Big Universe

For the next three weeks, all students in grades one through four will become acquainted with Big Universe. We are fortunate that we have a district subscription to Big Universe for grades K-6. Students have 24/7 access to over 7,000 eBooks from 35 different publishers. The database of books is levelized based on Fountas & Pinnell reading levels and are standards aligned. Students will practice searching for books using filters such as their F & P reading level or grade level, genres, and fiction type. They will also learn how to use the features in the Write Program to create a book on their own.

Students find reading the eBooks highly motivating. They particularly enjoy adding their favorite books to their bookshelves. They have the ability to “friend” other students enrolled in our MSD subscription and send them a preformatted friendly message that they choose from a drop down list. The messages give compliments to their friends’ work or ask them to check out their bookshelf so they can share titles that they are reading. Big Universe promotes student discussion about text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-real world connections.

Big Universe is more than just a resource for students to read books. It is an interactive resource that engages students in reading, writing, listening, and sharing. It is a great tool for providing differentiation of instruction. Students can engage in project based learning activities. With the vast number of nonfiction texts available, students can conduct research using books at their independent reading level allowing them to be active participants in their learning.

The writing feature of Big Universe allows students to self-publish books for a variety of writing purposes and audiences. Students can create books of their small moment stories. They can demonstrate their understanding of social studies and science concepts by creating nonfiction books on topics such as weather, the human body, planets, Native American tribes, world cultures, animals, ecosystems and biomes, butterflies, etc. There are over 7,000 pieces of clipart for students to choose from to illustrate their books. If they don’t find something that matches up with their topic in the clipart gallery, they can create their own drawings in programs such as KidPix or Paint and upload them to Big Universe. They can also import pictures from search engines.

Big Universe provides teachers with the opportunity to assess students based on Common Core Standards. There are many books in the Big Universe collection that can serve as mentor texts when teaching standards. If you project the eBooks on a whiteboard, you can pause the stories to underline words and passages, make inferences, draw conclusions, and look at pictures and diagrams. There are a number of uses for Big Universe in the classroom. Teachers can use it for guided reading or whole class instruction, creating and developing lessons, practicing Smarter Balanced Testing basics, and for Response to Intervention (RTI). Please visit the following links to learn how you can use Big Universe in these capacities with students. At the bottom of the second link there are short 1 minute video testimonials from various teachers sharing how they use Big Universe in their classrooms.

https://www.biguniverse.com/main/learn

https://www.biguniverse.com/main/buinaction

A wonderful feature of our subscription is that the students can access Big Universe from home from any devise. What a fun way to get that 20 minutes of reading in!

Safari Montage

This week will serve as a “head up” of a new program the district has purchased for us called Safari Montage. As the second part of the name suggests, Safari Montage is a mosaic of digital learning tools for teachers to use with their students. Safari Montage is a place for educators and students to create, store and present digital learning resources in K-12 teaching and learning. So you are probably asking about now, what does that mean? Safari Montage is a combination of four digital platforms. The one, I see teachers being most excited about is the video streaming library. Safari Montage will be replacing our Discovery Education subscription. Safari Montage has over 10,000 videos and 17,000 images at your disposal. You can search video content by state and Common Core standards. The titles cover Social Studies, Science, Language Arts, Math, Foreign Language, and Health & Physical Education. There are also videos on Character Education, Computer Science and lots more subjects. You may be familiar with some of the companies that house their movies on Safari Montage: Reading Rainbow, Schoolhouse Rock, Eyes of the Prize, PBS, Bill Nye the Science Guy, Magic School Bus, Sid the Science Kid, Modern Marvels, Schlessinger Media, SciGirls, Between the Lions, The Men who Built America, The History Channel, BBC, National Geographic, plus MANY more. The filtering system within the video streaming component allows you to search by grade level and video type. Each video is divided up into smaller segments so you have the option of showing the whole video or only parts that are relevant to what you are teaching. To learn more about video streaming using Safari Montage, click on the following link. http://www.safarimontage.com/solutions/video-streaming-library.aspx

Safari Montage also has a Learning Object Repository (LOR). That means you can upload over 50 types of digital resources file types whether they are Microsoft Office files, Apple files, ebooks, videos, interactive whiteboard files, interactive files such as Google Earth and images such as JPEG, GIF, PNG or Bitmap. You can group these resources by subject and place them in folders you create. The Learning Object Repository allows teachers to share playlists they have created for certain teaching units and use playlists created by other teachers. Playlists are groups of media that teachers put together to guide students through interactive lessons. Playlists can be given a QR code or web link so students can access them through the lab computers or at home. For more information on the Learning Object Repository (LOR), click on the following link. http://www.safarimontage.com/solutions/learning-object-repository.aspx

Rest assured, training on Safari Montage is coming. If anyone wants to explore the program on their own and start using the videos in their classroom, please do. Both Sue W. and I were introduced to the program and are happy to answer any questions you have or show you how to search for media. The link to the log-in page is below. The user name is the same school email address you log-in with every morning and the password is the same one you use every morning as well. The link only works from school. Mark B. is in the process of developing a separate link that will eventually work from home.

http://safari.merrimack.k12.nh.us/SAFARI/montage/login/login.php?

