Weekly Tech-y News Jan 27th-31st

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Weekly Tech-y News

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Weekly Tech-y News

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Breakout Edu in 1st Grade

We had a blast in Mrs. Tieszen's first grade, solving a football-themed Breakout Edu challenge created by the ah-mah-zing Ann Brucker. To complete the challenge, the first graders had to read and solve addition and subtraction word problems, then record the answers to open the locks. The kids did a tremendous job, and we were able to open the box! Mrs. Tieszen put the photos together into an awesome video using the free tool Adobe Spark Video. Click the image below to watch this video and learn more about Breakout Edu!

PicCollage Kids + ChatterPix Kids + Seesaw Superbowl App Smash!

I posted a few fun Superbowl activities in an earlier post that you can read about here, but I also wanted to share a fun app smash project we did in Mrs. Johnson and Ms. Romersa's first grades today! We used the free apps PicCollage Kids and ChatterPix Kids, then posted to Seesaw. Read on to see our fun app smash (and remember you can use this same technique in other areas - think Groundhog Day)!

SuperBowl LI Graph

Let your students graph who they think will win SuperBowl LI by using this Google Drawing on your interactive whiteboard (will work on Mimio, Promethean, and Hitachi). Make a copy by clicking the image above, or at bit.ly/SuperBowlGraph. Also, check out a previous post with football-themed activity ideas (forgive the Arizona Cardinals examples - we were feeling optimistic last year).

If you're looking for great ways to teach your kids about football, the SuperBowl, or specific teams, check out this awesome collection from Epic! books. Sign in to (or sign up for) your FREE educator account in Epic! and search "Super Bowl".

Also, check out the football-related wonders on the site Wonderopolis, including this one: What is Super About the Super Bowl Sunday?

Happy SuperBowl!

Superbowl Fun!

In my kindergarten class each year, we would have a fun football-themed day to celebrate the Superbowl each year.  Some of the activities included predicting and graphing which team we thought would win, completing a fun football player craft project, and yummy football-themed snacks.  Last year, we even had Rocky Mountain College football players come visit us to talk about teamwork and sportsmanship, and play football with us!  It was always one of my favorite days of the year!

Many of the ideas I used are from this website, Teaching Heart.  She has some really great Superbowl ideas on here, including crafts, projects and snacks.

This year, my little Arizona Cardinals fans at home wanted to make the craft project, and we decided to "tech it up a notch" by putting photos of their projects into ChatterPix Kids and having them "talk". This could be a fun way to have your students make predictions for who they think will win the Superbowl.  They could post to Seesaw, and then graph which team has more or less "votes"!

I posted about using ChatterPix Kids earlier this week.  CLICK HERE to read this more in-depth post about using this FREE app.  For this project, we completed the football craft projects from the website above, then used an iPad to take photos of each football player.  When we opened the ChatterPix Kids app, we selected "Take a Photo" and then opened the camera roll (see arrow below).

We selected the photo we wanted to use, then drew the mouth and recorded our words.  I then exported them to the camera roll of the iPad, where it would be easy to share out on Seesaw, Kidblog or another similar platform.  They turned out really cute, and would be a fun way to get your kids in the Superbowl spirit!  Here are our examples.  Go Cards!