Patti McMullen's 20% Post

For my 20% project, I got my classroom Google site, up and running. For some not a daunting task...for me it was the very definition of 'daunting'.  Lot's of trial and error!  But in the end I was successful.  It's called Mrs. McMullen's First Grade Corral. I played around a lot with colors and themes and some clip art.  I added pages for Monthly Bulletins, links for parents, and show-cased student work through slide shows, iMovie and a class book created using littlebirdtales.com








(NETS*T #3) As my navigational skills with my Google site improved I was able to model for my students any updates to our site. They helped pick my cowgirl clip art image and background theme. 'My' website soon began to evolve into 'our' website. I modeled how I made a slide show using Picasa and my students dictated the captions for each photo.  They helped choose the art work for our 'Art Gallery' page and watched as I uploaded the photos.  They 'ooohed' and 'aaahed' when we added our class movie created in iMovie. I did have to practice how to upload it and then model it for them because first grade can get really squirmy when 'TECH GOES BAD'.  (NETS*T #2) With the use of my Smartboard and lap top, each student contributed a page to create a class book about hibernation using the website littlebirdtales.com  and added it to our website.  My next adventure is 'Guess What I Am?', using Voicethread.com.  I created a voicethread with a super up close image of an ordinary everyday item and will have the kids guess what they think the image is.  


(NETS*T 5) I work on an awesome first grade team, and we are constantly sharing and creating together. I actually forwarded Molly's screen cast about creating a Google site to some of my team members and they used it to start their own Google site. It's been a never ending conversation of "Hey guys, I learn this new thing in my tech cohort...".  Tatanka Elementary is becoming a STEM school next year. My team and I jumped on the opportunity to do some curriculum writing this summer to incorporate technology into our current reading, math, science and engineering curriculum.