Kidspiration

This week I’d like to highlight a program we have on practically every computer in the building, yet is one of the least utilized.  That program is Kidspiration. It is installed on every computer in the Mac Lab as well as both HP laptop carts. Most teacher computers should also have it on them making it convenient to create lesson templates to use with students.

Kidspiration is a powerful tool that enables students to create graphic organizers such as word webs, concept maps, tables and Venn diagrams to organize information and demonstrate relationships within content areas. With these tools students can create models of life cycles, demonstrate their understanding of food chains and food webs, classify the three main types of clouds, etc. These tools lend themselves to outlining the paragraphs in a research paper, performing word sorts, doing a character analysis, demonstrating knowledge of cause and effect as well as fact and opinion and vocabulary.

Kidspiration contains a database of lessons in four categories: Reading and Writing, Math, Science, and Social Studies. There are more than 3,000 symbols in the program to provide visual support for the concepts taught. Students can even create their own symbols as well as import photographs to use with lessons. There are lesson templates that correlate directly with our curriculum. First graders can demonstrate their understanding of Goods and Services as well as what it means to be a citizen.  There is a template that second graders can use to identify U.S. Symbols.  Third graders can compare and contrast Native American tribes. Fourth graders can categorize powers in the three branches of government. These are just a very few templates available to teachers that can be edited to fit many subjects.

Kidspiration also has a Math View category filled with virtual math manipulatives such as base ten blocks, fraction bars, pattern blocks, and color tiles for them to practice math reasoning and problem solving skills. There are also a variety of math lesson templates where students can practice skills in the following areas: place value, adding and subtracting, building expressions, multiplication and division, comparing fractions, measurement and symmetry.

Kidspiration is extremely easy to use. Students find the interactive technology highly motivational for demonstrating their understanding compared to completing worksheets. Atomic Learning is an excellent professional development resource. It breaks down the features of the program into short manageable tutorials that are easy to understand. Remember, teachers can receive tech hours for completing Atomic Learning modules and exploring new technology.

Below I have listed a number of online resources provided by Inspiration, the parent company of Kidspiration, that provides a repository of lesson templates across the curriculum.

http://www.inspiration.com/Kidspiration#develop-critical-thinking-skills

http://www.inspiration.com/Curriculum-Integration/Kidspiration 

http://www.inspiration.com/Kidspiration/examples   

http://technologyintegrationshthornt.pbworks.com/f/Kidspiration-Online+Templates+to+Download.pdf

http://www.inspiration.com/lessonplans/kidspiration

Office 365

 As you read, Office 365 was referenced in the directions emailed to the staff to help everyone with the migration of our email system over to online storage. You might have asked yourself, “What is Office 365?” when you read the email or maybe you heard of it but weren't quite sure of its potential. In either case, Office 365 is a powerful cloud productivity tool that offers access to Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Sway, and other Microsoft Office tools from anywhere you have a Web connection. You can access Office 365 from virtually any device whether it is Windows or Mac based. It conveniently works on Android and Apple smartphones and tablets.

Office 365 provides users with online data storage on Microsoft’s online cloud storage service called One Drive. This elevates space issues on local hard drives on work and home computers. It also means that you can store your files on the cloud and access them from both work and home, no more saving files to flash drives. Teachers can share files with students and colleagues as well as work collaboratively on documents, spreadsheets, and presentations in teams.

Everyone in the district has an Office 365 account. You simply log in with your full email address as your user name and the regular password you sign into the Network with every morning. I am embedding two short video clips to give you a more comprehensive overview of Office 365 and a quick lesson on how to start uploading and sharing files. An official rollout of 365 is in the future, but you don’t have to wait to start using the program…. especially with report cards around the bend. Office 365 will provide you with a seamless platform to work on report cards and comments from your classroom and from home. You will always have the most up to date version of your file at your fingertips.

Data Managers, you can create and share documents with your PLT.

If you don't have Microsoft Office Suite at home, you are allowed to download it free from your school account. Click on the Office 365 tab in the top left corner to get to the download page (see below).

A comprehensive overview of Office 365.

For a quick lesson on how to upload and share files in Office 365, click on the link below and view the screencast.

http://screencast.com/t/SSoRCYbKcUC

Kid Safe Search Engines

A major concern for teachers whenever they work with students searching for information on the Internet is keeping them from inadvertently coming across inappropriate material. In our commitment to keep students safe, we have placed three kid safe search engines at teachers’ fingertips on our Merrimack Symbaloo Links page.

All three search engines, KidRex, KidzSearch, and Google Junior, use a combination of Google’s safe search mode and their own databases of filtered keywords and phrases to screen suspicious websites. These three search engines are specifically devoted to providing safe searches for kids with a higher level of filtering making the Internet safer.