In searching for a tool to enhance my second graders’ creating minds, I rediscovered an old friend. About 8 years ago I was using Kid Works Deluxe. I had even developed a template to make it easier for students to navigate the program. I just quit using it. I have at least ten copies of the program in my classroom, so I don’t have to purchase anything.

In researching it as one of my picks, I went to the Knowledge Adventure site which describes Kid Works as a tool that builds reading, writing and creativity skills. The first curriculum skill mentioned is “Write and think creatively.” Kid Works was designed for kindergarten through fourth grade students. It includes a word processor and a paint program. It also includes 100 sound effects, 100 animations, 100 “story starter ideas,” 140 illustration starters, and 400 stickers. This program can support my students’ creativity in writing and illustrating their stories.  Kid Works Deluxe is especially good in the beginning of the year when student stories are still relatively short. It is easy to create a booklet that students can take home and share with their family. Kid Works Deluxe is an easy program for my students to use and for me to teach.

 One teacher at my school is a big proponent of Inspiration. I agree that it seems like an excellent program for creativity. Her students are a few year older than mine so it may be good for them. I think Kidspiration may be a lot more user friendly for my students as it is the junior edition of Inspiration designed for kindergarten through fifth grade. I watched a tour of it today on their website. It appears to have a lot of great features. It would help my kids learn how to turn a graphic organizer into an outline for their story, because one application does just that. This is exactly the method our school adopted writing program uses. After turning their graphic organizers into outlines a few times on Kidspiration, students should be able to do this on their own. It is a challenge to get students at this age to organize their stories. The visual components of this program allow for student creativity and writing is a creative process. Having a dictionary and thesaurus will also assist me in teaching my students to use these important reference tools.

I am excited about Kidspiration’s math component. Regrouping (borrowing and carrying) is a difficult concept for second graders. I have made a PowerPoint presentation to try to help them with this concept. We also use base ten blocks in the classroom, but it is very time consuming. It looks like Kidspiration illustrates this concept very well for the student. The student needs only to enter an addition or subtraction problem and the base ten blocks are shown and it shows how they are moved to illustrate the solution.

Under classroom ready-made activities there is a writing project called “Writing your first report.” It is a partially completed web that I now plan to utilize to help my students with their animal reports. This very kid friendly simply worded visual document has places to complete information about habitat, diet, locomotion and reproduction. Their animal reports will be one of the main ways my students can use their creativity while   still working on the state standards. I think both of these programs will help me to foster my students’ creativity this year.

At my school it is sometimes hard to fit in time for science. I am part of a research project in my district that is exploring ways to get more science content into the primary grades (K-2). What we are attempting is to teach some of the language arts comprehension skills and strategies through science. I am very familiar with our language arts curriculum as we have had it for several years. Our new science curriculum details language arts strategies within the science lessons. What we are attempting to do is to link these science lessons with our language arts materials. Theme 4 (one-sixth of our school year) of my language arts program focuses on “Amazing Animals.” This is the perfect time to teach the state science standards about animals and their life cycles.  I plan to integrate reading, writing, and science with student-created (partially from a template) PowerPoint presentations. This is new for me and I am a little nervous that all my students will be able to complete this project. My students, at this point, only know how to view a PowerPoint that has already been created. However, I do have two students who complete all their work very accurately and very quickly and I have been looking for something that would challenge them. They are going to be my “guinea pigs” in a test to find out whether my second graders are capable of creating PowerPoint presentations. I spoke with them today and they’re up for the challenge.  This integrative student project will be an animal report on a specific animal. They have checked out books from the library and will research additional information on the internet at school and home. My district also has a great online encyclopedia that the students will utilize. I would also like to include a Discovery Streaming editable video segment in their PowerPoint, and if everything is going well, with their narration over the video.    I have a fair amount of experience creating PowerPoint presentations to enhance my lessons. I have no experience of turning the control over to my students in this way. I want to have my students get a taste of producing a project to be shared. I am excited about this undertaking and all the growth I think it will foster in my students.  Even though Gardner states that these types of projects are “misleadingly labeled as ‘interdisciplinary,’” it seems to me that this is truly an interdisciplinary approach. I am integrating the subjects of reading, writing, and science using technology and the students are synthesizing the information from different sources.

Almost one third of the second grade Houghton Mifflin Language Arts program is devoted to short-vowel words and the CVCe pattern for long-vowel words.  My primary goal is to teach students to recognize these spelling patterns and to use that knowledge when reading. My secondary goal is for students to spell basic short-vowel words and long-vowel words that use the CVCe pattern.  

The primary video I use to help meet these California content standards is Phonics in Context: The Long and Short Vowels. I use all the video segments except the ones “Introducing Pencil Power” and the ones where “Pencil Power Signs Off”. I show the video segments as I am teaching the phonics/spelling pattern of the week. The first week, I show the short “A” video segment and the short “I” video segment. We work on these two vowels for two weeks. The third week I show the short “E”, “O”, and “U” video segments. I continue to introduce video segments as I teach the long vowel patterns.

