Teaching Technology to Kindergartners

A while back I promised you I would be detailing our EdTech Scope and Sequence by grade level.

Below you'll find the overview of Kindergarten tech skills.  It has been a little slow in coming, because I wanted to get the full K-5 Sequence in ready-to-use format before jumping into the nitty gritty, and it's ready now (mostly), so... here goes!

Here is a pdf of the full K-5 Scope and Sequence.

Please feel free to use, copy, print and distribute these to your team. Our sequence is broken down by grade level to make it easier for you to know which chunk is yours. This work is based on the NETS standards for students (which are  National Educational Technology Standards ...which were developed by the ISTE Professional Standards committee, funded by NASA in consultation with the US Department of Education....blah, blah, blah. You get it. They're legit, that's all. :) )

This represents many hours of work by a group of awesome tech smarties, and we sure hope it can save you a similar expenditure of hours! If you have improvements, suggestions, we'd love to hear them!

Kindergarten

Here's the nitty gritty.

As in any subject area, teaching tech skills to Kinders is about evening the playing field. They each come with a stunning range of tech experience. This year in particular, my Kindergartners are coming to me with absolutely no idea what a mouse is or how to use it. (This is very different from past years, thank you iPad). But these guys still need mouse skills...very much. So we start there.
If I sum up what Tech skills are required in Kindergarten it looks like this:

1. Teach them what a mouse and keyboard are and how to use them. 

2. Teach them what it means to "login" and "log out"

3. Let technology serve to make literacy and learning FUN for them! (This tool is kinesthetic, visual, auditory all at once...technology helps engage your struggling, disinterested kiddos. They'll make connections in front of the screen that you've been struggling for weeks with simply because it can hold their attention.)

Easy peasy, right?
Wait, I'm about to make it easier. Here is a single card with all the resource tools and links we use to accomplish this in our Kinder classrooms. You can download it (all the links should stay with it and then you can use it later), or use just use the links below. Here's what's on it:

• Teach them to login. I give them each a little card with their login info and the time to find their names on the keyboard. 

This is a slow (kind of painful) process at first, but remember, these keyboard and mouse skills are what they're there to learn so if they only end up with a minute or two on the actual game, it's ok. It motivates them to learn and login faster next time when they only get a little taste. 

• For practice, I send home this keyboard worksheet and ask parents to have them practice finding their names. 

If you laminate them, they can be used for dinner placemats and kiddos get a little bit of practice every day. This gets them logging in really fast! You can also keep old keyboards or copies of this page in your classroom for practice during "choice time".

• Then we take them to Starfall.com. Oh my goodness.

If you've never put your kiddos on these games, you are going to love watching how they engage with the letters and sounds. This website also makes it so easy to differentiate. I can have one kiddo practicing letter sounds while the one right next to him is practicing onset and rime and reading books that challenge him. I love seeing them absorb the way they do when they're working on this website!

That's Kindergarten.
Next up: First grade!

Save URLs on your Desktop

Here's a Smart Kid trick I think you'll love.
Do you have websites you go to nearly everyday?
Did you know you can save links to them on your desktop so they're easy to get to?
Like this:

Now, with it on your desktop you can just double click to open the website.
But this trick gets better.
Maybe you have a bunch of links you want to save in a folder so you can use them again and again for a particular unit of study with your students.
Make a folder on your desktop by right clicking (Control-Click)

Now do the same thing as before, dragging your links into the folder

When you're finished you can file this folder away with everything else you store for that unit. Just drag the folder to where you want it using Finder.

Oh yeah...be sure you go into the folder and give those links intelligent names or they won't mean anything to you later.

NOW it gets even better...
Maybe you go to 5 websites everyday (email, calendar, Jennie's blog. wink) and you'd like easy access to them from your Dock.
Yep. We can totally do that too.

Here we go:

Remember to go into that folder and rename those links or they will be a pain to decipher when you have to move fast in front of 35 kiddos later.

And there it is all happy! It's going to look like a Web icon, because that's what it's full of unless you change it. Change it by doing a Control-Click on it and you'll get this menu. Choose Folder to make it look like a folder.

Now ask me if you can change that little folder icon to something cool like Marvel Super heroes icons.

Umm...

Oh. Yeah.

I'll totally show you how if you want me to. :)

Baah! How cool is that?!

Calendar Awesomeness

I like blogs that get right down to business, so I'm going to go straight to the important stuff here and then if you feel like reading about why I wrote this blog you can keep going. 

