Motivating the Reluctant Reader Through Technology

Dr. Rob Furman

South Park Elementary Center Principal - rob@furmanr.com www.furmanr.com

Presentation can be found here

Tame the Text

10 things to keep in mind when motivating a reluctant reader (not necessarily involving technology)

* Useful site for polling * Poll Everywhere - www.pollev.com - good way to share/submit thoughts

How can we use technology to help us motivate readers

1 - Don't Judge the Reader

• We have to find a way to get that first spark - we want kids to want to read
• Storia or Bookster, Kindle or Nook books - take away the fear of being judged by the cover of the book - share Storia with parents, when they purchase books the teacher gets the points

2 - Offer a range of materials -

• Scholastic Book Wizard - "Find Just the Right Books" - find books that are about certain topics, or similar to other books. Also great for leveling your classroom library
• GoodReads - create an account and keep track of then rate books you've read, plus make a list of books you want to read, as they read and rate books they get suggestions for more books to read

3 - Provide Time for Dialogue

• Conversations about books and reading
• What is the last book that you read?
• How did you feel when it ended?
• What did you want to do after you completed the book?
• How many of us want to answer 10 questions to prove comprehension?
• in2books - through ePals - screened adults are mentors to grade 3-5 struggling readers, teachers go between the teacher - UnitedWay and other organizations often underwrite the program. Authentic, rich communication about books. Classes can communicate with other classes about what they're reading.
• book-clubs-resource.com - book discussions
• Skype with another class - robfurman - rob@furmanr.com - willing to read a book then Skype to have a discussion
• Skype an Author Network - Capture the Flag author will Skype for free skypeanauthor.wetpaint.com

4 - Give Readers a Toolkit - here are some technology resources

• ReadingRockets
• Bookflix
• Podcasts - Audacity
• Tumble Books
• Literactive.com
• Read Naturally
• FlipSnack
• RAZ-Kids

5 - Don't impose on kids, let them read at their comfort level

• Never say "that's too easy for you" or things that would discourage them reading. If they have that interest, let them read it. If it's too hard, read it together, give them the book on CD to follow along.

6 - Dive Deep

• Scholastic - The Stacks - after students read a book,
• BitStrips - Make a comic

7 - Value Browsing and Rereading

• Kids need more time to do it and enjoy it -
• www.bookbrowse.com

8 - Building Stamina

• Scholastic Reading Timer - log the time they're reading
• Stopwatch, reading log, prizes, and goals/challenges

9 - Teach Students to Curate Their Own Reading Lives

• Help them take charge of and figure out what they like to read
• Destiny Quest - making book lists
• edublogs or kidblogs - let kids blog about what they're reading
• studentpublishing.com

10 - Remember, Joy Matters

• There is no greater gift we can give to our children than the joy of reading!
• Model a joy of reading
• Know your students and your collection 

Finding Treasure in the Lesson Activity Toolkit

Collette Retrosi, Street & Co

pdf (map of the Lesson Activity Toolkit) available on website and notebook training file--feel free to share & use

ACTIVITIES
Category sort (with text or images)

Help | Customer Experience Program | Submit feature request

Kids' pics: add to My Content...lunch count, attendance, bar graphine
link to sound file introducing themselves
Use your own face for link to directions

SMART Revolution NING (online community for education/learning/teaching community)

Hot Spots
can be an overlay of ANY picture
put in your labels | region

Heads/Tails coin flip...predict | if you win, you stay standing | if you lose, sit down

Obe Hostetter--RCPS website--google web search for smart notebook files

Image Arrange
reordering parts of a story, steps

Image Select/match
(can use with responders)

Multiple Choice
Dual page mode w/ resource on one page, questions on other page

Pairs (memory game)

Tiles (reveal picture from behind)

GAMES
checkers--use as link buttons
indoor recess--checkers/chess
bring in board & have kids make up their own game
image dice--put faculty members' pictures on them for training purposes for volunteers

GRAPHICs
Interactive pull tabs (use push pin to lock the return position)
make your own pull tabs using shapes w/ a pull tab box; group together to create custom label on the pull tab

PAGEs
title pages
SMART Response pages!
Lesson Pages

TOOLs
keyword dice--sight words for1st grade
random word chooser--dolch site words (ask Collette for sight word file)

Use Collette's portaportal for smart links!

