Techno-Fun, or should that be, "Tech-YES-Fun?"

The A day kids did a great job today.  They worked hard, followed directions well, and were patient!  I (and therefore we) faced one technology glitch after another, from the start of our day to the very last moments of class.  Karma was definitely not on my side today; your children, however, were and I'd take them over karma any day of the week!  I was surprised and impressed with their flexibility and willingness to adjust.  Bravo to them!

Despite our tech trials and tribulations, we managed to accomplish quite a bit and I think everyone had a good time along the way.  We started our day with an introduction to a Web 2.0 application, www.voki.com where I hope your children will have an opportunity to create a talking avatar for their personal blog.  Unfortunately, this was our first glitch.  Voki's are fun and very easy to make.  This application does require that you create an account and sign in so if your child is going to explore this from home, I would encourage you to familiarize yourself with the site and monitor your child's activities.  


As a part of our affective investigation to learn more about ourselves and our classmates, we spent some time this morning reflecting on our interests, influences and personality traits.  We used our computer lab time to create an electronic word cloud that tells others about us.  These will also be on display at our Open House next Thursday, October 6th.  Although the students are anxious to share their work with you, you will have to wait until Open House.  To give you an idea of what a word cloud is, and to give you some more information about me, my personal word cloud is below.  I'm sure you will enjoy what your child created! 

After recess and lunch, the students continued their individual work in the Math Rules program.  They were also introduced to/reviewed our procedures for using the TOPS Math Problems Solving Program.  We are focusing on finding the important information in the word problem and in the illustration.  We also discussed the key words that tell us if we need to add or subtract and ways we can show our thinking.


Next, the students began working in their Exploratory area.  A few were able to complete the Knowledge and at least some of the Comprehension level task.  They are now able to select any of the remaining tasks to complete.  Ask your child to tell you about their center work and a fact or two they learned about their topic.


At the end of our day, we discussed how to leave a comment on our blog and what constitutes a quality comment.  As we prepared to watch a brief video on commenting, we hit our last glitch of the day.  The video loaded slowly and then we were kicked off the network.  By then it was time to pack up.  Ugh!  I promised the students I would leave them a link to the video we were trying to watch.  Below you will find the link.  The video, How to Compose a Quality Comment, was made by Mrs. Yollis' third grade students in Los Angeles, California.  Her blog, http://yollisclassblog.blogspot.com/ has a lot of great information on blogging as well as some wonderful examples of student blogs.  I hope the boys and girls enjoy the video.  We will continue this conversation in the weeks ahead as we learn more about being a responsible, creative blogger.


http://vimeo.com/15695021

(I'm sorry my post is late. I wanted to get permission from Mrs. Yollis to use her video on our blog.)  Have a wonderful week!