Elementary & Primary Collaboration

One advantage of being the only tech coach in a PK-12 district is that I get to work with all grade levels! Read on to learn about some of the collaborations that have taken place at the elementary and primary levels.

Schoology for Organization of Content and Communications

How do you encourage teachers to transition from Schoology Groups to Schoology Courses? With an international pandemic, of course! The grades 1-2 Specials teachers (art, music, gym, STEM, library) reached out to see how Schoology Courses could work for them - they had 10-11 sections at a time with a total of about 800 students! That's a lot of logistics to keep in line.

Diane Schroeder is a 2nd-grade teacher who thrives on collaborative projects. She participated in the Forward Edge Flipgrid Kindness Challenge where we paired 2nd- grade teachers from districts where we coach for a Valentine's Kindness Exchange. Hear why collaboration is important to her.

Research à la VR and Book Creator

One of my buildings, grades 3-4, really took to Book Creator as a means of having students showcase their work, in particular, their research project. Some were also very interested in incorporating VR into the research process and they curated resources that immersed students into the world they were researching.

Natural Disasters

My first collaboration was with Mrs. Freeman, a 4th grade teacher. She was looking for an interesting way for her students to research natural disasters. Enter VR. I had demonstrated our VR goggles to the gifted team and she immediately jumped on the opportunity. We worked together for her to learn how the goggles worked and how to curate material for students to view. Some of her resources were from Google Expeditions while others she found on YouTube.

ecosystems

Remember Mrs. Freeman? She was on a team with Mrs. Moher and they collaborated regularly on their lessons. Mrs. Freeman had been so happy with an earlier Book Creator project that they decided to collaborate on their Ecosystems project: Mrs. Moher guided the science side (the ecosystem lesson and research) and Mrs. Freeman guided the VR and ELA sides (creating the research project, i.e., the Book Creator book). Here is one of the books created by their students: FORESTS

These two ladies are but one example of how teachers can collaborate with each other and share the load. I wish more teachers would board this train!

Mrs. Moher shares how the several levels of collaboration resulted in an incredible experience for students and teachers alike.

It all started in a little state called Ohio

Mrs. Frederick was one of my "regulars" for coaching. She did amazing things as she went from "I know nothing about tech" (not true, by the way) to absolutely soaring!

She got the Book Creator bug and decided she wanted to have students create their "Ohio Alphabet" books in a digital format. After discussing what these books typically looked like and the goal of this project, I presented her with some options, she decided upon Book Creator. She liked that she could set up the alphabet template and then students could add the various elements to each page.

She opened a library ahead of time to allow students to "play" with this new platform. I Zoomed in one day to introduce students to navigating Book Creator. They then played in a self-directed book.

When it came time for the project, Mrs. Frederick had students join her library, and away they went!

She later used it for her extreme weather/natural disasters project where students worked in groups to create their books.

Life Cycles and scaffolding

A pair of teachers who regularly collaborated (still do!), Mrs. Taylor and Mrs. Whiting, were very interested in learning how to incorporate tech into their lessons. They were looking for ways to engage students in their learning.

Round 1: They created an interactive lesson to introduce students to the lifecycle and comparison of frogs and toads.

Round 2: They had two Book Creator projects in mind for students this past school year. For the first one, they created a template for students to follow. For the second, they gave students a framework to build their books and more choice in creating them.

Mrs. Frederick, a 4th-grade teacher, not only completed her Tic-Tac-Tech March Madness Challenge. She also won a 1-year subscription to Book Creator. She can't wait to have her students collaborate on books next year. Thank you, Book Creator team, for being so generous!

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