Tech at Orchard Hills School
Behind the Scenes With the DLC...
November 2014
School-Wide Performance Task Event!
November 24-25th, Orchard Hills School had a School-Wide Performance Task Event for grades 6-8. The topic for the Event was Health & Wellness. On Day 1, students traveled through their normal daily schedule and learned about various health topics including Nutrition, Emotional Wellness, Sleep & Exercise with the aid of a specially designed Haiku site. At the end of day 2, all students and teachers participated in a Haiku Discussion together. On Day 2, students were placed into groups of 4. Groups collaborated to select one topic to focus on and they spent the day creating a shared writing piece. The day culminated in groups creating a movie using their iPads and various apps including Videolicious, iMovie, Tellagami and more! Students shared their work with OH Principal Rich Montgomery via Google Docs, and top submissions will be selected to be shared site and District-wide!
Learning
Day 1 was filled with articles, videos, infographics and charts all about Health & Wellness!
Discussing
The Day 1 School-Wide Haiku discussion had students and staff producing over 1,000 posts in under 30 minutes!
Producing
On Day 2, small groups collaborated to write and produce a video on a topic of their choosing. Student groups could be seen all around campus, filming, writing and editing their creations!
Fellow Spotlight: Kim Gullo
Kim Gullo is a 6/7 Core and Strategic Reading teacher and Digital Fellow at Orchard Hills School. At the beginning of the school year, DLC Lauren Steinmann shared the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) Young Writers' Project with Ms. Gullo. National Novel Writing month takes place during November each year and challenges writers to create a novel in 30 days! The Young Writers' Project focuses on writing lessons and having students set a word count goal for the month. Ms. Gullo and DLC Steinmann discussed how best to implement the project into her classroom and decided on using Google Docs on the iPad. Google Docs enables the students to access their novel from any device and share their writing with Ms. Gullo, who can then assist them in editing and revising their work. In addition, the NaNoWriMo Young Writers' Project website (below) has a wealth of resources including a digital student workbook, pep talks from famous authors, word count tools, and more!
NaNoWriMo in her classroom has been a HUGE success. Students are engaged and creating amazing pieces of work, crushing their initial word count goals- many students have written over 10,000 words! When novels are complete, Ms. Gullo and DLC Steinmann will work together to come up with editing and revising strategies for students and move on to digital publishing!
Got Apps?
Orchard Hills students are now receiving their apps over the air! DLC Lauren Steinmann pushes out apps via the AirWatch mobile device management system. Teachers request apps using an app request Google form where they justify the educational use of the app they would like for students.
Lauren's Tech Bytes
DLC Steinmann's recent Tech Bytes for OH Staff Members!
ClassTools.net
A fantastic site that allows teachers and students to create "Fakebook" profiles for historical figures, make quizzes and tests into Pac-Man games, create computer games, and more!
Animoto
Animoto is a video slideshow creation site. Students and teachers can display photos, video and text set to music in professional template designs.
ThingLink
ThinkLink allows users to take an image and make it interactive by adding 'links' to content such as photos, videos, text, websites and more!
Lauren Steinmann
Irvine Digital Learning Coach/ TOSA
Email: lsteinmann@tustin.k12.ca.us
Website: https://tusd.haikulearning.com/gkerr/tusdconnect
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Twitter: @TUSDConnect