Our Adventures With KidBlog Continue At Van Meter With Quad Blogging In The 3rd Grade!

Our adventures in Kidblog continue at Van Meter this week. 

As our classes get all set up, they have been connecting with each other in KidBlog.  

We shared the story of our 2nd graders learning how to blog and comment using paper blogging. You can read all about it here.

This week, after collaborating and planning with the 3rd grade teachers, we decided to kick off blogging in KidBlog with a special quad blogging activity with all four sections. 

With Thanksgiving right around the corner, we chose a blogging activity focusing on one of our favorites, An Awesome Book of Thanks, by Dallas Clayton. 

 You will find it online here.

The words and illustrations are....

...wonderful and perfect for this activity as the students were given....

 

...writing prompts to choose from for their KidBlog posts. 

I loved going to Amanda Wright's classroom yesterday to kick off quad blogging with her class.  Amanda and I read An Awesome Book of Thanks back and forth together and then shared the prompts.

 They were excited to pick one...

 ... as they wrote their post about thanks.

 I love the care and...

....details all of them...

 ...put into their posts.

It was great seeing how much fun they were having.  To have their very own place to post was the best!

Today, after every one of our 3rd graders had a post complete, they were ready to connect with their friends in the other classes. 

I rotated through the classes to help the students and teachers, which was super helpful in talking about quad blogging, commenting and connecting with our friends.  

On Monday, we will continue and I can't wait to see what happens for these brand new bloggers next!

Our 5th Graders Made Photos Talk With Blabberize While Learning With Mo, The Developer, On Skype!

Last week, our 5th graders had the opportunity to Skype with our friend Mo. He developed Blabberize.  Blabberize is a site and app that allows you to take any picture, put a mouth on that picture, and make it speak with your voice.

We plan to use Blabberize to give book talks, share historical events, celebrate art work and projects, and so much more. 

They had such a blast learning about Blabberize with Mo on Skype. 

He explained to the kids how you can take any image and Blabberize it by...

...clicking on the MAKE button underneath the Blabberize. It is circled in hot pink in the image above.

This is where you can also BROWSE and look at MY STUFF.

Mo took a famous painting and...

...showed them how to add a mouth and making the it talk. 

After Mo made this one for us, he also explained how Blabberize could be used in projects by

turning it into a video or embedding it in a blog or webpage to be shared with classmates and others.

They couldn't wait to make their own. 

They got right to work. 

Some of them worked with a partner or two and lots of them...

...worked by themselves to create....

....something awesome. 

We loved watching them find or take a photo to Blabberize.  

We kept Mo on Skype so he could answer questions and...

...get a good laugh from what our kids were creating too. 

At the end of our time together, Mo showed them the new..

...Blabberize iOS App. 

The site states, 

You can place your talking picture in video with you using the self facing camera. Or take your talking picture into the wild with Augmented Reality using the front facing camera.

He showed us how to Blabberize a banana with the new app.  We can't wait to use this one on our iPads and create with it too. 

You will find the information on the Blabberize iOS app and other resources here to help you create amazing videos with Blabberize too!  

Thank you Mo for Skyping with your students and sharing the awesome app you created.  We are excited to use Blabberize throughout the year. 

Join Us For The Next Future Ready Librarian Webinar, Exploring Equitable Digital Access!

On November 27, 2018, we will be hosting a new Future Ready Librarian webinar, Exploring Equitable Digital Access.  

For this webinar, my friends and colleagues Lynn Bryan, Ashley Cooksey, and Kristin Mattson will joining me as we talk about how we explore and support equitable digital access in our schools and districts in Alabama, Colorado, Illinois and Iowa. 

You can register for this free webinar here on the Alliance for Excellent Education site.  If you cannot attend at the scheduled time, don't worry as it will be recorded and shared afterwards too.

Thank you to our friends at Future Ready School and Follett for making this webinar possible and for supporting Future Ready Librarians everyday.