Different ways an individual video segment can be used: 

1. I can show the video segment as a preview before teaching the phonics and spelling lessons of the week.
2. We can view the video segments in conjunction with teaching the phonics and spelling lessons.
3. These video segments are an excellent source of review. The video segments may be viewed right before the students are tested on the skill. It can also be viewed the following week when the program has a lesson that reviews the introduced skill from the prior week.
4. I have organized PowerPoint presentations that are taught with the first four stories:
   1. Dragon Gets By is short “a” and short “i”.
   2. Julius is short “o”, “u” and “e”.
   3. Mrs. Brown Went to Town is long “a” and long “i”.
   4. Henry and Mudge and the Starry Night is long “o”, “u” and “e”.

These PowerPoint presentations can be put in a learning center for students to view. It is very easy for the students to view the video segments. The students really enjoy these video segments. When students had free choice in the computer lab, many elected to watch the videos again.

5. These video segments may also be used as part of Discovery’s Assignment Builder.

I always download videos from Discovery Streaming for two reasons. The technology department of our district has asked us not to stream videos because it slows down the network. The more important reason is that I don’t want to depend on the internet. If the internet is down, I can still teach my planned lesson.

If I did not feel strongly that digital media and technological tools should be part of students’ daily education, I would not be taking this class.  I strongly disagree with the statement, “Digital Immigrants think learning can’t (or shouldn’t) be fun.”  Of course education should be fun. It is gratifying to see students learning when they think they are playing. I label lots of assignments games so my students think they are playing.  

I have often thought that children today have very short attention spans and that this was an undesirable result of video games. I have blamed my students for not paying attention. I attempt to make my lessons interesting.  I tell my students that I add the videos, songs, and PowerPoint presentations to try to make their learning more fun, but sometimes they just need to pay attention to what we are working on in their school books. I see from the article that even my very young students may think that what I am trying to teach them is not worth paying attention to compared to other experiences. I have often found that students have much longer attention spans in the computer lab especially when I am letting them explore areas they are interested in. Students have voted to shorten their P.E. in order to work longer in the computer lab.  

I see that I am a Digital Immigrant. I started reading blogs about eight months ago, but have only today used the blog Discovery set up for me. I check other’s blogs regularly, might be lost without my email or cell phone, use the internet daily and listen to podcasts of my favorite radio shows weekly. Yet I am still not involved in MySpace, Facebook, or Second Life.  

Last year my school purchased Qwizdom Software. It includes data collection tools and RF handheld remotes. This technology helps me assure that all my students are involved and even seamlessly records their scores. My students loved using it. As Digital Native methodologies are created, I hope we spread our successes. I really want to reach ALL my students.  

I was surprised to read that Hispanic kids have higher media exposure than white kids. Many more of my current students have computers than just a few years ago. It was interesting to learn that 47% of eight- to ten-year olds watch educational TV. For years I have tried to influence this. I have encouraged parents of struggling students to have their kids watch educational programs on PBS. I have gone as far as to make TV guides for my students and count watching Between the Lions as part of the required reading minutes in their homework. I believe the right type of television can be truly educational. I had a student two years ago that seemed to know something about every topic we discussed that year. I asked him how he knew so much about so many different things. He told me he watched PBS.

My name is Debbie Salahi and I live in California with my husband and our cat Daisy. I have been interested in computers since I was in high school. In those days computers needed a room to hold them.  Education is a second career for me. I started using digital media my first year of teaching. My students have had an edge from educational videos, listening centers and computers in the classroom to my recording books on audio tapes and videotape available with “library” checkout for home use. I was the technonology liaison for my school for several years.  I have become very proficient finding great websites for skill practice.  I guess I am really a Digital Immigrant because this is my first blog even though I have had the account for several months. I have not yet incorporated Web 2.0 tools into my classroom, but I am ready to start!

I have been teaching second grade for eleven years. I really enjoy children at this age because they are usually excited about learning. I teach in a Title 1 school located in Anaheim, California. A large percentage of our students are English Language Learners. Our school has been concentrating on student engagement as a way to increase our standardized test scores. I think media is an excellent way to increase student engagement. Screen media is very beneficial for visual learners, it provides picture support for my English Language Learners and the fast pace keeps their attention. The majority of clips I use are less than 5 minutes and many are about 1-2 minutes. My students know if they don’t pay attention right away it will be over. I do show many of the clips more than once. I think it reinforces what I am teaching when they also see it on a video.

Every event that I have participated in with Discovery Education has been very beneficial. Other teachers look to me to help them with technology. I have held mini trainings at my school for colleagues. I have assisted teachers in our school in setting up their accounts on Discovery, introduced them to the songs section on Discovering Streaming, and probably the most beneficial was providing CDs that referenced the videos offered through Discovery Streaming with the phonics and grammar of our Houghton Mifflin Language Arts program. 

When I attended the DEN National Institute in July, I realized how much more there was to learn. I am taking this class because it is a joint effort between Discovery and Wilkes.  

I use Discovery Streaming weekly in my classroom. I have identified numerous video segments that I have aligned to many of the second grade standards (“Legacy” content).  I want to learn how to create podcasts with my students and get them more actively involved in creating content. I want to learn what is appropriate for seven and eight year olds who don’t necessarily have access to computers outside of school. I am excited that I am taking Digital Media in the Classroom. The goal is more technology integration in my classroom.