago, many of the teachers these same students worked with had little experience with or knowledge of PowerPoint yet and didn't include it in their lessons very often. It took these teachers some time to learn more about the program and to become comfortable with its use. I am noticing that now these teachers are using PowerPoint a lot. It has become their tool of choice. Ironically, the students they are using these PowerPoints with now are already at the "been there, done that" stage. They are ready to move on and add some new tools to their toolbox. The challenge is going to be moving the teachers forward along with the students.

PowerPoint is a great piece of software and has its pros and cons. It can be an effective tool if used correctly and if not over-used. There are so many other tools out there that students could be using to create a final project or to display their knowledge of a particular topic. The number of tools grows every day. It isn't going to be possible for me to teach the ins and outs of all these different sites and programs. My goal at this point is to teach students how to analyze a website, how to problem solve, and how to teach themselves to use new sites and programs. Many students already do these things: i.e. when they are trying to figure out how to play a new video game or how to use the latest social networking website. It's second nature to them. It's not second nature for a large number of teachers.

It may require teachers to get outside their comfort zone, but I think it is crucial that we all start adding some new tools to our toolbox. Teachers often think they need to be an expert at something before they feel comfortable asking students to try it. We've got to see that as an outdated way of thinking. We can share all that we know about our area of expertise (math, science, social studies, reading, etc...) and then give students the option to show you what they've learned about that topic using whatever tool works best for them. Provide the class with the list of things on which you will be assessing them, and then give them the freedom to choose a way of demonstrating those things.

Students, because they have become experts at creating PowerPoints, may need to be nudged out of their comfort zone as well. Perhaps on some assessments, students will have to be told that they need to use a new tool - something other than PowerPoint. It might be helpful to talk with students about some of the different tools available and how they can be used in different subject areas. Create signs to post around the room as a reference.

The benefits of this approach are two-fold. The students will take more ownership of their learning if they are given some choice in how they can present it. The teacher and the rest of the class will have a variety of projects to see/listen to instead of sitting through 30 PowerPoints all on the same exact topic which can be a bit boring!

How many tools do you have in your toolbox?

Participate! Collaborate! Communicate!

There are so many great online projects you can become part of that allow you and your students to collaborate and communicate with other classes around the world. Over the last eight years, my students and I have participated in a variety of different projects. Collaborating in these projects has led to other opportunities for my students. We've been able to Skype and share VoiceThreads with other classes around the world.

One of the first online projects that I became a part of many years ago was a postcard exchange. I found someone who was recruiting a class from each state in the U.S. to join. (I have also participated in International Post Card Exchanges.) Each school creates enough postcards with information about their school, city, state, to send one to each of the other schools in the exchange. In return, your school will receive one postcard from each of the other schools too. This means you could potentially receive 49 postcards! What kid doesn't love to get something in the mail? I admit, even I get excited to see another postcard in my mailbox in the school office! Check out Mike Ryter's site to see all of the cards he's received in our postcard exchange this year: Mr. Ryter's 6th Grade Godwin Social Studies.

Our Postcard Sent to Mr. Ryter's Class

You may be asking how this postcard exchange can be used as a learning experience in the classroom. Here are some ideas. First, I teach a lesson on writing a friendly letter. This is important to do before writing our messages on the postcards. Then I teach a lesson on how to write an address on a piece of mail. It amazes me how many students don't know how to do this, but then how many of them have ever used snail mail before?! I even have my students draw the picture that we use on the front of the postcard using a paint program on the computer. When the postcards from other schools start arriving, you could practice map skills to find the location of the school on a U.S. map. I created a Google Map and marked each school as their postcard arrived (SEE BELOW). If the other schools list how many students are in their school or their class, you could use this information in math to graph/average/analyze. There are probably lots of other ways you could use this postcard exchange.

View U.S. Postcard Exchange in a larger map

Another site that I would recommend for online projects is jenuinetech.com run by Jennifer Wagner. Jen organizes many projects during the school year including O.R.E.O. stacking, Christmas Card exchanges, St. Patrick's Day graphing, and more. My students and I have participated in these projects for many years and it is always a lot of fun!

Every spring, I sign the students in grades 1-8 up to participate in World Math Day. This is a great, friendly competition of math facts between students of similar age/ability levels from around the world. Guaranteed to be more fun than doing flash cards at the supper table!

This year my students in grades 2-8 are learning the art of blogging using Kidblog. We have had several opportunities to collaborate with other students through our blogs. The 6th graders participated in Quadblogging last fall. The middle school students are currently participating in the 100 word challenge. Next week the 4th graders will be communicating with other 4th graders who are attending a Catholic school to share the fun activities they do for Catholic Schools Week. I wrote about the art of blogging in my previous post Writing + Audience = Blogging if you'd like to know more.

I am intrigued by these new projects in which I have not yet participated...the Global Read Aloud Project, Collaboreyes, and the Flat Classroom Project. Other sites where you might find project partners include: ePals, Global School House, AtoZTeacherStuff Forums.

Joining these projects brings the four corners of the world a little closer to your doorstep and allows your students to collaborate and communicate with students from all over the world. Give it a try!

Creating Displays with Student Photos

I have found that students love to see their photo on display in school and have tried to come up with some fun ways to create displays using a photo of each student in our school. To do this, I first take all of the their pictures with a digital camera during Computer class. If you have all of their school pictures on file somewhere you could use those too. Our students wear uniforms to school...either a red or a white polo shirt...so I was inspired to use the red and white of their shirts to create a U.S. flag with their photos. To really accentuate the red and white color, I had them stand in front of a piece of red or white paper depending on their shirt color. I printed out wallet size pictures. We have about 250 students. If you have a larger school, you could print thumbnails instead. My original plan was to create the stripes with the students' pictures and put the teachers' pictures on the stars. In the end, I just wrote the teachers' names on the stars. Once I had everything organized I recruited the help of some middle school students to actually construct the display. I created the U.S. flag during the last presidential election.

