Technology in 2nd Grade, Episode 1
00:00
Welcome to the inaugural podcast of Technology for Learning in 2nd Grade. I am Jennifer Wilkinson and in this podcast I invite you to come along with me to find out what I did to better figure out how to technology tools to boost my students' engagement.
00:20
One of the ongoing questions that I face as is a teacher is how to convince my students to do hard things. The trick is to find a way to bundle the challenge that they need with the engagement that they want. Over the years, I have learned that one of the easiest ways to convince a 7 or 8 year old that something is fun is to turn it into a it a club! Don’t want to read chapter books? Let’s make a book club! Struggling with math? Welcome to before school math club. So when I was considering how to increase my students’ participation during online learning, it seemed logical to try to create a technology club. A second way to convince a 7 or 8 year old that anything is fun is to find a 10 or 11 year old to do it with them. So, I invited a group of 5th graders to join us. My students had a broad range of interests, from drawing to video games to geography, so I decided to meet two days a week, one day focusing on “creating” which was basically coding, and drawing and then a different day, which I called Explorer Club. It was a chance to play with Google Earth and Google maps. I reached out to my district’s tech gurus and was able to get access to a set of little Ozobot robots and a Maky Maky kit! Still not sure what is inside the Maky Maky kit, but I'll get to that later. We were ready to get going.
01:52
I sent out messages, fliers, talked it up during my family conference conversations, but in the end, it was up to the kids to show up to the club. On the first day I had 5 wonderful fifth graders, and three 2nd graders! A bit disappointing. I have 15 kids in my class and only three showed up! Anyway, we launched right into a Minecraft coding tutorial. The Zoom platform turned out to be a perfect way for students to collaborate and help each other. Those who chose could go to breakout rooms in pairs, others could stay with the larger group to problem solve together. This was the first time that most of the students, even the fifth graders, had used the scratch programming tool. The tutorials in this umbrella of Hour of Code activities were great. They set them up perfectly to start with small steps and then add on to their learning. Actually, I didn't really know how do any of these before I started with the kids. so it was a great way for all of us to teach each other and for all of us to tolerate frustration. Things rarely worked the first time, but the great thing about coding is that feedback is immediate and we all quickly discovered that problems can be solved.
03:13
That same week we also had our first “explorer” club. This time more 2nd graders came. We played with this tool called Hopper the Penguin, that I found on a site that is a Google site called Experiments with Google--I highly recommend this if you want to explore some incredible examples of what happens when Google pays people to be creative. It is like an artist playground. Kids can move a very cute penguin anywhere they choose on the globe and then it zooms to that location via Google Earth. Then they can direct their penguin, their little Hopper Penguin to explore. Added bonus, they could make the penguin take a selfie and then email the selfie to themselves. How cool is that! Double added bonus, on this day one of my most disengaged students happened to come. I was able to pair her up with a fifth grader who helped her to travel everywhere from Paris to Antarctica. This is student who needed many reminders to either turn her camera on or sit in a way that made her face visible in the screen. During our club time she benefited from the one-on-one attention of her 5th grade buddy. She had her face in the screen and she responded to prompts and questions for 30 minutes as they chose where to go all over the world. It was super fun. High engagement.
04:45
This is pretty much how each club went. We used the Dance Party Hour of Code tutorial to create animated choreographed dance and then made a flip grid so that we could share them with each other. We figured out how to program the Ozobots remotely. We explored drawing using the Microsoft Whiteboard tool--it was like having a big huge shared canvas that we could all draw on at the same time. Really fun. We played with the web version of Google Earth. With each meeting I felt myself step back more and more as the kids took the wheel—they were helping each other to problem solve , suggesting next steps and coming up with new things to try.
