Technology Tuesday: Haiku Deck and a Freebie!

Happy Tuesday everyone!  I hope everyone is enjoying their last few weeks before school starts, though I hear that some people are already back?! I can't believe it! Anyways, it's time for another Tech Tuesday. I know that  I have mentioned this one multiple times in the past few weeks, but I just wanted to take a minute to fully talk about it. It is so amazing that it definitely deserves its own post. 

Haiku deck is a presentation software. It can be used on computers, ipads, and iphones. Our school does have an ipad cart, so I was lucky enough to use it over the summer with Haiku Deck. Now that school is back in session, I probably won't see the ipads as much so I will be using this program with the laptops this year. 

First things first,  you'll need to set up accounts for your students. If you need help with this, feel free to check out my post on using one Gmail account for student emails.  Once you have them logged in you will see this screen:

Click the "Create New Deck" button on the right corner of the screen. Then your new deck will pop up. A deck is like a presentation. In the top left hand corner you can rename your deck. Then if you look on the left side you will see the four different slide formats. 

It's extremely simple from there. Your students just insert the information they want into each slide. There are a few options for customization, but not much. Once they enter in their information they can find images or take images for their background. Just click on the picture button on the left hand navigation bar. 

Underneath of the picture button is a button to choose different font arrangements. 

There is also a section for notes for the presenter. Make sure that your students know that they will be the only ones able to see that. Apparently, you can link an iphone to the computer to be a remote for the presentation too. 

You can also change the font. There are six different free font packs. On the ipad, a lot of paid packs come up as well. 

Finally, the two things that I had to learn the hard way with my kids was the  importance of telling them to click the new slide button for each slide (in the bottom right hand corner). I thought it was self explanatory but one student didn't quite understand. Also, if you are using the ipad app you  need to SHARE the deck to save it. When you click on the box with the upward arrow in the upper right corner, a box  will come up that lets you share it privately so you can access it from any device. (We learned this the hard way a few times...)

This app is awesome for kids though! To help you use it in your classroom, I went ahead and created a basic planning page to help you. Click here to go to my TPT store and download the  Freebie. It's really basic so that you can change it to fit your needs. 

When explaining to my students, I had them all come to the rug and demonstrated with one ipad while they watched. The third and fourth graders got it with no problem... well practically. :) 

In case you haven't used Haiku Deck, you've got to try it! If you have, how do you use it in your classroom?

Happy Teaching!

Tech Tuesday: Piazza

So as promised, it's time for the Firstish Tech Tuesday post! I'm so excited to be sharing my growing knowledge with anyone out there in blog world! 

While taking a course this summer from William and Mary I got the opportunity to work with a class using a platform called Piazza. Piazza is an awesome platform for teachers and students to be able to collaborate. To start using Piazza, you would go to the website and sign up for an account. Once you sign up and add a class, click on the"Manage Class" button on the top Navigation Bar. Once you are there, you will see the sign up link that you can give your students and the access code. Write these on the board the first day of class and you can walk students through the sign up process. 

Once students go to the sign up link, they will see a page like this where they will need to enter in their access code. 

Once they enter in their access code (found on the teacher page that you got the link from) and click "Join Classes" they will then come to the following screen in which they need to enter in their email address. Many of my students don't have email addresses and even if they do I want to be able to monitor their email use at school. If you don't already know about the wonders of Gmail, jump on over to this post!

They will then click "Submit Email" and will be prompted with a page to enter in the conformation code from the email. Then you are all set!

Piazza can serve as a classroom webpage where you can post general resources and link, homework assignments,  or homework help.  Just click on "Course Page" on the top navigation bar and then "Resources" on the grey navigation bar on that page. From there you can add to each section. 

Piazza also serves as an excellent platform for class discussions. Don't worry, I still think pencil and paper is very important! But why not mix it up every once in a while? From the "Q & A" tab at the top navigation bar, you will get to the main screen. Once there, click on the blue "New Post" button on the left side bar. While there you can choose the post type, who sees it, what folders to include it in, and can put in your post. I want to start of the year with a post from my students about what they consider their "math life" to be. 

Once you have finished, you will go ahead and click the orange " Post" button at the bottom of the screen and then you will see this:

This is the same screen that students will see, except there will not be a place for "the instructor's answer". Students will be able to see the questions in the side bar and will be able to click and answer. Students would click in the followup discussion box and type their answer to your question (or another student's question). 

When they go to post, they will have the option to post anonymously or with their name and also to the entire group or just to the instructor. After they have clicked the post button they will see a red box pop up on the post. It will have an option for if the post is resolved or unresolved. 

They will leave it unresolved if it is a question that needs to be answered. They will mark it as resolved if it is anything else. 

Another great function of Piazza is that you can also use it to work with smaller groups within your class! Just click on the "Manage Class" button on the navigation bar and then click on the "Create Groups" button immediately below it. This will enable you to create groups that can have discussions without the whole class seeing it. 

This would be a great function for reading groups or group projects!

The possibilities are endless with Piazza! I haven't used it with an actual class yet, but my graduate class used it and loved it. I promise to update in the Fall with how it is working for us so far! Hope you all are having a good week! I'm getting so excited for my birthday shenanigans this weekend!

Tech Tuesday on a Monday: Using Gmail for Student Email Accounts

I didn't intend for this to be it's own post, but as I was writing my post about using a program called Piazza in the classroom, I realized how important this was on it's own if you didn't already know how to use it. Using technology in the classroom is awesome, but many times we come to the realization that for every single student account we need to have an email for them. In high school and maybe even middle school for some of you out there, this isn't a problem; but many of my elementary kids don't have email. Even if they do have email, maybe you don't want them to be using it in school. Who knows what is on there!

An easy way to have different email accounts for each student is to use your ONE gmail account. 

For instance, my gmail is misshayden26@gmail.com. When I wanted to get all ten of my students Haiku Deck accounts, I used my gmail to set it up. 

By giving each student the email of misshayden26+InsertIdentifier@gmail.com, they all have their "own" email address, but all correspondence goes to my one account. You don't have to do anything online for this to work, simply tell your students their assigned email address.  Gmail does not recognize anything after the "+". For my students this summer, I simply used "Student1" and changed the number for each student. For the students I work with all year, I will use their names as identifiers. 

When the email comes to your inbox, you can see who it is for:

You can see that the email is to "misshayden26+David@gmail.com", but it and all of the other emails are still sent to the single email account. 

This is just a very simple tip that can help a lot in your classroom. When I found out about it a few years ago, my mind was blown! 

Is there a simple tip that made a big difference in your classroom?

Hope everyone is have a good end to their summer! I  know that Chloe and I are so excited to finally get to sleep in this weekend. She is doing a bit of napping to make up for her early morning as we speak. 

Happy teaching!

Now Introducing: Tech Tuesday

One of the things that I strive to do most with my teaching is to involve technology. From my student teaching experience through my first two years of teaching I have been in Title I schools. Especially for these students, I think that it is important that we give them experiences using technology so that they have those 21st century skills that are vital for them in the future. I have found a lot of new technology resources that teachers can use in the classrooms and want to be able to share them, so here goes nothing!

I want to be sure to be sharing ideas, but also want to take them to include some basic tutorials. Two of the people that impacted my teaching life the most are my mentors Kelly and Mitzi. They both love to incorporate technology, but Mitzi especially can sometimes be a bit daunted from figuring things out on her own. Here's to helping all of the Kellys and Mitzis in the world get some technology going in their classroom!