Bloom into EdTech: The Blog

Kindergartners are fun, imaginative souls.  They have a lot to share and their stories are genuine.  This is a great age to start introducing the basics of digital story writing and exploring that creativity. Below are some sites that I use with my Kindergartner to second grade students: Arthur's Comic Creator Those little hands will have a blast adding backgrounds, prompts and text with ease! Buster's Movie Maker Learn about the elements of a great movie and change the mood of the movie. My Story Maker Another fun Website with writing prompts! Great for younger students! You can print and share the stories when you are finished as well. Storybird One of my favorite Websites to use with my students. Easy to use and offers a lot of great visuals! Story Maker from ABCya! Who doesn't fall in love with what ABCya! offers on their site? Students can create a story from scratch and print it out when they are done. Story Jumper Create and shar...

As educators, how do we know if we are doing a good job in providing our students with the best opportunities for the future? We can look at test scores and evaluate data, but are our students engaged? Are they learning? More importantly- are they satisfied? What if we were to create an education that encompassed our students' needs while delivering content that was relevant to them. What would that look like? A little background before we begin.... My current place of employment is a private nonprofit school located in a small suburban town. We have block scheduling, with ELA and Math taking up three periods of the schedule every other day and Social Studies and Science taking up two. I only see them for one period. Sad. I know. In my small corner of the world, I took it upon myself to ask my middle school students a series of questions in an anonymous survey. {I, of course, at first had to explain anonymity to a few to ensure honest results.} It was even asked to be c...

Well, I did it! I finally took the plunge and completed my Google Trainer Application. I am very anxious and yet excited to see the outcome of my application. I am uncertain of what was required in the past, however the application is very straightforward. I had a very hard time keeping my video to the 3-minute limit, because as you know, I am a run-on sentence. Anyhow, here is an example of my video: If you are interested, you can find my Google Slide Game: Code Name  here.   I very much look forward to a reply. Happy holidays!

Hello and happy holidays!  Below is a list of free resources to help code you in the holiday spirit! Tynker Holiday Card Google's Made with Code Google's Code Boogie Google's Code a Christmas Card ​ Google's Code Lab

I created the below Webmix to share my resources on Formative Assessment. This Webmix contains resources for both technical and non-technical forms of Formative Assessment as well as information and studies.

I started off my career over 12 years ago teaching preschool children computer technology. I can tell you a lot has changed in terms of computer technology education. Preschoolers are typing... Preschoolers are creating..... Preschoolers are problem solving..... Preschoolers are troubleshooting.... Preschoolers are coding! Go beyond the Hour of Code and  make code apart of you curriculum.  I love to introduce code to my Preschool and Kindergarten students by teaching them the basic fundamentals of coding: following directions. I begin by explaining to the class that to begin, we are going to pretend that you are robots and I am going to code you! After all, coding is simply giving a set of commands that need to be followed. I made this very basic "Program a Preschooler/Kindergartner" Google Slide here  (and you can grab a copy here ) that I used to introduce simple sets of directions (or algorithms). There are several ways in which you can employ this a...

Are you ready? Are you excited?! It's here- The Hour of Code. Although coding should go way beyond the hour... please take this week to become acquainted with the plethora of Websites available to you to assist your students in learning how to code. Here is a Symbaloo Webmix of sites that I use with my students during the week: Happy Coding!