If you do, I promise you a good laugh at me and my ridiculousness by the end (rolls eyes).  

Here goes: 

How to Get in The Google Calendar Game:

There is plenty written about this, so I'll just provide some links.

1. Get a Google Account if you don't have one. This will give you access to Gmail (though you don't have to use it), Google Docs (another amazing collaboration tool), Blogger (which is how I'm writing this blog right now), and tons more.

2. Go make some Calendars. This link is for a 9 minute video for those of you who like to walk through set-up with a video tutor. But Google Cal is pretty intuitive, and you'll get pretty far by just playing with it. If you need to know how to get to it...just go to a Google search page and look at that top black bar.

3. Share. Just like with our kiddos. Share your tools :)

4. Sync your Calendars with your laptop and other devices...if you want. This link is to a blog post that gives good details about how to do this. But know that this step is only a convenience. Even if you don't sync, your Google Cal is available everywhere just by going to it on the web. :)

Note: Yes, it will sync with Android as well, but I didn't put a link for that here. If you want a hand with that, leave me a comment and I'll find a good resource for that too!

Now here's the rest of the blog about why you should do Steps 1-4 above!

At school last week we started a Calendar conversation. 

I made promises of Awesomeness. 

I stand by those promises, because...i.LOVE. my Google Calendars. 

I have 17 of them (yes one of them isn't showing up in this picture if you're the type who just counted.  I'm positively fond of you, if you're the one who just counted. hee.)

But change is never easy and many of us have other calendars we already use and don't want (need?) one more system.

Absolutely!
We should never add technology layers if they won't make things simpler, easier, more efficient, more collaborative, etc.

My litmus test for my teachers this year is this:
Will this technology save them time and effort while helping them do what they do (engage kids in meaningful learning) even more awesomely?   

If the answer is, "no but it's a neato technology...," then I won't bring it to them. That's my commitment to the Rockstars I work with.  In the case of Google Calendars though, there is so much potential for simplicity, time-saving and collaboration over any other tool available to them that it's well worth bringing to the table. (And it's free...what?!)

What are the benefits:

• Google Calendars can be shared. This means that I can set up a Calendar for my team, share it with them and now we all can make changes to it, see each others schedule, etc. At school, our Principal can put important info (assemblies and recess duty) on a master calendar and the teachers can all see it in real time right up against their own personal calendars. That brings me to the next awesome feature...

• Google Calendar can send you a Text or Email reminder. So in the case of my teachers, they can go into the Principal's Master Calendar on their recess duty entry and ask it to send a reminder to their phone the night before they are due on the playground. The beauty of this is they didn't have to remember to add their duty schedule to their personal calendar. It's already there on the shared one! They just ask for a reminder.

• Everything is in one place and available wherever I have internet access. I can log on to any computer or internet device anywhere and have access to my calendar. I don't have to be on MY laptop. I can also have access to my boys schedule and my husband's work schedule

• Everything can be Simplified. But I don't have to look at everyone's calendars most of the time. I can turn them on when I need to check and right back off. 

Now the part where you laugh at me.

Yeah. That's us the day I remembered to take him to 7th grade.

I believe in humor as much as I believe in leveraging technology. This is why I often do stupid things. Remember this blog post about my parental awesomeness?

I'm happy to report that we do have improvement since the first day of 6th grade, because we did in fact make it for the first day of 7th grade this year. 

We celebrated with cake.

However...

Today I forgot him at Cross Country practice. Didn't even think about him until my phone buzzed at 17 minutes past. 

Ask me why I forgot him. 

I was writing a blog post about how awesome Google Calendar is because you can have it send you text reminders so you won't be late picking up your kids.

Yeah.

He laughs at me, this boy. I do too, thank goodness. (I've always said, "if your kids know you're really, really crazy about them you can make a lot of mistakes and they'll be ok." I've now added, "but start a therapy fund just in case...")

I just set a reminder that will buzz my phone 17 minutes before I'm late next time.
Did I mention that I love my Google Calendars?

How To Ensure Your Privacy In Facebook

Some of us love our Facebook, some of us hate it, but most of us are on it.

So what do you do when one of your students sends you a Friend request? It can feel like it oversteps your professional boundary, but they're so cute...you don't want to reject them! Here's how to set up your privacy settings so that you can accept their request and still keep your privacy.

 First Create A Friend List and put your kiddos on it (their parents too if you feel like it)
(If you can't see these screenshots, just click on them...)

Go ahead and add people to the list.

  Now Change Your Security Settings To Exclude That List.