05:31
It turned out that the five students , out my fifteen, who regularly chose to attend the technology club also happened to be my students who typically, during our regular class time, were on target and excited to learn. These were kids who were reading at or above grade level, they were quickly understanding what we were doing and they were HIGHLY engaged during the coding and map exploring lessons, asking questions, wanting to share their work and persisting through frustration. Both the 5th and 2nd graders would ask to stay on to keep working after the 30 minutes of club time had passed. The fifth graders were so excited about the club that they even did a news report about it for School wide assembly!
06:18
But what about the reason I was doing this club in the first place? Those kids who needed this most. Those kids who I was most worried about because they were not engaged in our regular learning. This club was not turning out to be a solution for them because they rarely, if ever chose to come. So, I was worried. I needed to find a way for this to work for them. Because so far our online learning platform was not working.
06:48
Well, there was one big advantage to being 100% remote. It allowed me to be much more flexible with my time. If a kid wasn’t coming to the technology club, maybe I could try bringing the club to them! One student in particular, I’ll call him Tim, was on my mind and heart. Tim struggled with our 2nd grade academic tasks—but he was one of the first to figure out how to annotate during our online Zoom class. He was drawn to technology. This kid's mom would report that he would often have different screens open during our online lessons. What? A hot wheels game is more interesting than Mrs. Wilkinson explaining how to find key words in nonfiction text? I had to somehow convince him that there was something worthwhile of his attention in our online platform. As it was, he just wasn’t interested in what we were doing in that Zoom. I invited him to a special “two person” tech club session . He was intrigued by the Dance Party Coding program after I had shown him some examples of what the other kids had done.
07:58
I have been learning about this idea of “digital literacy” which expands beyond the traditional definition of literacy as being simply reading and writing. I was starting to shift my understanding of literacy to include symbols , emojis, being able to navigate a keyboard. All of these things are skills that in truth are things that will be required in the future to be a literate person. During my one-on-one time with Tim, using Scratch code to program his dance. he followed directions and went back to correct mistakes when prompted. During our whole class instruction when he responds or participates it was usually off topic or a guess. But now, he was so interested in getting his character to make the moves that he wanted that he was focused the entire time. The lesson turned out to be, in some ways, a traditional reading lesson as I prompted him to use his phonics understanding to figure out the names of the different animal choices that were available to him in the coding drop down menu. At first, he only wanted to move random blocks to see what they would do but then he realized that when he slowed down to try to read the words on the blocks he would have more control of what the character did in the dance. He maintained focus on this task for 30 minutes. Watching Tim focus so intently on learning how to move the Scratch coding blocks, and quickly figure out the meaning of the different commands, ( “run”, “turn”, “beats” etc.) was both inspiring and exciting. I saw him not only reading, but also building a super important skill that he needs--the ability to stick with something even when it is hard, even when its frustrating.
09:53
So, in this year of everything turning upside down, our class made another big adjustment when we returned to in person instruction in January. This, I thought, would be when I could see all of the parts of my project come together. Remember, the original goal--teach 2nd graders tech tools that they can use for inquiry—now that we were back in person they could spontaneously apply those skills to our inquiry based learning. I did not reckon with the time we would be spending washing hands, practicing social distance, and basically re-learning how to be with 3 D humans outside of our families again! But still, there have been glimmers of transfer. One of my students who I was most concerned about for engagement asks to use her computer to make a drawing to show her understanding in class. I've been seeing kids make videos of each other reading--again, one of those students who I was concerned about with engagement. These are baby steps. I do not feel done. . .which is why I am starting tech club up again. . .We still have so much more to learn. We barely touched on the Ozobots and we haven't yet even opened the box of Maky Maky tools.
11:20
I have noticed and I am sure that every teacher who has ever taught has noticed, that when I have fun, my kids have fun. And when my kids have fun, when they feel like they are playing, that is when they are the most open to learning. What tricks do you use to engage your reluctant learners? Do you use technology tools that allows kids to explore and create? I hope that listening to my journey about my attempt to infuse inquiry and technology for my students to help boost their engagement has sparked some questions and some ideas and some next steps for you as well. Thank you for listening.