Technology for K-2 Small Group Instruction

Shared Activities will be updated when they're posted to Edmodo

ActivInspire Activities (can make SmartBoard versions of these)

• All About Me activity
• Info or questions hiding behind pictures then drag them out to reveal
• Word Study 
• Beginning sound sort by picture - ex: y v z q sort
• Ending sound sort
• Templates on PrometheanPlanet
• Elkonin boxes with alphabet at bottom
• blank screen with letters at the bottom
• Attendance Graph
• Question of the day - premake with student names then just edit each day with a new question

Kidspiration Activities

• Sight word activity - bubbles with sound recorded, and a word bank, students listen to word then find that word and drag it to the bubble.  Afterwards, change the background color and see if you're correct
• Silly Sentences - roll the dice and choose beginning, middle, and end then read the silly sentence

iPad Apps for Small Group

• ABC Photo Touch
• Letter School - teaches letter formation, then you make it
• Profs' Phonics - letters, makes sound then gives you a picture and you have to find things in the picture that begin with that sound
• Kids Learn Sight Words - word is shown and said, then they write it 
• Sentence Maker - picture with a sentence that's mixed up, click on a word and it reads it to you, then put the words in order
• iSequence - pictures for different scenarios - click and drag to put them in order, then what happens next
• ICanWrite (1 2 and 3) - dress the animal, then choose the words for the sentence to match the clothing item
• Twenty - number recognition and one-to-one
• Motion Math Hungry Fish - addition and subtraction games to practice # recognition and facts
• Motion Math Wings - choose the larger number
• Motion Math Zoom - place value and number lines
• AppMATes - Cars II app as a reward/behavior incentive

Something NOT ipad related for once!= The new Dell Windows 8 computer.

Tech. Difficulties for the Dell rep so far.  Latitude 10 tablet for using Windows 8. Office comes with Windows RT. Xps12 will work as a tablet and ultra book mode.

The XPS12Duo would have been a good computer in place of the tablets we got last year.

Coder Dojo

Started in Ireland. An environment where different ages are encouraged to code on computers.
Various languages are covered.

Scratch, html, Cass, php, minecraft,mysql, stencyl, kodu are used primarily.
4 day stronger session was started first with only 50 seats. There was am over flow so they had to expand this to 100 seats and another session had to be started with all day sessions. Ended up being 200 kids for the first try with many on the waiting list.

4 and 5 year olds were mixed in with older kids. They held there own. Kids were encouraged to help each other. Parents also came and learned and some even became advocates. The idea of NEVER putting your hands on a students mouse were important.

Day 2 involved Stencyl. Physics had to be discussed to deal with some of the programming.
Currently have about 5 dojos running at once. Instructors ate volunteers. Sessions run monthly or bi-weekly.

They started using notepad then composer for early programming before getting more complicated stuff.

Augmented Reality

Band aid brand ar.  As one example, you can scan in a muppets band aide and it will play music or something related.

Lunch Rush is an education app for iPad.
-has a PDF that is downloaded and printed to use with the app.

Wondering if the presenter will be showing Aurasma (sp?) She did cover this about a 1/2hr in.  This has some of the most promise. May be able to get an educators account for free. This is cross platform.

Zooburst  is another app.

Presenter is showing a lot of noneducational apps.

Augmented Reality Defender is a pay= another game.

History Pin may show places scanned as they appeared years ago. Not sure if you would need flash cards.

AR Player is a little better than the rest, but you only have one marker that you program for what you want to see.

Ipads for autism students

One presenter could not be present.

We were shown various apps that could be used for autistic students.
Presenter said he will list the apps on his website:  luedtech.com
He tries to stick with free or low priced when possible.