 Now whenever you post a status, this list will not see it, unless you change this setting.

You can lock down everything and make it seem like you're just never on FB, or you can leave up some pictures, etc. And the cool thing is, you can always change this on the fly...if you post a status or photo you want everyone to see, you can change it right from there. Just look for that little Custom gear!
*Do pay attention though...when you change this setting in a status update, that change becomes your new default so be SURE you change it back!

Voila. You're back to having a Professional AND a Personal life! :)

4 Things To Make Life 4 Million Times Easier!

I. Make yourself a Google Account!
so that you can

• A. Make an iGoogle Page (This is a lifesaver when you find yourself on someone else's computer because yours got left home or it got in trouble and had to go see Roy)

• B. Use Google Docs (Why use Google Docs sometimes? Collaboration. Cross Platform. Available anywhere. Fill-able Forms.)
• C. Take a Look at Google Calendar (I have 12 different calendars all stored in the same place, all color-coded. The Husb and I can access them from anywhere...even our phones. Saved my life SO many times!)
• D. Consider a Blogger blog to put your class newsletter on. This is a super non-threatening way to delve into the techy-classroom stuff. Get your feet wet with a simple Blog style newsletter instead of an email one. It will be on the web, but you can make it so it's not searchable...only people with the link can get to it, so that's cool. Don't wait until you have time to make the perfect class website. You can literally have a cute blog up in 5 minutes and down in less than that if you change your mind. It's totally worth trying!

II. Magical Mac Tricks You May Not Know.

• Touch Pad Finger Zoom and Right Click trick

• Keyboard Short Cuts. CMD-X,C,V,A,Z. Know them, Love them. Do you have others to add to our vast storehouse of treasures?

• Screen Capture. CMD-Shift-3: Captures the whole screen and saves it to the desktop. CMD-Shift-4: Gives you a little crosshair cursor. Drag it around what you want to capture and it will snap a picture of that and save it to the desktop.

• Magnifying Glass Search in the Upper Right Corner. Did you know this was there? Use this to open applications and documents. So Awesome!

• Hot Corners. They can be annoying or really awesome, depending on how you like to work. I set the bottom right corner to show my desktop...it sort of mimics a PC tool I used to love!

III. Awesome App Tricks You May Not Know!

• Sticky Notes are SO cool. Type in Stickies in the Search bar up there. The application is self explanatory, but if you want it to open every time you turn your computer on, click and hold the icon in the dock until you see Options pop up. Choose to Open at Login.

• First Class is your default mail, but it's probably not set up to be the default when you're browsing the web. Irritating! That's ok, here are the instructions about how to set it up so that whenever you click on an email link from a website, FirstClass will open instead of MacMail. Click Here to Download the Instructions. Here is an email link to use so you can see if it's working.

• Here's another FirstClass trick to make life easier. Save your name on the login screen so you only have to type your password. Here, I'll post a picture of what I'm talking about.
  
• Make folders in your FirstClass to help organize your emails. Click on your inbox (or whatever folder you want to put your new folder inside of) Then go to File>New>New Folder. Now you can drag emails into folders.

IV. Web Browser Organization!
I recommend using Firefox as your Web Browser. It just plays nicer. But even in Safari, there are a few good tricks to know.


If you're in Safari:
1. First, Show the Tab Bar. Go to the View Menu and click Show Tab Bar. Phwew. Now you can keep track of where you are when you're surfing.
2. Now Get a Home Button. Go to View and Customize Toolbar. Drag the little house button onto the top toolbar. Phwew. Now we have a home key. Everyone needs a home that's easy to get to.

Now for either Safari or Firefox:

1. Set iGoogle as your Home Page: Open up your iGoogle Page. On the Menu, go to Firefox(or Safari) >Preferences>General. Under the Homepage Bar click the button that says Use Current Page.
   
2. Set your browser to open a new tab instead of a new window: Go To FireFox(or Safari)>Preferences>Tabs>Open Windows in a New Tab
3. Remove anything from your Bookmark bar that you don't use: In Safari you just drag that baby off there and Poof! In Firefox you can Right Click and choose Delete.
4. Make yourself some Folders up there: Right Click on an empty space on the bar. Safari gives you one option. Firefox gives you a bunch.
5. Now Surf and find something you want to Bookmark. In order to save it...just do this: See the cute little picture in front of your address bar at the very top? Drag that into a folder you just made on the Bookmark bar. Link saved. You love this, don't you? You can also go into the bookmarks menus and get more specific with your organizing if you like, but this is the easiest way to deal.