Hit Record with Book Creator

Written by Kelly Skillingberg

Señor Mares joined the Cowboy community as recently as this Spring semester to teach Spanish II and Spanish IV. He is an amazing example of an educator who loves to integrate technology into his classroom for the purpose of providing his learners with opportunities to express themselves while learning a foreign language.

Recently, Señor Mares collaborated with us, his digital learning coaches, to find a way for his learners to share their knowledge of speaking in past tense about their summer. Together we discussed the benefits of using Book Creator. The beauty of this tool is in its simplicity. It allows users to spend their time creating instead of learning how to use the tool. His learners were able to create beautiful customized books, using the voiceover feature to describe their summer experiences in past tense.

Señor Mares has already established a classroom culture where all learners are educators and all educators are learners. He had no prior experience with Book Creator, but was transparent with his learners in asking for their help to set up an account to ensure everyone had access. Due to his problem-solving mentality, his learners were kind and considerate in helping him use a new tool and truly collaborated with him as a team.

Señor Mares collected feedback from his learners by encouraging them to tweet about their Book Creator experience, capturing their voice and ensuring the project met their needs.

Welcome to Coppell, Señor Mares! Keep Rocking!

If you are interested in using Book Creator in your classroom, remember your DLCs are here to support you in the design and execution of your lessons. As always, feel free to leave a comment below or contact your campus DLC for support on any tools highlighted on this blog.

Coding to Learn in AP Human Geography? Yes you can!

Ryan Simpson is an educator who is always looking to improve his craft. His passion lies in designing lessons that will engage his learners and present authentic application of course content. Recently, Ryan met with us, his digital learning coaches, to explore innovative ways to integrate technology in his AP Human Geography blended course, including coding robots!

From this personalized PL experience, Mr. Simpson facilitated an economic development learning experience rich with voice and choice and activity variety. In order to answer the essential question, “Why do development and industrialization vary across space and time?” his learners were to research and trace a chosen product’s life from ideation to production facility to distribution. This learning experience was rolled out in 50’s diner style with educators dressed as waiters taking learners’ “orders”. 

Groups were given a menu, “Simpson’s Industrial Diner” and asked to choose an appetizer, main course, and dessert activity for their project.

The learner led aspect was evident from the very beginning with the presentation of an incomplete rubric. In order to empower learners to take ownership and focus their learning, Simpson required group members to work together to complete the “exceeds expectations” and the “below expectations” portion of their own rubrics.

As learners began to work and research their chosen product, they had to keep the “product tracing template” in mind. 

Groups that chose to code Sphero robots had to constantly consider, where the product traveled, what the Sphero will say at each stage of development, the purpose behind Sphero’s movements (speed, color, location for each economic sector) and how to creatively design a map to display all parts of the process. This experience lead to discussions that deepen their understanding of each stage of development. It required them to think of all the tiny details in production and how to display them in a way that would make sense to an outside audience. The computational thinking skills that are needed to code a robot fit seamlessly with the research elements of Mr. Simpson’s content.

Lastly, learners reflected using Flipgrid to discuss “Is outsourcing/globalization helping or hurting America’s economy?”

We are always looking for innovative ways to Code 2 Learn in all content areas. If you have a great project idea or simply looking for a thought partner on this topic please share below.

Teen Tech Week

This week our library will be celebrating Teen Tech Week.  This year’s theme is "Libraries are for Creating.” We want to encourage teens to create and share their own content.

On Tuesday and Thursday, learners are encouraged to bring their lunch to the library and leave a Flipgrid response to the prompts: “What book have you read lately that would make a good movie? Why? What actors would you cast as the main characters in the story?” Visit this Flipgrid to contribute and see other’s responses.

We will also explore different tech tools that can help learners promote their movie or tell an entirely new story of their own and share it on the same Flipgrid. Click on the images below for a quick tutorial on each of the tools that will be highlighted.

Apple Clips

TextingStory App

Book Creator for Chrome

iMovie

How are your learners' telling their stories? Please share below.