Umbrella happiness, painting at #kispd thanks to Sallie

Skype session with California school

Today, my students in Korea had the wonderful opportunity to Skype with Springer School in Los Altos, California for our Trans-Pacific Book Club. It was such a thrill to see the faces of my students light up as they spoke face-to-face with their book club members. Technology like Skype, FaceTime, and Google Hangout, make it possible to share experiences with people across oceans. 

I think the biggest hurdle with video chat using any provider is the technical difficulties. Having tested Google Hangout yesterday, I knew that I needed one student in each group to install the video/chat plug-in or else it would not work. However, even though we tested each student with my own Google Hangout, we did not test with Los Altos. The other teacher and I came to the conclusion that the Google Apps for Education in Los Altos might be blocking that feature. Name of the game, make sure you test prior to and always have a back up plan. 

We went to our back up plan with only about 15 min left to chat. Rather than having each novel study group video chat with each other, we went with a whole class chat using Skype. It worked great and the kids were none the less excited to meet each other virtually for the first time. 

We’ve scheduled two other video chat sessions where the students will be discussing their novels in more depth. Julie and I will be testing prior to that using Google Hangout. 

Having minimally used video chat in the classroom, I’ve been looking into how to use it for other educational purposes. See below for some ideas I’ve pondered on using video chat in classrooms: 

• Simple article on how to set up a video chat (link)


• Interview experts in a field for science or social studies


• Author visits for novels


• Pen pals


• Office hours with students who need extra help

Zucchini frittata tippy!

Giving Thanks

While Korea doesn’t celebrate American Thanksgiving, today at lunch we had a feast fit for any suburban family. Complete with Costco pumpkin pie, turkey, corn, mashed potatoes, and salad, it was a lovely time. 

Throughout the meal I was admiring the kindness of my students and thinking about all that I am thankful for in my life. So I decided it would be applicable to write an education blog post about all the edtech tools I am thankful for: 

• Dear Educreations, thank you for making it possible for me to flip my classroom. Without you I’d never be able to make videos for my students to watch at home or give them live feedback on their essays through videos. 


• Dear Google, well what can I say. Thank you for making collaboration on Google docs possible, for creating comments so my students can edit each other’s essays, for creating Google forms so they can evaluate each other on their performances  for making Google Drive so we never loose any documents, for making Google presentation so I can quickly create mathematics slides…need I go on? You are the pumpkin pie this year with all the whip cream I’d ever want. Thank you times one million!


• Dear iPad, thank you for being as small and as sleek as you are. Without your amazing features I’d be lost. You make correcting grammar a splash, taking notes digitally in class possible, tweeting is as fast as can be, and teaching without you just couldn’t ever be possible. 


• Dear Khan Academy, thank you for all the modules you’ve created in order to help my students master math concepts in a fun way. 


• Dear iMovie, thank you for helping me teach my students to think creatively, to collaborate, to imagine and to grow. Making book trailers and personal autobiographies has brought another element into my class that just isn’t possible without your skill. 


• Dear Twitter, thank you for connecting me to educators around the world. Thank you for your short tidbits of knowledge and exciting 150 character posts. 


• Dear Tumblr, thank you for making it possible for me to share with the world my thoughts and ideas. 


• Dear Edmodo, thank you for allowing me to connect with a school in California so my students can have interesting and insightful discussions with peers. 


• Dear MERIT, thank you for inspiring me to become an edtech lover and innovator.


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Teaching students how to use HTML to embed a video into their blog post. It is important that students realize websites are made possible by more than just their typing and pressing buttons. Hoping to have my husband introduce some basic coding skills as well in the near future. Enjoy the screencast and check out other blogger screencasts here. 

Frustration over tech

Wednesday proved to be a low point in my patience level. In our reading groups, students are working collaboratively on a Google doc. While in class, I had students who did not read the right pages even though they were explicityly stated on the Google doc. Additionally, I had assigned a screencast video on how to add labels to blog posts and how to copy and paste a Google doc into blogger so it was properly formatted. However, upon checking over their work I had about half my class forget to do one blog post. 

Bubbling up to the surface, I felt a great amount of annoyance that the kids did not follow directions. I realized that they are only 10 but in the moment during class I just couldn’t handle it. Clearly they sensed my frustration and most were very quiet during the remaining part of the class period.

After the kids went to lunch, I sat at my desk and had a personal reflection period due to feeling incredible awful in regards to loosing it with my kiddos. I am trying to teach them how to use Google docs, learn independently, create Google forms, write blog posts with tags, upload Google docs, insert images, create iMovies, use Today’sMeet, watch Khan Academy videos on unknown math concepts so I can flip the classroom, work on Edomodo with students in California, and still remain kids. 

I am out of breath simply typing all that I have asked of my students. So upon this realization, I feel that I need to have grace with them when issues come up. Many of these kids never used Google docs before August of this year and now they are soaring. I am impressed inside and out with how much technology they have learned and been able to apply across the subject areas. 

If I think back to my fifth grade year, I remember non of the types of projects I am having my students work on now. My hope is that they look back on this year and feel they truly learned skills that they will utilize beyond 5th grade. 

On that same note I hope that they remain kids this year too. I wonder if I push too hard at times and expect too much. Hopefully reading picture books takes care of that : ) 

Sometimes what we need is a bit of lamination, paper and scissors. Reading card choices, thank you Angela!