Welcome to the inaugural podcast of Technology for Learning in 2nd Grade. I am Jennifer Wilkinson and in this podcast I invite you to come along with me to find out what I did to better figure out how to technology tools to boost my students' engagement.
00:20
One of the ongoing questions that I face as is a teacher is how to convince my students to do hard things. The trick is to find a way to bundle the challenge that they need with the engagement that they want. Over the years, I have learned that one of the easiest ways to convince a 7 or 8 year old that something is fun is to turn it into a it a club! Don’t want to read chapter books? Let’s make a book club! Struggling with math? Welcome to before school math club. So when I was considering how to increase my students’ participation during online learning, it seemed logical to try to create a technology club. A second way to convince a 7 or 8 year old that anything is fun is to find a 10 or 11 year old to do it with them. So, I invited a group of 5th graders to join us. My students had a broad range of interests, from drawing to video games to geography, so I decided to meet two days a week, one day focusing on “creating” which was basically coding, and drawing and then a different day, which I called Explorer Club. It was a chance to play with Google Earth and Google maps. I reached out to my district’s tech gurus and was able to get access to a set of little Ozobot robots and a Maky Maky kit! Still not sure what is inside the Maky Maky kit, but I'll get to that later. We were ready to get going.
01:52
I sent out messages, fliers, talked it up during my family conference conversations, but in the end, it was up to the kids to show up to the club. On the first day I had 5 wonderful fifth graders, and three 2nd graders! A bit disappointing. I have 15 kids in my class and only three showed up! Anyway, we launched right into a Minecraft coding tutorial. The Zoom platform turned out to be a perfect way for students to collaborate and help each other. Those who chose could go to breakout rooms in pairs, others could stay with the larger group to problem solve together. This was the first time that most of the students, even the fifth graders, had used the scratch programming tool. The tutorials in this umbrella of Hour of Code activities were great. They set them up perfectly to start with small steps and then add on to their learning. Actually, I didn't really know how do any of these before I started with the kids. so it was a great way for all of us to teach each other and for all of us to tolerate frustration. Things rarely worked the first time, but the great thing about coding is that feedback is immediate and we all quickly discovered that problems can be solved.
03:13
That same week we also had our first “explorer” club. This time more 2nd graders came. We played with this tool called Hopper the Penguin, that I found on a site that is a Google site called Experiments with Google--I highly recommend this if you want to explore some incredible examples of what happens when Google pays people to be creative. It is like an artist playground. Kids can move a very cute penguin anywhere they choose on the globe and then it zooms to that location via Google Earth. Then they can direct their penguin, their little Hopper Penguin to explore. Added bonus, they could make the penguin take a selfie and then email the selfie to themselves. How cool is that! Double added bonus, on this day one of my most disengaged students happened to come. I was able to pair her up with a fifth grader who helped her to travel everywhere from Paris to Antarctica. This is student who needed many reminders to either turn her camera on or sit in a way that made her face visible in the screen. During our club time she benefited from the one-on-one attention of her 5th grade buddy. She had her face in the screen and she responded to prompts and questions for 30 minutes as they chose where to go all over the world. It was super fun. High engagement.
04:45
This is pretty much how each club went. We used the Dance Party Hour of Code tutorial to create animated choreographed dance and then made a flip grid so that we could share them with each other. We figured out how to program the Ozobots remotely. We explored drawing using the Microsoft Whiteboard tool--it was like having a big huge shared canvas that we could all draw on at the same time. Really fun. We played with the web version of Google Earth. With each meeting I felt myself step back more and more as the kids took the wheel—they were helping each other to problem solve , suggesting next steps and coming up with new things to try.
