Mrs. P's Ed Tech Talk: March 2013

So, last week I decided to try an interactive site with my 1st graders. I was a bit worried as we had never used a site like this before at the 1st grade level, but I felt confident with my students' abilities, so we tried it out.

The site is Lino. It's an interactive bulletin board where you can post sticky notes, pictures, etc. I set up a board for my 1st graders (very easy to do; no sign up is required), and posed the question, "What is your favorite website?". I decided to focus on a simple question this time because I was more interested in them focusing on the task of using an online, interactive tool. This site could definitely be used at multiple grade levels for endless topics!
Well, let me say that my 1st graders ROCK!! They blew me away by how well they did and how much fun they had! They were amazed at the fact that their friend could be sitting on the other side of the room, on a different computer, yet their friend's sticky note showed up on their own computer!!

If you have never tried this site, I highly recommend it! It's so simple to use. The one drawback is that many times the sticky notes ended up on top of each other by mistake, but that was an easy fix. I simply just went back in as me, and I was able to easily unstack them.
I took some screenshots of their answers and posted them below. I have disabled the page I set up for them so that only I can see it now. I did this for their privacy and so as to not have any more sticky notes added to it by outsiders.

Enjoy the link to the site (click the logo below) and the screenshots of the students' answers!

Screenshots:

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Legit or Not? How can you tell?

I know that one of the areas that is hard for me to explain to students, is how to tell if a website is legit or not. I know ways to tell, but it's hard for me to convey that message in a way that they will understand.

Luckily, after doing some searching and reading, I have found multiple resources to help me teach this skill. I am most likely going to teach this to my 3rd graders next week. It's a very valuable skill to learn and use, especially as students get older. They will be doing more and more research online so it will important that they are aware of how to find accurate and valid information.

Below are many links to ideas and resources for teaching this skill. However, if you have any other ideas or links that would also help, I would LOVE to hear them! Thanks!