This past December I used the same red/white stripe idea and had the middle school students help me create giant candy canes. In the first example, I placed any extra photos around the flag on a piece of red bulletin board paper. With the candy cane display, the extra photos were placed on snowflakes that some of the students cut out.

These displays were a lot of fun to look at. If you create something like this, I suggest you put it up somewhere that students and parents can easily see it. Students love to look for their picture, and parents love to spot their son/daughter in the display.

What can YOU make out of a heart shape?

It won't be long before it's Valentine's Day! Time to start planning those Valentine activities now so you can put them on display for the big day. You could have your students make a picture on the computer. It's a great way to practice using the mouse, to learn how to use the tools in a drawing program like Kidpix, and to inspire creativity. What kind of picture do you suppose a first or second grade student could create if they started with a heart shape? Of course that would depend on which way the heart shape was facing. If it's a regular heart shape, you could create a bunny...

a butterfly or a ladybug...

If the heart is facing sideways, you could create a fish or maybe a spider...

If it's an upside down heart, you might turn it into a cat or a puppy dog...

First and second grade students have pretty good imaginations. With a little help from you, they can come up with some creative ways to turn a heart shape into something fun. What can YOU make out of a heart shape?

There's a Wocket in my Pocket!

I realize that March is still nearly 2 months away, but I thought I'd share a fun project that I do with the pre-k students. If you like planning ahead, you can get this in your planbook early!


As you may know, Dr. Seuss's birthday is March 2nd. It's easy for me to remember this because it's also my oldest daughter's birthday! I like to do activities revolving around Dr. Seuss's stories that week. The PreK boys and girls and I read There's a Wocket in my Pocket in the Library. Then during Computers we create our own Wockets using Kidpix. We look at the illustrations in the book and make note of all the different characteristics of the various Wockets. They are different colors. Some have really long tails. Some have feathers coming out of the top of their head. Some have duck feet. I encourage the students to be creative. It's a lot of fun to see what they come up with!

These are some of the pre-k Wockets from past years:

When their Wockets are finished and saved, I print them as wallet-sized color pictures. I have a piece of tagboard for each student that says, "There's a Wocket in my Pocket", at the top and has a book pocket attached underneath. (If you're wondering what a book pocket is, check out the picture below.) The pictures are the perfect size to fit in these book pockets. The PreK boys and girls are excited at the end of class when they find out that they have their very own Wocket in a Pocket to take home!

Word Clouds for Younger Grades

Word clouds are a fun way to present words visually.

Kindergarten/PreK teachers can create posters to put up around the classroom as they teach the letter(s) of the week. A great site for this is ImageChef. Here's an example I created of the letter S made up of all sorts of age-appropriate words that begin with the letter S.

How do you do this? Choose "Word Mosaic". Click on the Initials tab. Type in the letter you want to work with. Type all of the words that start with that letter that you want to use in the text box. Choose the Font style you like from the drop down menu. Click on Preview to see your creation. If you want to save the image to your computer, click on Export...choose an image size...right-click and save the image to your computer or drag the image to your desktop. To make a poster, insert the image into Word, Publisher, or some other program.

First and second grade students can easily create word clouds of their own. You might want to start with a site like Wordle, a very easy site to use. I've had the first and second graders create Mother's Day word clouds similar to the one here to give as a gift. They had fun choosing the layout, fonts, and colors to really personalize it for their mom.

How do you do this? You might want to brainstorm possible words to use before you begin this activity. Then have those words available on a handout or projected somewhere in your classroom. Type your words in the text box. Remember that in Wordle, the size of a word is determined by the number of times it is typed in the text box. Click GO when you have finished adding words. To personalize your word cloud, you can select options from the Font, Layout, and Color tabs. When your word cloud is finished, you can print it. One downside of Wordle is that you can't download the finished image. To get around this, I use PrintScreen to copy the whole desktop and then paste it into Paint. Then crop the excess and save the image.

Once the younger students have mastered the art of creating a word cloud in Wordle, you could have the third, fourth, and fifth grade students use a site like Tagxedo to create something a little more advanced. Since it is winter, we are going to create snowflake word clouds like the one here. The students are reading Snowflake Bentley and learning how each snowflake is unique. These snowflake word clouds will represent each unique student in our class.

How do you do this? Have the students create a list of words that describe themselves. Choose the snowflake shape from the Shapes menu. Click on Load... under the Words category. Type the words in the text box (not the webpage box). To personalize the look of the snowflake, students can adjust the color, font, layout, etc... When you are ready to finish, download the image to your computer by clicking on Save|Share|Print.

Have fun creating these visuals to post in the classroom, to give as gifts, or to reinforce concepts learned in class!

Polar Express Christmas Around the World

At this time of the year, I have the first graders listen to The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg read by Lou Diamond Phillips at Storyline Online at the beginning of class. Then they each create a passport of their own using ReadWriteThink's stapleless book maker. You can include the names of the countries you are going to be learning about during your trip around the world in your passport. Before the students leave, I give each of them a ticket to board the Polar Express and tell them that they'll need to bring the ticket to the next class when we will be traveling around the world to learn about Christmas and other holiday traditions in other countries.

When the students arrive for our next class, I have a Christmas around the World webquest for them to complete. As they read about each country's traditions, they write down one thing they learned in their passport. I got a free CUSTOMS stamp from VistaPrint to stamp their passport page when it is filled out. This makes it seem even more official.

If you wanted to make this lesson more exciting, you could find schools in other countries to Skype with. The students at these schools could tell your class first hand what some of their holiday traditions are. I'm making this a goal of my own for next year!