3-12, Apps, Education, Independent Study, Research, Student Products, Teaching Tools, Web 2.0

Take Your Dream Team to the Next Level

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Last year, I posted about a “Dream Team” project, inspired by Angela Maiers, that my 5th graders did using the Puppet Pals app.  If pressed to name my own Dream Team (which would have a larger roster than all of the teams in the NBA combined!), Angela Maiers would definitely be part of it.  Two other members would be Laura Moore, an Instructional Technologist in our district who blogs at Learn Moore Stuff, and Kacie Germadnik, a fellow GT teacher.

I was recently browsing Laura’s blog, and she did a post with some great shout-outs to teachers who have been integrating technology in amazing ways.  She included Kacie’s Dream Team project, which completely blew me away.  Each student created a Smore, and they have biographies and pictures of their Dream Team members. Also included on the Smore pages are various technology products created by the students in which they explained mandalas that they made as well as “This I Believe” videos.  Kacie then collected each student’s project into a Blendspace portfolio.  To see more examples, take a look at this link.

Critical Thinking, Education, K-12, Motivation, Teaching Tools

Fun Critical Thinking Activities

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This is a neat poster (created with Smore) from Huffman ISD that gives some ideas for shaking things up a bit in the classroom.  Though the poster was designed to help teachers to prepare their students for the STAAR test (Texas’ statewide assessment), the activities can really be used with any topic, and to support any learning goal.  Some of these may not be new to you, but you might find one or two suggestions that you haven’t used in awhile.  If you are still in school for a couple of weeks (as is our district), then you may want to refer to this for some last-minute ideas.  “Carouseling” is one of my personal favorites – although I have never used that title for it before!

I am embedding this below, but it may not show up.  So, here is the link: https://smore.com/0udr