Creating & Collecting Digital Work (Tammy Worcester)

Creating Digital Work

goal: get each student's work to end up with a URL

try: www.drawzit.com (won't work on iPad)

rover app---flash app for ipad? websites will sometimes work if you open them in this app

setup digital drop box for kids to submit URLs...use a Google form
questions on the form:
First Name
Last Name
Assignment Name
URL
notes to teacher

Favorite URL shortener website: tinyurl.com

Create audio recordings online that provide a URL:
www.croak.it (easy, and it has an iPAd app)
www.recordmp3.org (quality is better in firefox)
vocaroo.com (QR codes won't play automatically, you'll have to press play)

For giving student feedback as an audio in this way, link the audio URL to a QR code & print the code for them to scan

QR Code Generator (qrcode.kaywa.com)
QR code creation within Google spreadsheet....Tip 110 on her website...HOLY COW! I wanna try this!
running "reflection" on her computer, she showed her networked phone on the screen to run the QR code scanner & have it appear on her phone.

Have kids record their Christmas lists, create a QR code & send out...other ideas:
record book reviews, record all about me, record a child reading, record a child describing their artwork hanging on display & post QR code beside it.

Scribble Maps (scribblemaps.com)
kids can mark up a map!

Google Docs
File | Publish to the web (however, now this is public!)

List view in Google form spreadsheet results (allows you to filter what you need)

Evernote (www.evernote.com)

What about websites that DON'T provide a URL for student work?
www.readwritethink.org
abcya.com
wordle.com
tagzedo?

3rd party download--jing--and keep it open
click the sun
add | select the part you want | select the image | upload as URL

iPad apps with URLs;
croak.it (audio)
showme & Educreations (records both drawing & audio)
*Sock Puppets
YouTube

Google Activities for Kids!

Presenter - Tammy Worcester
Handouts

The Google Activities Tammy showed us today require a Google Account for teachers, but not necessarily for the students

Google Maps - Teacher can login and create a map, adding place-markers and details

• Markers to follow along different places with a book
• If you couldn't live in Virginia, where would you live - add details about why
• Rock band going on tour - mark tour locations on map and what would you do in your spare time?
• *Scribble Maps* - students can create a map without logging in. They can save the map, e-mail it, or even embed it into a blog or webpage. They can choose a mapID to access the map later. They then create a password so they can edit the map later.

Google Docs (Drive)

1. Free
2. Collaborative - you can potentially have up to 50 people in a Google Doc at the same time
3. Cloud Based - can access from anywhere

Collaborative Spreadsheet - Create and share out, then go to tinyurl.com

• Ex: tinyurl.com/twvste1
• Google Form - Sample Survey - tinyurl.com/twvste2
• Tools - Show Summary of Responses to show graphs of multiple choice and checkbox items
• **batchgeo.com - paste info with location data, and it will map including the data with each placemarker. You can then save that map to edit later, or to share out, embed on a site

Collaborative Word Cloud 

• Start in a spreadsheet and type your questions across the top, then create a form from there - Ex: tinyurl.com/twvste3
• Kids fill out with name and words to describe _____ (ex: words to describe a famous person, etc.) - good way to collect words before going to wordle.com or **tagzedo.com (similar to Wordle, but it allows you to put the word cloud into a shape.

Quizzes with Google

• Tammy's Tips and Tricks on her website, she has a tip of the week - #81 has templates for quizzes - use the form to collect data, put your answers at the top then it will score for you.

Google activities for kids

www.tammyworcester.com

Google maps-
Can create own custom maps
My places button allows this.
Students can mark places on a map like in a lit trip. Stops could have a little descriptions based on research.
Students can create place marks in 5 other states where they wheels like to live other than VA and why.
Can create a path down a road with chapters added.

Scribble maps- can be used without a google account. More pushpins than on google.
Sharing can be a little more difficult though.
Map ID allows students to get back to their map instead of needing an account. A password is needed that is made up at the time of creation.

Google drive-
You can now download google drive for viewing and editing.
She showed collaboration features and then used TinyURL to share the link.

She then showed forms.
Created a form and had viewers this in.
Then showed how to work with some of the numerical data.
Show summary of responses under form option.
Highlighting columns and copying... Batchgeo  allows you to paste your information to create a map with all of your information. Saving and moving on allows a link to be created with the information to embed.

Creating a word cloud in a spreadsheet...
Filling out the spreadsheet headers for the questions before working in the form is a quicker way to setup a form.
Used Tagxedo and Wordle with the information posted.

She then used a form top create a test.
By using a template, grading can be done automatically.