Technology in Education: Notes from the Closet

Each year as students head back to school they set goals for themselves; ' get good grades' , ' listen to the teacher' , ' become better at sports' are some popular ones we here.  Teachers in first grade, second grade and third grade took these goals a step further; they had students record them. Teachers began by having students write three goals for the new year.  When this step was complete I came in. Using the app Audioboom I recorded each student reading their goals.  Audioboom stores the audio recording on their site, and generously creates a QR code linking to it.  I printed each and teachers found creative ways to display them (see pics below).  These goals were then placed in classrooms for Open House.  Our parents loved them, and the students got a kick out of them as well. The hope is that we will come back to this activity in June and rerecord reflection statements about meeting/not meeting our goals.  It will be fun to compare writing ...

As students learn about history teachers often test knowledge through discussions and quizzes.  How about using technology tools to demonstrate what they've learned?  This year in Ms. Malhiot's classroom students became very comfortable using PicCollage and Audioboom to demonstrate learning.  Following are some great examples of their knowledge of the American Revolution.  Look closely at the PicCollages...students embedded themselves in various scenes! Follow Ms. Malhiot's Class on Twitter listen to ‘Declaration of Independence’ on audioBoom listen to ‘The Constitution of 1787’ on audioBoom listen to ‘the battle of sarrotoga’ on audioBoom listen to ‘Benedict Arnold’ on audioBoom listen to ‘NEW the french and indian war’ on audioBoom listen to ‘patrick henry’ on audioBoom listen to ‘samuel adams’ on audioBoom

I've used AudioBoom for years to provide audio feedback to undergraduate and graduate students.  Even at the college level students love this form of feedback.  Recently I've introduced it to many of the teachers at Coonley .  We absolutely love that AudioBoom generates a QR code for each file and provides a free account that allows unlimited 10 minute recordings!  With this we've made our kindergarten monsters come alive, provided musical recordings of our students' progress and allowed our 5th graders to become book reviewers. We find new uses for this awesome app each day.   Below is a User Guide that I created to help teachers walk through the app.  Click here to see a 1 page condensed version.  Happy recording!   AudioBoom User Guide