05:31
It turned out that the five students , out my fifteen, who regularly chose to attend the technology club also happened to be my students who typically, during our regular class time, were on target and excited to learn. These were kids who were reading at or above grade level, they were quickly understanding what we were doing and they were HIGHLY engaged during the coding and map exploring lessons, asking questions, wanting to share their work and persisting through frustration. Both the 5th and 2nd graders would ask to stay on to keep working after the 30 minutes of club time had passed. The fifth graders were so excited about the club that they even did a news report about it for School wide assembly!
06:18
But what about the reason I was doing this club in the first place? Those kids who needed this most. Those kids who I was most worried about because they were not engaged in our regular learning. This club was not turning out to be a solution for them because they rarely, if ever chose to come. So, I was worried. I needed to find a way for this to work for them. Because so far our online learning platform was not working.
06:48
Well, there was one big advantage to being 100% remote. It allowed me to be much more flexible with my time. If a kid wasn’t coming to the technology club, maybe I could try bringing the club to them! One student in particular, I’ll call him Tim, was on my mind and heart. Tim struggled with our 2nd grade academic tasks—but he was one of the first to figure out how to annotate during our online Zoom class. He was drawn to technology. This kid's mom would report that he would often have different screens open during our online lessons. What? A hot wheels game is more interesting than Mrs. Wilkinson explaining how to find key words in nonfiction text? I had to somehow convince him that there was something worthwhile of his attention in our online platform. As it was, he just wasn’t interested in what we were doing in that Zoom. I invited him to a special “two person” tech club session . He was intrigued by the Dance Party Coding program after I had shown him some examples of what the other kids had done.
07:58
I have been learning about this idea of “digital literacy” which expands beyond the traditional definition of literacy as being simply reading and writing. I was starting to shift my understanding of literacy to include symbols , emojis, being able to navigate a keyboard. All of these things are skills that in truth are things that will be required in the future to be a literate person. During my one-on-one time with Tim, using Scratch code to program his dance. he followed directions and went back to correct mistakes when prompted. During our whole class instruction when he responds or participates it was usually off topic or a guess. But now, he was so interested in getting his character to make the moves that he wanted that he was focused the entire time. The lesson turned out to be, in some ways, a traditional reading lesson as I prompted him to use his phonics understanding to figure out the names of the different animal choices that were available to him in the coding drop down menu. At first, he only wanted to move random blocks to see what they would do but then he realized that when he slowed down to try to read the words on the blocks he would have more control of what the character did in the dance. He maintained focus on this task for 30 minutes. Watching Tim focus so intently on learning how to move the Scratch coding blocks, and quickly figure out the meaning of the different commands, ( “run”, “turn”, “beats” etc.) was both inspiring and exciting. I saw him not only reading, but also building a super important skill that he needs--the ability to stick with something even when it is hard, even when its frustrating.
09:53
So, in this year of everything turning upside down, our class made another big adjustment when we returned to in person instruction in January. This, I thought, would be when I could see all of the parts of my project come together. Remember, the original goal--teach 2nd graders tech tools that they can use for inquiry—now that we were back in person they could spontaneously apply those skills to our inquiry based learning. I did not reckon with the time we would be spending washing hands, practicing social distance, and basically re-learning how to be with 3 D humans outside of our families again! But still, there have been glimmers of transfer. One of my students who I was most concerned about for engagement asks to use her computer to make a drawing to show her understanding in class. I've been seeing kids make videos of each other reading--again, one of those students who I was concerned about with engagement. These are baby steps. I do not feel done. . .which is why I am starting tech club up again. . .We still have so much more to learn. We barely touched on the Ozobots and we haven't yet even opened the box of Maky Maky tools.
11:20
I have noticed and I am sure that every teacher who has ever taught has noticed, that when I have fun, my kids have fun. And when my kids have fun, when they feel like they are playing, that is when they are the most open to learning. What tricks do you use to engage your reluctant learners? Do you use technology tools that allows kids to explore and create? I hope that listening to my journey about my attempt to infuse inquiry and technology for my students to help boost their engagement has sparked some questions and some ideas and some next steps for you as well. Thank you for listening.